Just over a year ago, BBC Director-General Tony Hall set out his vision for a more personal BBC in a world that’s ever more digital. A BBC that’s moving from broadcasting the same content and programming to everyone – to a much more personalised, two-way relationship. By knowing more about what you like (and dislike), we can ensure you get the most of out of your BBC – and help you find more of the content you like.
At the time he said: “It's the start of a real transformation – the myBBC revolution. How to reinvent public service broadcasting through data. But we will always be doing it in a BBC way – not telling you what customers like you bought, but what citizens like you would love to watch and need to know.”
What have we been doing?
Since then, we’ve been working hard to bring this ambition to life. And, today we’ve published a progress report – sharing how we’re getting on. This includes the launch of a host of new personalised features for those of you that have signed in to the BBC and changed some of the systems behind the scenes to help us know more about you – so we can give you more of what you want from the BBC.
These are already starting to benefit millions of you. In fact, in the last year, 6.4 million of you have signed in to the BBC – with over a third of you coming back to the BBC on a monthly basis to benefit from personalised signed-in experiences. And, since this time last year:
- 1.6 billion BBC programmes have been recommended to you - based on what you’ve previously watched/listened to and are interested in
- 1.4 billion personalised alerts have been sent via the BBC Sport app - along with 27 billion breaking news alerts from the BBC News app. Leicester football fans might have had a few of these over the weekend.
- In the last 3 months alone, 1.7 million of you have personalised your myNews section on the BBC News app and website – selecting over 12 million topics to track.
- Personalised experiences - including BBC iPlayer play, pause and resume notifications; and recommendations have been used by you an average 800 million times a day. I had a Calvin Harris doc recommended to me the other day – I wouldn’t have found without it being recommended to me.
- There’s been an increase of 400% in the number of you signing up to our pan BBC newsletters – which we’re increasingly making more relevant to your tastes and preferences.
- Over 400 editorial staff are using real-time analytics on a minute-by-minute, day-by-day basis to help them tailor our online experiences for BBC News and the BBC’s Homepage
What we’re up to next
Our plans are focused on you – and we’re not stopping here. In the next couple of months, we’ll be launching a new mobile app called BBC+, helping you discover collections of content you’re interested in from across the BBC in a simple, easy to use app. And, if like me you’re a big sports fan – we’ll be making everything from our coverage of the Euros in France to Olympics in Rio more personalised than ever.
This, along with rolling out more personalised features to our products, renewed privacy and data policy (in plain English) and a new more secure and simple ID system will ensure you continue to find the things you love from your BBC – and discover more hidden gems that you might not otherwise have found.
Phil Fearnley is Director Homepage and myBBC
- Download the full myBBC Progress Report.