Over the past four years BBC Worldwide has been building a
wholly owned and operated international TV channels business that
carries extensive BBC branding. This has been a fast-growing area
of operation and now delivers the highest sales of any of our
businesses. The strategy involved exiting a number of existing
joint-venture agreements for international channels, in order to
focus on our own portfolio, and we largely completed this in
2010/11 when we sold our stakes in Animal Planet and
People&Arts to our partner Discovery Communications Inc. We are
focusing in particular on BBC America (see Case study: Expanding in
the USA) as a springboard for expanding in the US market.
New services
We launched nine channels in the year. This included CBeebies in
South Korea, BBC Knowledge in Italy, a dedicated feed for BBC
Entertainment in India, and BBC HD in a number of markets. In New
Zealand the Documentary Channel was relaunched as BBC Knowledge in
March 2011. We also launched two new branded blocks - BBC HD on SKY
Brasil and CBeebies on BBC Entertainment Europe.
Platform operators increasingly want us to manage
video-on-demand (VOD) services alongside our linear channels as
this is believed to reduce churn, a development we welcome. BBC
America, for example, now manages its VOD service on Comcast.
Local relevance and impact
We have worked hard to make our channels relevant in their
individual markets through appropriate scheduling, dubbing and
subtitles, and by building the profile of talent locally in order
to connect with audiences. We will do even more to adapt our
international channels to suit local tastes in 2011/12 with more
dubbing in local languages and locally made commissions.
At year end we had 343m subscriber homes in over 100 countries,
including BBC World News, UKTV in the UK, and the relay of BBC
public-service channels.
We plan to build our international subscriber base by marketing
key shows as "TV events", using online tools such as social media
and onscreen talent to achieve maximum impact. Our creation of
special programme schedules around the theme of Royal Weddings to
celebrate the marriage of HRH Prince William and Catherine
Middleton in April 2011 is one example of this approach
(below).
UK
In the UK, our joint venture with Virgin Media, UKTV, now has a
5.0% share of the pay-TV market. It achieved its third consecutive
year of growth. In July 2010 it awarded Channel 4 Sales a 10-year
deal to represent its advertising sales across its full portfolio
of services, beginning in January 2011. Overall ad sales were up
15.6% year on year.