New strategy vital to keep young audience

The BBC is throwing itself into digital culture to stop it losing the next generation of viewers, following a year long study called Creative Future.

"The audiences of tomorrow currently get too little of real value from the BBC and the BBC needs to think how it engages them and reflect their lives better," BBC director general Mark Thompson told the Royal Television Society's Fleming Memorial Lecture.

However, David Mercer, principal analyst at Strategy Analytics, maintained that it is not just younger viewers who are taking up the new technologies.

"Online access through broadband or mobile is obviously becoming a major tool for many users," he said.

"I would not say just the younger audience, although they are obviously the major adopter category. It is happening in some of the older demographics as well."

Thompson warned of a "big shock coming" in the way the BBC operates and that "the foundations of traditional media will be swept away" taking the BBC beyond broadcasting.

"On-demand changes everything. It means we need to rethink the way we conceive, commission, produce, package and distribute our content," said Thompson.

"The BBC should no longer think of itself as a broadcaster of TV and radio and some new media on the side.

"We should aim to deliver public service content to our audiences in whatever media and on whatever device makes sense for them, whether they are at home or on the move."

Mercer suggested that the steps the BBC is planning to take into the digital world are obvious given its public service role.

"The BBC is a public service broadcaster and you might argue that it has an obligation to make content available to the widest possible audience on whatever platform people want to use," he said.

However, Mercer suggested that this does not include all of the areas touted in the Creative Future outline, such as the BBC's plans to learn from the world of video games and experiment with commissioning for new platforms.

"Should the BBC start to get into online gaming? It's not quite clear to me how that's a public service, but I dare say the BBC will argue the case very strongly," he said.

The key recommendations of the BBC's report include adding more personalised features and user-generated content to its website, and creating easier access for topics built around areas such as sport, music, knowledge building, health and science.

"We can deliver much more public value when we think across all platforms and consider how audiences can find our best content - content that's more relevant, more useful and more valuable to them," said Thompson.