Box Set Madness

Watching live TV is rapidly becoming something of an oddity. Aside from obviously “live” events such as sport or reality contests it is now very common for shows to be watched on a PVR or, increasingly, via steaming and catch up services. The BBC’s iPlayer was very much at the forefront of this as a catch-up service but although it was very much a disruptive technology in its own right it is now playing catch-up itself. Channel 4 operates its own service, All 4, and aside from catch-up it also offers access to its extensive back-catalogue with “box-sets” of old shows available on demand – many going back to the 1980s.

Over the Christmas period, the BBC offered its own box-sets for a limited period. I ended up watching Peaky Blinders, a show that I had heard many good things about but hadn’t watched since I had missed the first series. Over the last couple of weeks I have watched all 24 episodes and I am really glad that I did. It’s essentially a gangster series set in Birmingham in the post-World War One period but unlike many similar programmes it has far more of the personal and social background of the period – particularly in terms of how damaged many returning from the trenches in France really were. In that respect it reminded me more of something like the Godfather films which put the greed and brutality of the characters in the context of the poverty from which they were escaping.

It’s definitely a plus point for the BBC making this available but with it only being on the iPlayer for a month I have really had to binge watch it to make sure I didn’t miss any episodes. However, with Channel 4’s All 4 service I would have been able to delve in and out of the series at leisure. The main difference between iPlayer and All 4 is that the Channel 4 service carries adverts whereas the BBC doesn’t. I can actually live with this on All 4 as they are offering a decent service free-to-view but it does make me wonder whether the BBC are missing a trick.

The iPlayer typically has around 3 Billion hits per year. I don’t know what Channel 4 charges but a typical YouTube single advert costs about 15p. A similar charge for the BBC would mean showing a single advert before a programme could result in an extra £450 million per year – and that is purely for the catch-up service. If box sets and archive programming were available in a similar manner to All 4 that could be considerably higher. Of course, the BBC is tied down by its charter not to show adverts but just a small change could potentially bring in a huge amount of revenue whilst still allowing free-to-air programming and increasing its independence from the UK government.

Of course if it did start putting up old series there are quite a few I’d love to see again: Sci Fi like Blake’s 7 and The Triffids; comedies like The Goodies and Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em; documentaries such as Civilisation, Life on Earth or The Ascent of Man; some old Play for Today or Our Friends in the North wouldn’t go amiss. I do wonder how many of these fondly remembered programmes would stand up to the test of time but there is only really one way to find out. How about it BBC?