The BBC announced it’s plans to reinvent its iPlayer streaming service to up their game in the streaming wars. According to Deadline, BBC Director General Tony Hall and Content Chief Charlotte Moore explained more details of the re-imagined iPlayer at a London event on October 7, 2019.
“iPlayer is a great service. But it can and will be even better,” Hall said. “The BBC’s combination of backing great and different ideas, alongside a complete reinvention of iPlayer, will mean a unique service that will be of huge benefit to the public. It will be a new front door for British creativity.”
The event covered announcements like BBC’s push on iPlayer’s new look and human-curated platform, and addressed the fact iPlayer can’t compete with competitors budgets like Netflix for signing British talent, but can offer other incentives like creative freedom. This comes after Netflix recently signed a huge deal with The Crown creator Peter Morgan last week.
The announcement includes BBC’s biggest change since iPlayer launched in 2007 which will give viewers more time to catch up on new shows, changing the window from 30 days to 12 months. BBC plans to turn iPlayer into a total TV experience, delivering personalized live events, box sets and more to it’s audiences, according to Deadline.
“iPlayer will become the heart of everything we do; the gateway to all our programs – a ‘total TV’ experience which will bring everything you want from BBC television into one place for the first time,” Moore said. “There’s something else that makes our vision for iPlayer unique and special. In fact it’s the vital thing. It’s curated. We’re talking about a cutting edge tech platform, run by humans. Because in a world of so much content and choice, a dynamic curated offering will become more and more important to people and will set the BBC apart.”
iPlayer has had impressive viewer counts recently, including a record 90 million program requests in seven days last month and a spike in viewers under 35 going up by more than a third during 2019, even amid stiff competition from platforms like YouTube and Netflix.
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