The BBC has formally announced its strategic partnership with YouTube. It says it will invest in fresh YouTube-first programming but provides little information about what form or extent this will take. It will also launch a BBC and YouTube creator skills and training programme for 150 partner creators and established television producers at BBC sites across the country.
The announcement of the strategic partnership says that the BBC will expand its use of YouTube, focusing on four areas.
The BBC will build what it calls targeted communities for children and young adults in the United Kingdom, with the launch of new channels, including seven new channels for children.
It will promote key programme brands, especially for those people that do not come to the BBC often.
The BBC provide new global channels, live story streams, and innovative story formats to deliver news that it says will cut through the noise.
It will drive commercial growth through what it describes as global fandoms, connecting fans with brands, partners, and creators.
The partnership will see the BBC and YouTube support the creative industries by investing in the next generation of creators and partnering with creators and established television producers to want to create and commission ‘digital-first content’.
Led by the National Film and Television School, there will be a series of workshops and events. A training programme will be hosted online and BBC hubs in Salford, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Belfast, and Cardiff.
Pedro Pina, the vice president for YouTube in EMEA, described it as a first-of-its-kind training programme that represents a deep investment in the creator economy.
What it amounts to is three fully funded courses, in news, storytelling for young audiences, and strategies for growth.
Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, who resigned last year but has yet to be replaced, said: “It’s essential that everyone gets value from the BBC, and this groundbreaking partnership will help us connect with audiences in new ways.
“We’re building from a strong start and this takes us to the next level, with bold homegrown content in formats audiences want on YouTube and an unprecedented training programme to upskill the next generation of YouTube creators from across the UK.”
Whether a training scheme is the answer remains open to question. It seems to distract from the question of whether the BBC should be contributing programming to YouTube, or whether it should be learning from YouTube what appeals to younger audiences.
It certainly brings value to YouTube and Google, helping to legitimise a global online video platform that is largely unregulated by co-opting the BBC Brand.
Even promoting the partnership with a logo lockup that places them in close proximity seems to be a strategically strange decision by the BBC.
The BBC already has a presence on YouTube, with a ‘channel’ that has over 15 million ‘subscribers’, which is largely limited to short promotional clips. Most of these seem to receive a few thousand views, although some like the coverage of the New Year fireworks, have reached a few million.
Baby Shark Dance, on the other hand, has been viewed over 16 billion times and has over 84 million subscribers on YouTube.
YouTube recently overtook the BBC in viewing reach in the United Kingdom. In December it reached 51.9 million users in a population of about 70 million, although that was based on a measure of watching only three consecutive minutes in a month.
However, the fact that by this limited measure fewer people watch the BBC than YouTube calls into question the universal reach of the broadcaster in the modern media environment. It is difficult to see how this latest initiative will address that.