BBC Studios extolled the virtues of its partnership with YouTube at Mipcom on Monday.
BBC Studios digital SVP Jasmine Dawson and YouTube’s EMEA boss Pedro Pina appeared at the Cannes TV confab in a panel hosted by Map of Media’s Evan Shapiro to shed light on how the two companies – ostensibly competing for the same audiences – are working together to build their fanbases.
“Putting our audience obsession at the heart of everything we do is what makes our business work now. Being ‘fandom-first,’” said Dawson. “BBC Studios is proud to build the biggest fandoms across the world … that’s why the partnership of YouTube is so critical, because that partnership is enabling and driving that ‘creative earth’ mindset.”
Dawson cited the BBC Earth YouTube channel, which is one of BBC Studios’ longest-standing channels on the platform and boasts 14 million subscribers, as an example of the partnership’s success.
“But what we are excelling at is finding our fandoms across the world who care about this, who are finding their place to be able to engage with the content they love and the content that resonates with them,” she said. “For us, that’s not just about finding the fandoms where they live, but also understanding we can monetize those audiences, both on platform and off platform.”
Dawson also made the point that the company, which is the commercial arm of U.K. broadcaster BBC, is not “sacrificing anything” by making its content available for free on the Google-owned social media platform. “We see this with so many of our IPs, it’s not a mutually exclusive game,” she said. “We’re not sacrificing anything. Actually it’s incremental. And that is a really powerful conversation to have our distribution partners, whether it’s ‘Bluey’ with Disney or some of our BBC Earth titles with PBS and other distributors, they understand that this is where the fandom grows, and then it drives incrementality.”
YouTube’s Pina also made the case to the audience, comprised of many TV industry execs, as to why they should partner with what many imagine is a competitor to the distribution and broadcasting business.
“We all know that there is amazing content creation happen around happening around the world. BBC Studios is one of the best content creators in our world, but there’s tons, and we found out they actually congregate here every year. So we decided to be here this year to actually say, look, the same rule that applies to our content creators applies to anyone who creates content. Everyone could be a YouTuber … You find smart and great ways of monetizing that we share that success. We don’t commission stuff so we don’t give money and then make profit back. What we do is if you’re successful, I’m successful. If you’re not successful, I’m not successful. It’s the best combination ever. The audience will determine whether the content is good or not.”
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