BBC Worldwide: smoke and mirrors

The way the corporations commercial arm now reports its results makes it almost impossible to assess how it is performingThe BBCs commercial arm Worldwide formerly BBC Enterprises used to be a simple affair. Take BBC-produced programmes, sell them to broadcasters around the world and invest the profits in future BBC productions. BBC Enterprises declared profits were always pretty low primarily because the criteria they used to decide on programme investment were (deliberately) in many cases only borderline commercial. The idea was to invest as much as possible in new programmes, thus reducing declared profits and the tax bills that came with them. Throw in BBC magazines and BBC Books and that was it. True, the relative lack of commerciality almost certainly provided cover for widespread inefficiency, but it was at least relatively straightforward.The last 10 years, however, have seen BBC Worldwide transformed. Under former director general Mark Thompson and chief executive John Smith, refocusing on profitability of the declarable type and expanding into a host of new markets and activities became the priorities. Worldwide now runs channels all over the world and has its own production businesses in the US, India, France and Germany. It set up its own format factory in Los Angeles and began investing directly in indies and paying for and distributing non-BBC content. It set out to conquer the world with the global iPlayer. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-07-27 00:00:00 UTC ]

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