Last year we asked the BBC Trust for permission to include selected third party content from not-for-profit arts and cultural organisations within BBC iPlayer. This is to enable us to provide a richer service to our audiences and to foster growth in the creative industries. The Trust approved our plans in November 2015, subject to the condition that the BBC Executive consulted with stakeholders on the criteria we would use to determine which content would be included before going ahead.
We already have some experience of showcasing third party content with S4C on BBC iPlayer and over the next few months we are planning to dip our toe in the water further by undertaking some small scale pathfinder projects to get a better understanding of the issues and questions we will need to address. This will start next month with content to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death where our plans include a digital event on 23rd April hosted in Birmingham and co-curated by the BBC and the British Council, in collaboration with some of the nation’s greatest performing arts institutions.
Of course, we will ensure that we have a fair and transparent process for selecting which third party content is included in BBC iPlayer. We are proposing to use the following criteria.
- Content must be editorially consistent with the BBC iPlayer brand (the BBC’s primary entertainment destination for all audiences, on demand);
- The content must be editorially consistent with existing BBC iPlayer content and demonstrably be connected to, extend and enhance our creative offering;
- Content must support the Public Purposes; and
- Content should be high quality and meet the expectations of BBC iPlayer audiences.
In addition the content provider must enter into an appropriate licensing arrangement with the BBC and have sufficient permissions from the content producer and underlying rights-holders for the BBC to make the content available on BBC iPlayer.
Further explanation of these criteria can be found in our response to the Trust’s provisional conclusions here.
Victoria Jaye is Head of TV Content for BBC iPlayer.
