Recommendation 23

We asked the BBC if it had explored how it could increase income from BritBox, the streaming service it runs overseas and in the UK in partnership with ITV, and expanding its use of the BBC archive. The BBC responded that the number of subscribers to the overseas BritBox service was approaching 2 million and it was confident that these numbers will continue to grow. The UK service has reached half a million subscribers so far, but the BBC did not disclose its ambitions for growth in subscribers over the next five years as this is dependent on agreeing with ITV how much unique content goes into it and the continued supply of archive content. However, according to the BBC, ITV is looking for a healthy level of growth.45 The BBC told us that it has been able to sell some archive content through UKTV but this is very dependent on genre. Most of the archive has not been sold because it is live or factual programming, and there are challenges in finding the right model to sell such programming. However, the BBC said that it will keep considering the appropriate model to increase revenue from its archive, because digitisation may provide new opportunities. The BBC also informed us that it is interested in the potential for developing further products in the United States, such as news, where it can use direct-to-consumer and digital services to increase revenue.46