TVB’s potential divorce from the BBC brand: Does the move make sense?

Around a month ago, speculations emerged around local broadcaster TVB removing all BBC channels from its streaming service. Across local Chinese media and HKFP, it was reported that TVB might soon suspend channels including BBC World News, BBC Earth, CBeebies and BBC Lifestyle.

While TVB did not confirm the news to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, it said that it refrains from commenting on individual cases, and stressed that it reviews its programme structure and development on a regular basis in order to provide informative and innovative programmes to the audiences.

BBC as a brand has earned its stripes for being a credible source of news and entertainment. As such, the potential removal of the service certainly raised eyebrows amongst fans and advertisers in the market. Industry players MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to said one reason behind this potential cull of the BBC brand could be due to a shift in demographics within Hong Kong over the past year, with many global citizens shifting out of the city.

Ranga Somanathan, former CEO of Omnicom Media Group, and current founder of RSquared Global Ventures, said this could be a reasonable enough market size for the local broadcaster to revisit its programmic strategy, and lean  more towards native content as well as from the mainland.  Somanathan's views were also reflected on YouGov's data for MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that showed BBC World News currently rank number 10 of the most watched channels within Hong Kong. 

According to extracted figures from YouGov, majority of HongKongers watch TVB programmes regularly including Jade (43%), iNews (25%) and J2 (19%). Meanwhile, BBC was the tenth TV channel that people in Hong Kong watch regularly. 

Interestingly, despite the slight drop in TVB's volume of viewers, myTV SUPER, its streaming platform remains as the leader in local entertainment at penetration of 27%, according to Vpon’s recently released report analysis on Hong Kong news and entertainment app installation. Meanwhile, a downward trend in penetration has been observed in BBC News, from peak above 4% in late-2020 to 2.2% in February 2023. It is believed the penetration of BBC is dropping significantly among the HK viewers, according to the report

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The report also found that TVB and BBC audiences are seen to have stark contrast in media consumption and personal interest. While TVB viewers tend to be more local, preferring Chinese language channels; BBC viewers seems to be English native and have interests in finance and education.

"This indicates that TVB’s economic engine comes from local content and not so much from revenues on account of BBC channels," according to OMG’s former CEO Somanathan. As such, the cutting of the cord with BBC might not have much of an impact on TVB's income streams. From audience perspective, those who wish to consume BBC programming can still access it via digital platforms. Commenting on global media brand distribution strategies, Somanathan explained that many global players are now focused on direct-to-consumer streaming solutions rather than just depending on Pay TV operators alone.

Adding on his view was Joanne Tong, managing director of Mediabrands Hong Kong, who said that each broadcaster has different channels targeting different audience segments.  “Nowadays, TV is much more segmented than in the past therefore they are more selective in terms of channels, airtime and programmes for more specific target audience. Each of the local broadcaster have a different positioning therefore their selection may be different but it would not impact their competitiveness,” Tong added.

What should local broadcasters invest in to grow revenue streams and audience base? 

Given that the media landscape is rapidly changing, local broadcasters should always improvise to cope with different challenges. As such, local broadcasters should play to their strengths to grow revenue streams and audience base, according to OMG’s former CEO Somanathan. 

“If they know their audiences well, creating compelling content to engage them will be critical for their survival. Creating quality content, with a media neutral distribution strategy, global reach through universal appeal will hold local broadcasters in good stead, in the era where global OTT platforms are flattening the entertainment world,” he said.

On the other hand, it is hard to point out a clear direction on where local broadcasters can grow their revenue streams as each of them has a different positioning, said Mediabrands’ Tong.   In the past few years, a growing trend has been observed that local investors are investing in their digital sector as the overall population grow their time spent online. This includes live streaming, video streaming platforms, program content partnership and social. “Each of the platforms are used to answer both their own brand purpose, or to leverage on their audience to answer their advertisers’ needs. I think the biggest task for the local broadcaster is how to engage with their new audiences and how to retain the current ones,” Tong added.

In fact, broadcasters, publishers and other content providers who have emerged strongly in the past five years would be those that do not rely on advertising revenue as their primary revenue stream, according to Helen Lee, former executive within the media space who has worked with the likes of Zenith early in her career. "Diversifying into new revenue streams beyond advertising would prevent them from being over-reliant on advertising which has seen much volatility in recent months," Lee added. 

She also said that being bold to venture into new or alternative revenue streams that leverage on partnerships, alliances or niche subscription models would enable content providers to rise above the pack.

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