This from the 2014 Report again [page 68] covering On Line activities:
where a cost of 8.6p per hourperson is given based on the production cost of £106.5M. After overheads this is £174.4M so the p/hrperson is 14.0p. This is why my first reaction was to be startled. Looking at this from the Online breakdown footnote, viz:
"BBC Online spend is monitored by annexe (relating to editorial areas of the service). Non-annexe spend covers costs relating to central editorial activities such as the BBC Homepage, technologies which operate across the service and overheads. The spend for each annexe was: News, Sport & Weather £47.8million (2013: £43.8million), Childrens £9.3million (2013: £8.5million), Knowledge & Learning £15.7million (2013: £18.7million), TV & iPlayer £11.1million (2013: £12.2million) and Audio & Music £11.7million (2013: 13.3million), giving a total annexe spend of £95.6million (2013: £96.5million). Non-annexe spend was £10.9million (2013: £6.5million)"
Extracting only those costs that involve TV and Radio consumption, that is audio visual and not pure web content, IOW the iPlayer, the costs are £22.8M [the sum of 2 bold figures above] of the £106.5M so reducing the 14p to about 3p including overheads. Because we don't know the actual hours this is at best an estimate.
This is an annual cost so 1 hour a day for 1.5M people [somewhere it says that many use the Player] would be £22.8M/(1.5M*365) or about 4p/personhour. So perhaps they assume 1 hour a day in the absence of any data, typical duration of a programme? Anyway this cost is perhaps more reasonable for streaming TV, radio and catch-up. The Trust acknowledge that streaming is at a low level at present but is is expected to grow [if allowed] but although that means more people and more hours it could also attract more cost so it is hard to know which way the 4p would go. This 4p is additional to the basic cost of making R3 in the first place. Added to all that is the fact that internet coverage and quality of service is nowhere near that of the other distribution media.
But note in my #169, the lower table, the distribution cost of Online is £49M for it all; about 20% of this is attributable to streaming so about £10M, comparable to R3.
This is worth a read; it refers to an interview with Whittingdale:
where a cost of 8.6p per hourperson is given based on the production cost of £106.5M. After overheads this is £174.4M so the p/hrperson is 14.0p. This is why my first reaction was to be startled. Looking at this from the Online breakdown footnote, viz:
"BBC Online spend is monitored by annexe (relating to editorial areas of the service). Non-annexe spend covers costs relating to central editorial activities such as the BBC Homepage, technologies which operate across the service and overheads. The spend for each annexe was: News, Sport & Weather £47.8million (2013: £43.8million), Childrens £9.3million (2013: £8.5million), Knowledge & Learning £15.7million (2013: £18.7million), TV & iPlayer £11.1million (2013: £12.2million) and Audio & Music £11.7million (2013: 13.3million), giving a total annexe spend of £95.6million (2013: £96.5million). Non-annexe spend was £10.9million (2013: £6.5million)"
Extracting only those costs that involve TV and Radio consumption, that is audio visual and not pure web content, IOW the iPlayer, the costs are £22.8M [the sum of 2 bold figures above] of the £106.5M so reducing the 14p to about 3p including overheads. Because we don't know the actual hours this is at best an estimate.
This is an annual cost so 1 hour a day for 1.5M people [somewhere it says that many use the Player] would be £22.8M/(1.5M*365) or about 4p/personhour. So perhaps they assume 1 hour a day in the absence of any data, typical duration of a programme? Anyway this cost is perhaps more reasonable for streaming TV, radio and catch-up. The Trust acknowledge that streaming is at a low level at present but is is expected to grow [if allowed] but although that means more people and more hours it could also attract more cost so it is hard to know which way the 4p would go. This 4p is additional to the basic cost of making R3 in the first place. Added to all that is the fact that internet coverage and quality of service is nowhere near that of the other distribution media.
But note in my #169, the lower table, the distribution cost of Online is £49M for it all; about 20% of this is attributable to streaming so about £10M, comparable to R3.
This is worth a read; it refers to an interview with Whittingdale:
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and Radio 5 Live lost out, especially Radio 5 Live which has been drastically cut since 2006/07.
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