For so many years, the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC has survived on the statutory patronage of the British tax payers. But with a changing global media landscape, the BBC has to wean itself from a less innovative revenue model.
Feelers from the company’s management, is pointing to the fact that the BBC might be putting on its thinking caps to take a huge bet on the video streaming side of the digital content business.
The name of the ‘startup’ is rumoured to sound like a rip off of Netflix- Britflix. As funny as it sounds, perhaps for the choice of a copycat name, the BBC’s decision will rattle the video on demand, VoD market.
According t0 a writer for Telegraph UK, “If they want to explore that kind of thing, we’d encourage them. There may come a moment in the future where all television is delivered online, and if you do that it becomes a more realistic practical possibility if you wanted to move towards an element of voluntary subscription, which is why the BBC, who see the way the world is changing, have said, ‘Yeah we will just see for the online provision, whether or not there might be a case for additional new content being delivered on a subscription service, via the iPlayer”
In all intents and purposes, the BBC has a massive treasure trove of old and real time contents. From news, business, sports and entertainment, the company might not suffer a content drought. However, Britflix or whatever name it will be called will need to be separated from its ‘British-centric’ feel. Unless it intends to restrict its focus to the United Kingdom, BBC has to look into taking on Netflix and perhaps ShowMax by diversifying its content from its ‘British-centrism.
The BBC many TV channels might be a very good start but locking horns with Netflix and many VoD startups, will require a serious development of original content and striking major deals with content providers.
On a global scale, Netflix, the market leader in video streaming has seen its subscriber growth going down even when it has taken the site to over 100 additional countries late last year. ShowMax, a smaller player announced yesterday that it is spreading its service to all countries in the Sub-saharan market. IrokoTV, a smaller startup has near shuts its service blanking out web access, perhaps for cost-cutting and restructuring.
