BBC Worldwide to expand BBC Earth, launch BBC First and one more content brand globally from 2014

BBC Worldwide has revealed details of plans to launch three new consumer genre brands around the world, under the auspices of its BBC Worldwide service, as part of a wider ravamp of its offerings.

As home to a wealth of factual, entertainment and educational content, the BBC wants to make the most of its wide-reaching portfolio and make it available to more people around the world. As such, the new “genre consumer brands” will be introduced on a market-by-market basis from 2014.

BBC Earth will now become the brand for the BBC’s factual content, ranging from natural history and the human world to outer space and science, while BBC First will be the brand for “premium drama” and “high quality first-run British programming”. The third brand will be announced in the coming months, the BBC said.

Underpinning this, and the rest of the BBC Worldwide’s imminent content future, is a pledge to invest £200 million in new premium content. 

As part of expanding its global reach, the BBC said it would be revamping its global BBC.com website in a bid to attract its goal of reaching 500 million per week by 2022; it currently achieves about half of that. As a result of these gradual changes, the BBC said it also won’t be expanding its global iPlayer trial; instead, the company expects the service to be integrated into the global BBC.com website.

CEO of BBC Worldwide, Tim Davie, said:

“The plans outlined today for the next phase of BBC Worldwide’s development will underpin our success over the next three years and beyond. They combine an increased commitment to content investment with new BBC content brands alongside a more powerful and unified digital engine. Taken together, these three investment priorities will serve to grow the BBC’s footprint across the world, both via our own services and our important third party sales, resulting in greater access by audiences to BBC and British content and sustainable cash flows back to the BBC.”

The changes to BBC Worldwide come as part of a wider revamp of the organization that has seen an effort towards more effectively monetizing its content, like the BBC Store, and offering it more widely and to new audiences through services such as its Playlister music service.

➤ BBC Worldwide CEO, Tim Davie, shares future vision for BBC Worldwide [BBC]

Featured Image Credit – NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/GettyImages 

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