BBC4 leads the way with 15% spending hike

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Bros After the Screaming Stops: BBC4 hit

The BBC splashed out on all of its channels and the majority of genres last year, defying a decrease in licence fee income, with BBC4 the biggest beneficiary.

Spend on the Broadcast Digital Award-winning channel rose by more than 15% to £44.6m, with BBC1’s budget up by 10.6% to £1.1bn and BBC2’s by 1.9% to £381m, according to the BBC annual report.

BBC1’s spend increase is likely to have been driven by the acquisition of football World Cup rights.

Online-only BBC3 was also handed a £10m boost as it returned to the factual entertainment game, which was revealed to Broadcast last year by former channel controller Damian Kavanagh.

BBC3’s budget is recorded within ‘online spend’, which rose by 17.6% to £214m for the year to 31 March 2019.

The spending trend is a reversal from the previous year, when all channel budgets declined and Cassian Harrison’s BBC4 was the hardest hit.

The spree also comes in a year that the BBC’s licence fee income dipped by 3% to £3.69bn, partly due to the government providing less money to cover licence fee costs for the over-75s.

The splurges failed to boost reach however, which declined for all offerings. The proportion of the UK population watching BBC1 each week fell from 68.9% to 66.7%, BBC2 slipped from 44.6% to 41.3% and BBC4 from 12.7% to 11.8%.

Youth-skewing BBC3, which is now helmed by Fiona Campbell, once again failed to increase its reach with the coveted 16-34 demographic, which remained static at 8% for the second year running.

Sports was the biggest winner in terms of genre spend, rising by 16.9% to £76m.

News and current affairs experienced an 11.2% budget boost to £355m and factual went up by 5.8% to £311m.

Piers Wenger’s drama team’s spend remained virtually flat at £333m, defying recent budget decreases as the BBC becomes more reliant on scripted investment from third parties.

Netflix was yesterday (15 July) revealed as a co-producer on BBC1’s forthcoming high-end drama The Serpent.

The BBC’s ‘other television content spend’, which comprises commissioning and scheduling costs, copyright, rights and playout, shifted upwards by 24% to £366m.

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