BBC annual report: what we learnt

Beyond the top line figures, the BBC’s 300-plus page annual report revealed a number of significant updates:

Nations and regions fail

The BBC will double down on its efforts to exceed its nations and regions quotas after it failed to meet its spend target for the first time, in a year heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Total spend outside of London for the year to 31 March was around 2 percentage points shy of the corporation’s 50% target, at around £670m, while the BBC’s 6.5% spend in Scotland and 1.7% spend in Northern Ireland were both shy of their Ofcom-prescribed quotas. Scotland’s quota is 8% and N Ireland’s is 3.5%.

“The unprecedented and rapid reduction in programme spend led to particular challenges in some individual nations and English regions,” said the report. “We have plans to exceed our existing quotas in future years.”

MORE ON THE BBC ANNUAL REPORT

Davie hails C4 as privatisation battle looms

Programme costs soar as BBC edges towards fewer hours

BBC cuts top talent pay by 10%

When the pandemic commenced, Ofcom contacted all broadcasters to make clear that it would take a more lenient approach to missing quotas, taking into account the production hiatus.

The BBC will, however, require a dramatic turnaround as it aims to increase its nations and regions spend to 60% within the next three to six years as part of its the Across the UK plan.

The corporation comfortably hit its quotas in terms of hours for Scotland, generating 15.3% of its content from Scotland, against an 8% quota. It made 4.6% of its hours in Wales and 2.2% in Northern Ireland - both just ahead of their respective quotas.

Diversity struggles

In the related press conference, DG Tim Davie made much of the BBC’s reduction in senior leader headcount as he attempts to create a “leaner organisation”, but this may have had an adverse impact on its levels of diversity.

As Davie tasked all departments with pushing towards a 50/20/12 split in terms of female, BAME and disability representation, the proportion of senior leaders from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds increased by just 0.3pp to 12.6%.

The figure remains some way short of former DG Tony Hall’s 15% target for the end of 2020, which has long since passed.

Across all staff, some 15.9% are BAME, an incremental 0.2pp rise on the previous year.

Female representation in senior leadership remains behind target at 46.1% - an increase of just 1pp last year – and even worse for the corporation, the proportion of disabled senior leaders declined, from 8.6% in 2020 to 8.2% in 2021.

A good year for youngs

The BBC comfortably hits its youth audience targets, holding steady from the prior year to reach 80% of 16-34 year olds each week against a target of 70%-80%. Young audiences spent around seven-and-a-half hours per week with the BBC.

The corporation remains atop the most-used media services with the coveted demographic in terms of weekly reach, just ahead of Facebook, YouTube and Netflix.

Meanwhile, eight-out-of-10 young viewers tuned in to BBC iPlayer each week, while almost 1m used it for the first time.

And youth-skewing BBC3, which is soon to return as a linear channel, saw reach increase by 1pp to 6% of young viewers, with average weekly viewing minutes rising by 4m to 124m.

Across all ages, viewers watched almost 40m combined hours of BBC iPlayer per week, comfortably exceeding the corporation’s 31m-33m target.

Views to the VoD player rose 28% to 6.1bn requests, just beating rival Channel 4’s 26% rise for All4, as the pair of publicly-funded broadcasters plot a digital future.

Covid causes content spend drop

BBC2, BBC4 and the drama genre were the biggest losers in terms of spend in an exceptional year that featured a Covid-induced production hiatus and the delay of several major events.

As the BBC prepared to enter a world without channel controllers, spend on BBC2 declined by 22.5% to £261m, although the channel’s weekly reach held steady with 42%.

Spend on BBC4, which is soon to wind down originations, fell by a similar proportion to £29m. BBC1’s budget was less impacted, with a 10% drop to £924m for the highest-funded channel.

Overall, content spend fell by £200m to £1.4bn, with the heavily Covid-impacted ‘film and drama’ genre taking the biggest hit, slipping 18% to £289m.

‘Entertainment and comedy’ was the least affected genre, with a 7% fall in spend to £182m.