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BBC scraps TV Channel Controller roles

In favour of a Streaming first approach

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CW
Charlie Wells Moderator
TIGHazard posted:
What exactly happens with nations and regions commissions?

It'll also be interesting to see what happens regarding live programmes, particularly big Saturday night shows which tend to require a linear output. It wouldn't surprise me if in time the BBC One portfolio editor role becomes more like a channel commissioner role, due to the nations & regions, and having more live programmes.
AB
AcerBen
mdtauk posted:
It does make some sense to approach commissioning in this way. The Channels then need to rethink their purposes however.

BBC doesn't tie particular genres to each channel that strongly. So assessing which content goes on One or Two will be interesting.

As I see things:

BBC Two tends to favour Lifestyle, Culture, Political, Factual, and "Alternative" content.

Leaving BBC One with Entertainment, Comedy, Drama, Sport, with an occasional Movie.

We have heard that BBC Four will transition to being a place for Archive content, but not sure what genres it applies to.

And then BBC Three may be returning for Young Adult content and a place for younger producers to be featured.

Is there anything missing? BBC News handles News Broadcasts, with Parliament for the procedural and process activities of Politics and Government. CBeebies and CBBC for Children's programming.

Are there content types that could be iPlayer bound, which do not work on Linear TV. Shows with unusual running times, interactive content, pilots maybe which could become full series?

The genre heads would essentially end up filling the schedules of the Linear channels if those continue to delineate their programming by the very nature of defining channels by the shows they include. But is that an outdated way of doing things? I wouldn't have thought the channels had a specific age demographic without significant overlap, or a clear delineation with attitude or economic status.

There may be some issues if a celebrity brought in to front a series was deemed "too big" to be on TWO rather than ONE - but again this may be a distinction of the past, that ONE comes before TWO.

I also wonder if any of these changes will be followed by BBC's UKTV channels? These are Genre defined, and typically take BBC content after the Air Dates and iPlayer exclusivity window. But UKTV Play and BritBox may add some complication.

And a final thought. Is this really laying the ground work for a Subscription or Tiered BBC when/if the License Fee is phased out. Do the Linear Channels make way for genre channels with varying levels of Advertising/Funding?


Surely BBC Four will keep its "Fourness" even with a slashed programming budget. So focusing on archive documentaries, high-brow dramas and music shows.
MD
mdtauk
AcerBen posted:
Surely BBC Four will keep its "Fourness" even with a slashed programming budget. So focusing on archive documentaries, high-brow dramas and music shows.


That sounds like what will happen, but there is plenty of archive comedy, and other Light Entertainment shows, which could work on GOLD, but may work well on a more generalised Archive channel.

Some could argue that BBC Four has to prove itself in the face of cuts and criticism. Is there more viewership in High brow, or is something more populist worthy of repeat?
TE
tellyblues
What the BBC say they want to do and what they realistically can do are two different things. The shows that people go to Netflix for are not what the BBC can afford to produce on a continual basis so the iPlayer may be popular for a bit but not constantly as hoped for.
Last edited by tellyblues on 9 December 2020 6:50am
NG
noggin Founding member
TIGHazard posted:
What exactly happens with nations and regions commissions?


Do you mean networked commissions from BBC Studios production teams in the nations, or opt-out/non-network commissions from both BBC Studios and Indies that are only commissioned for and broadcast in the Nations?
NG
noggin Founding member
What will be interesting to see is how the budgets for this are re-aligned.

It appears that the BBC is moving away from commissioning to fill slots on channels, to commissioning what they feel are the best shows to commission, and making them available via both on-demand and on linear channels in a curated form (so the channel editors effectively have less input into what is commissioned for their channels, and instead schedule based on what a central commissioning team have commissioned)

This seems to suggest that rather than commissions coming from a channel budget initially - they will need to be funded more centrally - unless the scheduling is still done at the point of commission (which seems to fly in the face of not commissioning for slots)...
TI
TIGHazard
noggin posted:
TIGHazard posted:
What exactly happens with nations and regions commissions?


Do you mean networked commissions from BBC Studios production teams in the nations, or opt-out/non-network commissions from both BBC Studios and Indies that are only commissioned for and broadcast in the Nations?


The latter.

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