The BBC Trust has approved proposals for the BBC to establish bbc.com, a commercial venture to offer advertising on the BBC’s international online service for users outside the UK. UK users’ experience of bbc.co.uk will not be affected. The BBC says that bbc.com will deliver a new flow of income from international visitors into the BBC for investment in its core journalistic mission and capabilities, and into BBC Worldwide and BBC Global News to strengthen the range and reach of their offering to international audiences.
BBC Worldwide, in conjunction with BBC Global News, will be responsible for the development of bbc.com. The current site has been very successful in attracting international traffic, and it currently has more than 40 million (source: BBC web server stats) unique users per month from outside the UK who mainly access the news pages.
Following the launch of bbc.com, advertising will be introduced on selected high-traffic pages, visible only to users accessing the site from outside the UK, and over time will be rolled across more of the site. Editorial control of the news pages will continue to be the responsibility of BBC News.
BBC Worldwide has entered into a joint venture with BBC World covering the news, sport and weather parts of the site, which means that BBC World will receive a portion of the economic benefits from this exploitation in return for providing their editorial, audience and advertising expertise and on-air cross-promotion. Together these represent a significant new source of income for BBC News and BBC Global News to invest in journalism and new services.
The financial support for the BBC’s international facing site that was previously provided via Grant in Aid by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) will now be taken on by BBC Worldwide, allowing the Grant in Aid to be reprioritised within the BBC World Service. The BBC World Service’s 32 non-English-language sites will continue to be funded by Grant in Aid from the FCO and are not impacted by the bbc.com proposition in any way.
(R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)