It feels a rather pertinent time to recall what the Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, told the Royal Television Society — stressing the importance of deals with streaming services as has happened for Doctor Who. Why? Because there’s a lot of talk right now about Doctor Who‘s future and whether it’s linked to co-producers/distributors, Disney+.
When talking about the future of the BBC, Davie explained:
“In future we must continue to be highly active in attracting investment and redeploying money internally as well as making savings.
“Firstly we will utilise commercial partners much more actively in areas like programming and technology to increase our horsepower. Our recent deal with Disney on Doctor Who is a good example of how we can work to deliver more value through third-party funding, while protecting content for UK audiences. Also, we will need to work more strategically with the best tech companies to co-create solutions and form business partnerships that save money, inject capital and create better products.
“We will also continue to aggressively grow BBC Studios internationally, building our production capabilities and direct-to-consumer services like bbc.com and now the wholly owned BritBox. We aim to double Studios in five years to deliver over £3.2 billion in revenues by 2027/28. We will move more areas into BBC Studios where there is a competitive market for talent and it does not negatively impact services in the UK. After moving some of BBC Audio production this year, we are now evaluating areas such as BBC Monitoring.”
That last part is important as BBC Studios is in charge of commercial licenses for Doctor Who and spin-offs like the upcoming series, The War Between the Land and the Sea. So there’s no chance of the licensing arm slowing down, it seems.
Doctor Who showrunner, Russell T Davies, has effectively strived to detach the brand from the BBC to some extent, as he’s argued in the past that the BBC isn’t long for this world. Davie naturally seems to disagree, but is open about looking into the license fee. He goes on:
“I often think people discuss funding in the abstract without linking it to the content it would provide. Any commercialisation inevitably shapes the editorial content that it funds… However, we are not defensive about the future. We will need reform.
“With that in mind, we will proactively research how to reform the licence fee post-2028 – looking at its scope, how it could be more progressive, and making sure its enforcement is fair and proportionate.”
It’s great to hear Doctor Who used as an example in such a notable speech; then again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it’s something of an experiment, being available on iPlayer within the UK, and distributed outside the UK by Disney+.