BritBoxing Clever?
As Reemah Sakaan takes the reins at BritBox as international CEO, Stephen Arnell takes a look at how the joint ITV/BBC streamer is faring
Congratulations to Reemah, who I had the pleasure of working with in my time as an Editorial Consultant in the early days of attempting to scope out what (after multiple iterations) was eventually to become BritBox.
There is certainly a challenge ahead of her, not least in the UK, where the captive audience available during the various Covid-19 lockdowns has not resulted in the kind of subscriber boost other streamers have enjoyed.
Whilst not exactly a Quibi-style dud, the service hasn’t exactly raced out of the gate.
According to a January article in Broadcast: ‘Ratings agency Barb said it (BritBox) had attracted just shy of 200,000 subs between its launch in November 2019 and September 2020.’
The service has claimed that BARB’s figures do not paint the entire picture, as (from the same article): “BritBox has seen substantial growth in subscribers since the research was completed, due largely to the launch of BritBox original Spitting Image, and partnerships with the likes of BT.”
But as official figures have yet to be released by ITV, we have no way of assessing whether the uptick was of sufficient scale to have made it worth Britbox issuing a release proclaiming this at the time, or whether churn has resulted in declines with customers dropping out post free trials since.
The revived Spitting Image received largely poor to average reviews, which means that the already commissioned second season will need to really raise its game to retain eyeballs, rather than rely on nostalgia and novelty value.
Apparently, Britbox subscriber numbers will be published this Spring – presuming the narrative the figures display is a positive one.
During my consultancy at BritBox I urged a strategy of large-scale drama commissions that could punch through in a crowded marketplace from launch. Shows that would be distinctive enough from standard ITV/BBC fare in order to attract subscribers and encourage the view that they weren’t likely to turn up on linear TV a few months after dropping on the streamer.
Interestingly (or not), a few of the high concept scripted ideas we were kicking around in the mid-2010s have since been put into development/production by others.
C’est la vie.
Likely budgets and launch timescales (mirroring the original-less debut of ITV Encore in 2014) prevented this Paramount+ style approach, but last year BritBox announced a raft of new dramas, with top-flight talent attached, both behind and in front of the camera.
Personally, the emphasis on crime thrillers (The Beast Must Die, Crime, The Magpie Murders) and the Kim Philby espionage drama A Spy Among Friends appear to promise scant change from the usual BBC/ITV offerings, but I could be wrong.
Sakaan must be hoping Spy showrunner Patrick Spence has more success with the drama than he did with Sky Atlantic’s eye-wateringly expensive Nordic Noir/Horror mash-up Fortitude which limped through three seasons to ever-decreasing audiences and episode orders.
Certainly, the commissioning of Irvine Welsh’s Crime might just throw some subscribers a curveball, as the aging enfant terrible’s oeuvre is somewhat of an acquired taste, despite the generic press pack description of his new show:
‘Detective Inspector Ray Lennox, who is investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl while battling his own personal demons.’
‘Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before’, as The Smiths once sang.
Knowing little of the audience profile (due to the lack of official stats) I would take a punt on there being an older, female-skewing subscription base to BritBox; probably not the biggest fans of the drug-fuelled antics of Begbie, Spud, Renton, Sickboy and co.
ITV last dabbled with Welsh back in 2009, when ITV4 commissioned the darts comedy mockumentary Good Arrows, which about three people and a cat ended up watching.
And a word on curation; it might be an idea to see what your co-owner the BBC is theming on I-Player, as BritBox’s upcoming Back to the 90s Collection mirrors a current tile in Auntie’s From the Archive section.
On a final note of presumably unintended mirth, whilst perusing February 2021’s press release detailing new movies appearing on Britbox, I noticed this typo… ‘Mr Love (1985) starring Barry Lyndon’
What next, I mused to myself, William Makepeace Thackeray's Becky Sharpe turning up as the star of BB’s March prison movie Scrubbers (1982)?
