Matt Brittin is beginning to set out how his leadership of the BBC may differ from that of his predecessors. The first major interview with director general was promoted on BBC outlets but significantly was also posted in full on YouTube. The former Google executive says he wants to remain true to the public service mission of the BBC while being “really radical” about how it is delivered. That could mean fewer conventional channels and services, more investment in iPlayer and other digital platforms, and a more data-informed approach to understanding what the BBC produces and how well it serves its audiences.

“I want to be really radical in reinventing how we deliver that mission, but stay true to that mission,” Brittin said in an extended BBC interview, four months after taking over as director-general.

It is a distinction that runs through much of what the new director general says. He is strongly defending the purposes and value of the BBC, while being noticeably less protective of the forms through which they have traditionally been delivered.

“We wouldn’t guarantee any programme or any channel will exist forever,” he said. The immediate financial pressure means some decisions may need to be taken sooner, but he argues that changing audience behaviour would require them in any case.

Brittin offered a hypothetical example of a service attracting 100,000 people to its broadcast output but 500,000 to the same programmes on iPlayer. “When’s the right time to migrate that service fully to being on demand?” he asked.

That suggests a subtle change in the unit of thinking. Rather than starting with an existing channel or service and asking how it can be preserved, Brittin starts with the audience and asks how the BBC can most effectively serve it.

“We’re locked into yesterday’s model of how people consume content,” he said. “And actually the audience is already living in tomorrow’s world.”

His background inevitably informs that view. Brittin spent almost two decades at Google and ran its European operations, having previously been responsible for YouTube across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He makes no attempt to disguise his status as an outsider at the BBC.

“What I’d like to bring from that experience is that sense of serving audiences and that sense of experimentation and learning and moving faster,” he said, repeating his call for the BBC to be closer to audiences, simpler and faster.

That may be particularly significant for iPlayer. Brittin says investment in programmes and channels has delivered audience impact but acknowledges that BBC technology has not necessarily kept pace.

He sees discovery as central to the public service role of iPlayer. In traditional television, scheduling could lead an audience from one programme into another. Brittin argues that digital recommendations can perform a similar function, offering the example: “Come to iPlayer for Scooby-Doo, stay for Horrible Histories.”

That is rather more interesting than simply making iPlayer more like Netflix. It suggests using recommendation and personalisation to reproduce some of the serendipity and editorial purpose previously provided by a television schedule.

At the same time, Brittin does not believe the BBC can rely solely on its own destinations. “BBC content should be on Netflix, on YouTube, on TikTok, on Spotify and Instagram, and everywhere where audiences are,” he said.

That creates an apparent contradiction at the centre of his strategy. The BBC needs to be present on the global platforms to remain relevant, while maintaining a direct relationship with audiences that does not depend on them.

Brittin says BBC apps and services should be “the antidote to the algorithm”, contrasting their public service purpose with platforms driven by commercial interests in engagement, advertising or data.

Coming from a former Google executive, his assessment of the strategic risk is striking. “There’s a danger that six companies will control access to information in future and the creation of information and misinformation,” he said. “Six companies, none of them European, let alone British.”

Yet when pressed on whether he trusted technology platforms, he was pragmatic rather than ideological. “I wouldn’t trust any platform innately,” he said, while acknowledging that the scale of YouTube means the BBC cannot avoid working with it if it wants to reach audiences.

Perhaps more revealing of how Brittin may change the BBC is a brief discussion about measurement towards the end of the interview.

He notes that the BBC produces around 66 live breakfast shows each day but that he cannot readily determine how many covered a particular story. At YouTube, he did not know what was in every video either, but he had data that enabled the company to understand its output.

Brittin wants “a better way of understanding our output and listening to audiences where they have concerns and complaints and being more transparent”.

That need not mean chasing ratings or allowing algorithms to determine what the BBC commissions. Better measurement can equally expose services that are expensive relative to their impact, identify programmes that audiences struggle to discover, or reveal where the organisation is duplicating effort without necessarily adding public value.

The Google influence on the BBC under Brittin may therefore prove less conspicuous than artificial intelligence or putting more programmes on YouTube. It could be a culture of measurement, experimentation and iteration, with fewer assumptions that existing services should continue simply because they exist.

There is an obvious risk. Public service media cannot be reduced to an optimisation exercise, because some of its most important output exists precisely because the market would not otherwise provide it. Brittin appears conscious of that distinction.

His emerging proposition is that the BBC should be uncompromising about its mission but much less sentimental about the machinery used to fulfil it. If he follows that through, the BBC of the next decade may be defined less by its portfolio of television channels and radio stations and more by the relationship it can establish with audiences across its own services and those of others.

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More than half of the top 100 creators on YouTube are now watched more on television screens than on any other type of device. YouTube is responding by giving creators what it calls the “prime time treatment”, introducing seasons and episodes for short-form series and adapting more of its service for television viewing. It is another indication that the world’s largest online video platform is increasingly becoming part of television itself.

The new features were announced at the annual Made on YouTube event. Among them ‘Shorts series’ allow creators to organise short-form videos into seasons and episodes, with custom thumbnails and sequential playback across mobile, web and television.

YouTube chief executive Neal Mohan said the company needed to “stay one step ahead of how the world watches”, pointing to its “early bet that people would want to watch YouTube on the biggest screen in their homes”. He describes television as its “fastest growing screen”.

The adoption of seasons and episodes is significant. These are conventions inherited from television, but YouTube creators are not constrained by traditional programme durations or schedules. An episode does not need to fill half an hour or an hour, while a series can still provide the structure and continuity that encourages an audience to return.

“Over half of YouTube’s top 100 creators have TV as their most watched interface, so we’re going to continue giving creators the prime time treatment as they experiment with different formats,” explained Kurt Wilms, senior director of product management for YouTube on TV.

That is particularly apparent in the rapid growth of microdramas. YouTube says they attracted more than 6.5 billion views in the first half of 2026, with viewing time increasing by more than 50% year on year.

Microdramas might seem an unlikely format for television, since they were developed primarily for mobile viewing and episodes can last little more than a minute. Yet YouTube says views of microdrama content on television screens increased by more than 90% over the same period.

It suggests that the boundaries between short-form online video and television viewing are becoming less distinct. Creators can adopt some of the organisational conventions of television without inheriting its historical constraints.

Independent audience research confirms the growing importance of the television screen to YouTube. Ofcom reports that average YouTube viewing on television sets in the United Kingdom has doubled since 2022, from nine minutes to 19 minutes per person per day in 2025. Across all devices in the home, YouTube viewing averaged 41 minutes a day.

YouTube has been adapting accordingly. It has previously introduced ways for creators to organise longer videos into collections designed for television viewing and has been promoting more ambitious Creator Shows. Now even Shorts can acquire the familiar architecture of seasons and episodes.

This is not simply YouTube attempting to recreate conventional television. It is selectively adopting features that television has developed over decades while retaining the flexibility of an online platform, where programmes can be almost any length and independent creators can publish without securing a place in a schedule.

For years, broadcasters have been asking how television programmes should adapt to YouTube. Increasingly they may need to consider the reverse question. As YouTube creators adopt the formats, production values and viewing environment of television, what exactly distinguishes a YouTube channel watched on a 65-inch screen from any other television service?

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European broadcasters are resisting moves to reopen the debate on radio frequencies used for television, even as some countries prepare for a future without digital terrestrial television. The European Broadcasting Union argues that it is premature to revisit the international settlement on the spectrum used for television. Behind the technical arguments is a more fundamental question: should international spectrum policy determine when countries give up terrestrial transmission?

The EBU made its case in a submission to the European Commission as it develops a common European position for the next World Radiocommunication Conference, WRC-27, which will take place in 2027.

The submission is largely concerned with protecting access to spectrum used in programme production, including wireless cameras and video links. The EBU argues that spectrum access underpins the ability of public service media to deliver radio, television and emerging services to audiences.

It says that European policy should also recognise the wider significance of spectrum. The EBU says that “the relevance of spectrum policy for cultural and linguistic diversity” and “media pluralism” should be respected, together with the role of individual member states.

The potentially more significant issue for the longer term concerns the spectrum between 470 and 694 MHz, which is widely used for digital terrestrial television, or DTT. WRC-27 is not being asked to decide the future of this television band. The argument is about what should be considered at the following conference, WRC-31.

The EBU opposes proposals for further studies on mobile use of part of this spectrum with a view to possible regulatory changes at WRC-31. It argues that implementation of decisions already taken at WRC-23 is still being explored, while European regulators are separately considering how the band might be used more flexibly at a national level.

In effect, the EBU is saying that we have only just reached a compromise, countries are still working out what it means, so do not schedule another international negotiation before it has been implemented.

Importantly, this is not simply a demand that spectrum should be reserved for broadcasting indefinitely. The EBU argues that countries which continue to require terrestrial television should not find their ability to provide it constrained by international spectrum decisions.

That raises the question of whether this was not already settled at the last World Radiocommunication Conference in 2023.

WRC-23 produced what the EBU subsequently described as “an excellent outcome for broadcasting”. Broadcasting remained the only region-wide primary service in the 470-694 MHz band across ITU Region 1, which includes Europe, Africa and the Middle East. A proposed region-wide mobile allocation was not agreed, although individual countries gained greater flexibility for mobile use.

Yet WRC-23 also put the UHF band back on the agenda for WRC-31. The conference is due to review spectrum use and the requirements of broadcasting and mobile services and consider possible regulatory action.

There are effectively three clocks running.

The international clock runs through the ITU and its World Radiocommunication Conferences, with WRC-31 representing the next significant review point. The European clock is slightly different. EU legislation safeguards the availability of 470-694 MHz for DTT and programme production until at least 2030, according to national needs.

The European Commission reported on the future of the band in July and noted that the existing framework provides long-term investment predictability for DTT and programme production. At the same time, demand for this valuable spectrum continues to evolve.

Then there are the national clocks, and different countries are moving at very different speeds.

In Sweden, commercial broadcasters have progressively withdrawn from DTT, leaving a reduced terrestrial platform carrying public service channels.

Spain is moving in the opposite direction. DTT remains the principal means of receiving television for the overwhelming majority of households, and the country is investing in its future, with a transition to DVB-T2 enabling more services to be broadcast in ultra-high definition.

The government in the United Kingdom has committed to maintaining DTT until at least the end of 2034 but is now explicitly planning for its eventual withdrawal. Its recent green paper proposes a managed switch-off either at the end of 2034 or following a limited extension to the end of 2044.

From a British perspective, therefore, fighting internationally to preserve spectrum for terrestrial television might appear increasingly academic. If the United Kingdom is preparing to turn off DTT, why should it matter whether the spectrum remains protected for broadcasting?

The answer is that spectrum availability and spectrum use are two different policy questions.

Retaining an allocation for broadcasting does not require a country to continue using terrestrial television. A country such as the United Kingdom can still decide that its audiences, infrastructure and market are ready to move elsewhere.

Changing the international regulatory environment can have the opposite effect. Once spectrum is progressively reassigned, national choices may become constrained by neighbouring countries, interference considerations, equipment markets and investment decisions. A country that still depends heavily on terrestrial television could find that a decision has effectively been made for it.

That helps explain why the EBU is seeking to slow the international process even while the future of DTT is being actively reconsidered in individual countries.

The underlying argument is less about defending a particular transmission technology than preserving national options. Different countries have different levels of terrestrial viewing, broadband availability, public service obligations and approaches to universal access. They may reasonably reach different conclusions about how long terrestrial television remains necessary.

The debate is therefore not simply broadcasting against mobile, or old technology against new. It is also about European harmonisation and national discretion at a time when television distribution strategies are beginning to diverge.

The United Kingdom is increasingly asking when it can switch off terrestrial television. Other countries may still be asking how long they need it. The EBU is posing a prior question: who should have the authority to make that decision?

www.ebu.ch