BBC将在2016年对美国推出OTT服务

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英国当地时间9月17日下午，BBC总裁托尼•霍尔（Tony Hall）在皇家电视协会会议上宣布BBC旗下商业部门BBC Worldwide（“BBCWW”）将于2016年在美国推出OTT视频服务。

霍尔表示：“借此机会，BBCWW将与观众直接面对面。这项OTT服务将会为用户提供别处看不到的独家内容，向用户展示英国文化以及英国节目制作者和演员的风貌。”

针对BBCWW的经营业绩，霍尔提出了新目标，期望BBCWW能够为BBC贡献更多的资金流。2014年，BBCWW为BBC贡献约2.5亿英镑，部分收入来自于BBC旗下频道，包括以电视剧为主的BBC1，主要针对男性观众的BBC Brit，以及不久之前在印度推出的倾向于真实类节目的BBC Earth。霍尔期望，在五年之后，BBCWW能够每年为BBC贡献12亿英镑。

BBC to launch OTT service in the US

The concept of a global iPlayer may have floundered but the BBC has confirmed fresh plans to offer over-the-top (OTT) content to those in the US.

The news was revealed by Director General Tony Hall in a speech to the Royal Television Society Convention in Cambridge. Its timing could not have been more appropriate given that the previous day at the event UK Culture Secretary John Whittingdale not only expressed his long-standing concerns about BBC funding and governance, but also hinted at shake-ups in scheduling that the BBC's news programmes should make. There had also been mutterings about the future of BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm.

In his speech, Hall hit back at critics, pointing out that to deliver the quality content licence fee payers should expect, the BBC needed a commercial strategy where BBC Worldwide delivers as much as possible back into public service programmes. The DG noted that in 2014 the commercial arm was an indivisible part of the BBC and had a ￡1 billion turnover that gave the BBC a record return of ￡226 million. Such profits, he added, were ploughed back not only back into the BBC — more than 70% of the funding of BBC One's natural history landmark Life Story was commercial and the licence fee paid for less than half the budget of some of our biggest dramas in 2014 — but also into the independent production sector. Hall pointedly asserted that without BBC Worldwide, the licence fee would be ￡10 higher.

Hall stressed the imperative to grow the business and said that the BBC would work with global partners to grow BBC Worldwide further, taking advantage of the demand for British programming and new digital opportunities with offerings such as the new OTT service. "Following on from our AMC partnership in the US, we have just signed a new joint venture with Sony Multi-Screen-Media to launch a BBC Earth channel to India," he revealed. "And we'll begin to try out businesses that go direct to the public. Next year, we're launching a new OTT video service in America offering BBC fans programmes they wouldn't otherwise get – showcasing British actors, our programme-makers – and celebrating our culture."

Hall calculated that the plans would increase commercial returns from BBC Worldwide to ￡1.2 billion over the next five years, more than 15% higher than the returns of the previous five years.