Distinctiveness and the BBC audience
Helen Boaden
Director, BBC Radio and Executive Sponsor for myBBC
Distinctiveness is not a term that often comes up in daily conversation, but it is one that we use with some regularity. That’s because it’s a fundamental characteristic of the BBC and our services, and something we are focused on in everything we do.
Most media companies aim to be different, and some other Public Service Broadcasters have a formal requirement to be distinctive, but no other broadcaster has the same commitment to being distinctive in so many areas.
On radio, two-thirds of the music on Radio 1 is new, 1,100 hours of music a year on Radio 2 is from specialist genres like jazz, folk and country, and the remaining stations from Radio 4 to Nan Gàidheal are utterly unique. On television, the BBC is the UK’s only significant provider of natural history shows. And for children, CBeebies and CBBC provide more than 85% of all first-run UK originated television programming.
These three examples show what distinctiveness is – and what it isn’t. CBeebies and CBBC are unlike other channels, but they are also immensely popular, with CBeebies reaching 46% of its target audience. Radio 2 is eclectic and surprising, but also the biggest UK-wide radio station in the country.
Distinctive doesn’t mean niche, market failure broadcasting. Channels like BBC ALBA and BBC Four are obviously different from anything else on television but it’s arguable that our most distinctive service is BBC One. Thirty years ago, a fifth of BBC One’s peak time schedule consisted of foreign series like Dallas, The Rockford Files and Kojak. Today, it is zero.
From Happy Valley on BBC One to Slow TV on BBC Four, the BBC’s services and programmes have never been more distinctive. In the next Charter period we will make sure that, like the Corporation itself, they continue to be something unique and precious, for everyone.
Helen Boaden is Director, Radio and BBC England
- This blog post appears in the BBC Annual Report 2015/16 published on Tuesday 12 July 2016
- Read more on the BBC Annual Report website
