THE BBC ACROSS THE UK THE BBC 2022-2027 March 2021 INTRODUCTION The BBC is an essential part of the UK’s culture, democracy and creative economy. We celebrate the UK’s creative strength, telling stories from every part of the country. We have a responsibility to nurture the UK’s democracy, and we seek to do so with trusted, accurate and impartial programming. We are a critical foundation of the creative industries, one of this country’s world-leading success stories. Over 90% of UK adults and 80% of young adults use the BBC on average per week. Almost 100% of adults use the BBC every month, making the BBC one of the most-used UK public services. Today, our output celebrates the UK’s creative strength and unique culture, finding diverse new voices and talent from across the UK and from all communities. We are a core part of the UK’s democracy, with programming that aims to reflect a broad range of views and provides a public space for debate and disagreement. As the UK’s largest media provider we play a critical role in bringing people together across the UK, to laugh, commemorate, and celebrate, but also to understand and appreciate our differences. That has been borne out in the last year, where we have played a vital role in the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring the UK has remained informed, educated and entertained. Despite huge operational challenges, we have maintained the range of our services and delivered the biggest educational programme in our history. At the height of the crisis 84% of adults came to the BBC in a single day – 23 March 2020 and 31 October 2020. We have provided much-needed entertainment and escapism, with tens of millions of viewers and listeners coming to our drama, our comedy and our entertainment. The profound changes in UK society over the last decade have been accelerated by the pandemic. Parts of the economy have been devastated, halting the partial recovery since 2008. Social inequality has increased. The pace of change in our lives has increased sharply. The rapid shifts in the media market have also been turbo-charged. Big Tech has got bigger. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix and Apple influence our lives in 2021 even more than they did in 2019. US programmes are a bigger part of our culture. Social media drives more of people’s news consumption. Misinformation, disinformation and propaganda are weakening the UK’s long-established journalistic strengths. Traditional media business models have come under yet more strain. The BBC is needed more than ever These rapid and seismic changes in UK society and UK media are making the BBC’s mission, purposes and output more needed, more distinctive and more valued than ever. Impartial news – at the heart of the BBC’s first public purpose – has never been more vital. Many of the social, economic and cultural issues the UK faces over the coming years are complex and nuanced. Many are controversial, with passionately and strongly held beliefs on different sides of the same issue. At the same time social media is increasingly awash with partisan views and misinformation. As we have seen during the pandemic and recently in the US, this has real-world consequences. Bad information causes harm; good information can save lives. The nature of impartiality is shifting, too. Many issues now cut across traditional political lines, and touch deeper identities. Political disagreements now speak to who people are, not only what they think. Impartiality means that localities and communities who do not feel they have heard their voices and 2 concerns reflected should have confidence that they will. Never has it been more important to keep open a civil public space for exchange, disagreement and resolution. Covid has had a significant impact on the education of an entire generation. Along with many others, the BBC has stepped into the breach, supporting millions of children and parents with learning and education (our second public purpose). Online media giants like Netflix, Amazon and Disney are bringing audiences brilliant global content that has been deservedly successful across the world. But that content, while popular in the UK and sometimes made in the UK, is rarely about the UK nor primarily made for the UK audience. It cannot substitute for programmes that show who we are and that shape how we engage as a society. The public service broadcasters collectively make around 32,000 hours a year of new UK content, compared to around 200 hours of UK-produced content available on SVoD services Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Telling the UK’s stories through distinctive high-quality British content – our third purpose – will become increasingly important and more reflective of the whole of the UK over this period. As part of that purpose, rebuilding the UK’s world-beating arts, music, culture and creative economy after the devastation of the pandemic will be an urgent task. Every £1 of the BBC’s direct economic activity generates a total of £2.63 in the economy and 50% of the BBC’s economic impact is outside London, compared to a sector average of 20%. No media provider does more than the BBC today to serve the UK’s Nations, regions and communities, our fourth public purpose. Covid has strengthened the need for local news and information, with big uplifts in audiences for our regional and Nations news coverage. But it has also accelerated the decline in local media business models. Covid has also had different impacts on different ethnic groups, with trusted information for those communities made even more valuable. As the UK develops a new relationship with the world, the global impact the BBC brings to nearly half a billion weekly users – our fifth purpose – will be essential in carrying impartial journalism and UK values to the world. In a media landscape where value is increasingly captured by vertically integrated global media giants based in the US and China, ownership and control of British creativity and intellectual property will be of great global economic and cultural value. Finally, as the pandemic increases economic inequality, bringing great value free at the point of use to audiences will become more valuable still in a world of multiplying subscriptions – where today a bundle of subscriptions providing services comparable with the BBC’s would cost over £400 per year. And in a market where US media giants dominate the most popular sites in the UK, only the BBC can keep an online space open to all for British news, stories and creativity. The BBC is well-placed to respond to these challenges for its audiences and for UK society. But these challenges are profound. To ensure we continue to deliver for the whole of the UK and that every household gets value from the BBC, we are developing a plan for change – the biggest programme of reform of our programmes, services and operations since the 1990s, a unique opportunity to restore the creative economy after the pandemic: 1. Getting closer to audiences across the UK, its Nations, regions and communities 2. Protecting and nurturing democracy and civil debate, through impartial news and information 3. Stimulating the UK creative sector, through distinctive, high-impact content 4. Learning, education and skills for all 5. Delivering impact across the world, tackling propaganda and misinformation and reflecting the UK’s culture and values. This document outlines our plans for the first of these: getting closer to audiences across the whole UK. 3 GETTING CLOSER TO AUDIENCES ACROSS THE UK The BBC does more than any other broadcaster to reflect the different Nations that make up the UK, and their different communities, experiences and backgrounds. We seek out and tell the stories that matter most to those communities and bring them to UK-wide audiences through our channels and services. We provide an unparalleled range of content in a wide variety of genres on television, radio and online in each of the four Nations: from local radio to the BBC Scotland channel, from regional news to Radio Foyle, from Angels of the North to Gavin & Stacey. This role is becoming increasingly valuable as huge new global players bring more non-UK content to audiences. The BBC will do more to serve and represent a UK that is changing fast, and where too many big editorial and creative choices are still too often rooted in just one part of the UK. Authentic, passionate storytelling from across all our Nations, and from all their diverse communities, is what will truly make the BBC different from anyone else. It will help to demonstrate to audiences that we are for them. That we understand where they are coming from, and how they see the world. We will show audiences across the UK that we are relevant to their lives because the stories we tell will be rooted in, and inspired by, their communities. Our ‘Across the UK’ plan will transform the BBC by making a decisive shift in its footprint. Over the next six years we will recreate the BBC as a genuinely UK-wide organisation with a much stronger presence across the length and breadth of the country. This shift will move the creative and journalistic centre of the BBC away from London to a much more distributed model that moves not just people, but power and decision-making to the UK’s Nations and regions. This shift represents an even bigger transformation than ten years ago when we moved hundreds of staff and a number of services to Salford. That relocation affected Children’s, Sport, and 5 Live.