iPhone

Content LogoEntertainment on Demand

The take-up of digital services by consumers around the world is gaining pace. In the UK the BBC iPlayer, which provides an online catch-up service for UK viewers, recorded 123m streams of TV and radio programmes in April 2010, up from 76m in April 2009. Just five years after launch, video-sharing website YouTube now delivers more than 2bn video streams daily, with the number of views doubling in just over six months between October 2009 and May 2010. At BBC Worldwide our aim is to ensure our content remains relevant to all the emerging opportunities. We have an ambitious target of deriving 10% of our revenues from digital by 2012.


Growth in % of revenue
from digital activity

Growth* in percentage of our sales from digital activity

How we will drive the growth of our digital business:

Web properties

  • Investing in the development of our websites, especially BBC.com and lonelyplanet.com


Syndicated content

  • Securing deals with other web players to carry BBC content on demand, eg YouTube
  • Creating partnerships with device manufacturers to offer their customers added value by pre-loading our content; for example Doctor Who and Top Gear episodes were pre-loaded on the Nokia N96


Mobile

  • Developing mobile apps and other services by exploiting existing content
  • Creating new content and releasing it in mobile format
TOP

Strong brands + great content = stand-out apps

The market for mobile applications has grown fast, but with growth comes overcrowding. To stand out you need to have a strong brand, offer great content and understand your consumers. Lonely Planet demonstrated this in April 2010 when the volcanic ash cloud disrupted flights over Europe. The team moved quickly to provide free and discounted City Guides via the iPhone apps store to stranded travellers, resulting in 3m downloads in April. In addition, downloads of some non-promoted guides increased by over 500%.

* Throughout this Review, sales include Group revenue and the Group’s share of joint-ventures’ revenue, and profit refers to operating profit before specific items. Specific items are not defined under IFRS and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. Specific items are material items which are highlighted by virtue of their size or importance to enable a full understanding of BBC Worldwide’s performance. A full definition of specific items and a reconciliation to profit before tax is provided in Financials.

During the year, BBC Worldwide has voluntarily chosen to employ International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as adopted by the European Union, as the basis for the preparation of its consolidated financial results. This is in line with best practice and to allow greater comparability with other organisations. Throughout this Review all results are extracted from BBC Worldwide’s financial statements and presented consistently under IFRS, unless otherwise stated.