They think it's all over...it is now
Here’s a massively simple comparison – it’s the BBC versus News Corp ‘n’ Sky. All of which assumes that News beats up the independent directors of Sky and gets them to fall over for £8 billion or so in return for 100 per cent of the satellite shooting match. Once it’s all said and done, then the BBC won’t be the big boy of media any more. Oh no.
Start with the top line, where else. BBC revenues, mainly from the licence fee, are about £4.8 billion, which gets you a lot of telly, and some radio and a decent website or three thrown in. Sky is already bigger on its own, with revenues expected at about £5.9 billion this year, but then you lop in another £1.4 billion for News International, and Virgin Media’s telly division — £140 million — and maybe Five too.
Answer: knocking on for £7.5 billion — 50 per cent bigger than the BBC.
Then move to multimedia: it’s more like a fair fight. The BBC has some succesful websites, but it is cutting spending by £30 million. Meanwhile over at News, get in some fella with the energy of Will Lewis, give him an editorial role that cuts across Sky News, and turn News and Sky into a full on television and words proposition online.
And tack the News Int newspapers onto the Sky subscription and suddenly it could be the case that the easy, easy money starts rolling in. (Remember they thought Sky TV was a joke once; might not be the time to start laughing about the paywall either — although of course all other newspapers wanting to go ‘pay’ would have ‘fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory’ access to the Sky newspaper channel service).
Now what about a bit of market share analysis? News Int has a market share of about 38 per cent in press; the BBC has nothing. Research I saw today has that rising to 41 per cent by 2015. But the Beeb still wins the other two battles: it is the most watched broadcaster with a share of just over 33 per cent but Sky (plus Virgin Media) is moving up with a 10 per cent. Five would add another 6 per cent. And online is hard to compare because while the BBC is the leading British media website, and The Sun does about 22 million, The Times and The Sunday Times are in the paywall game and no longer chase large numbers.
But this is the future of British media. A duopoly of a publicly funded media group enduring relentless criticism from the British arm of a successful commercial empire. And a Conservative government more likely to favour the commercial player (owing to a bit of pre-election support) than the British Broadcasting Corporation. And until Richard Desmond buys ITV, will anybody else count?
