Providing services to the public and transforming for the future

The report shows that the BBC is at the heart of national life and is the UK's leading media brand, with 95% of UK adults using our services on average per month.

We continue to meet the expectations of audiences across the UK and abroad, but we know we must accelerate the pace of change to increase relevance and value in an age of limitless choice and interactivity.

In March, we set out an ambitious long-term plan to prioritize and focus our resources on three essential roles: seeking truth without agenda; supporting the best local stories; and bringing people together.

Samir Shah, Chairman of the BBC, said: “The BBC is very important to the UK and continues to play an important role on the world stage.”

Together with the Board, I look forward to overseeing progress on the robust plans in place to preserve the benefits of public service broadcasting for all and to ensuring the BBC can meet audience expectations in the future.

Tim Davie, BBC Director General, said: “This year’s annual report shows how we are transforming at pace to meet the needs of all audiences in the digital age.”

We remain firmly focused on prioritising our resources to build a BBC for the future that can deliver crucial benefits for the UK at a critical time and help support a healthy democracy, a thriving creative economy and a strong society.

Content

By far, more people get their news from the BBC than from any other source and, across our services, 35 million UK adults accessed the BBC every day in 2023/24.

We are now the only UK provider to feature in the top five media brands most used by young people and it was another record year for BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer, both seeing significant increases in weekly active accounts.

The BBC was the place to be for unmissable moments. We brought people together for the coronation of King Charles III, watched by an average audience of 14.6 million, and the Eurovision Grand Final in Liverpool, watched by an average audience of 10 million that night.

We saw huge audience success for British drama across all genres, from Doctor Who and Planet Earth III to Ghosts and The Traitors. It was an incredible year for quintessentially British drama from across the UK, including Blue Lights, Shetland, Steeltown Murders, Sherwood and The Responder.

BBC Radio continues to be the market leader in audio, with over 30 million adults listening on average per week, more than any other broadcaster or on-demand player. Radio 2 is the UK’s number one station, Radio 4 the number one talk station and 6 Music the largest digital-only service.

All over the UK

Our Across the UK plan remains critical to our mission and has now entered its second phase. It is currently on track to exceed its target of $700 million in spending outside of London. To date, the programme has enabled the BBC to make over $200 million of cumulative investment in its programming and services, including over 350 roles relocated outside of London. Over 54% of our workforce is now based outside of London.

In 2023/24, the BBC met its target of spending 60% of the network television budget outside London and we are on track to maintain this target permanently by 2026. With 44% of total radio and music production spend made outside London, we are on track to meet the 50% target by the end of the current Charter.

Transparency and impartiality

We build trust with our audiences through a focus on transparency, as demonstrated by the launch of BBC Verify. The team fact-checks, combats misinformation, analyses data and explains complex stories in search of the truth. This year, we will bring BBC Verify to audiences around the world.

In May, we demonstrated our continued commitment to impartiality by publishing our second independent thematic report on the BBC's coverage of migration, and announced the next report on our output in terms of authentic and accurate representation and portrayal.

Finance and trade

Despite a challenging trading environment, BBC Studios delivered a strong year of performance, with revenue of £1.9 billion (2022/23: £2.1 billion). The increase in our borrowing limits has kick-started new investments and the recent acquisition of streaming service BritBox International demonstrates our plans for sustainable future growth.

Our aim is to double our commercial business by 2027/28, generating additional content and funding for the BBC.

Although licences in force decreased by 2% compared to the previous year, the vast majority of our audiences remained committed to paying the licence fee and 95% of public service expenditure was spent on content and its delivery.

In real terms, the licence fee generated 30% more income in 2010/11 than it does today, a difference of over a billion a year. We have made it clear that the severe financial pressure we are under means that we must make further savings, on top of the major savings and reinvestments we have already made, to deliver the greatest possible value to the public.

Transformation

We are becoming a leaner, more agile organization, and accelerating our digital-first approach to reach audiences where they are. Public service jobs continue to decline this year, with headcount down 10% over the last five years, a reduction of nearly 2,000 positions.

Over the next two years, we will seek to redirect more of the funding we have to priority areas that deliver real value to the public. This means that in the public service, we will cut and transfer jobs in some areas and create jobs in growth areas. By the end of March 2026, we expect to see a total reduction of around 500 jobs in the public service.

Workforce diversity

We have made progress towards our overall 50:20:12:25 diversity and inclusion targets for the year, but there is still much to do to ensure we remain representative of our audiences as our organisation shrinks. Disability and ethnicity are at the root of our expected ambition and both will be at the centre of our updated D&I strategy which will be published next year.

The report demonstrates the implementation of our three key pillars.

We seek the truth without any objective;

• 75% of UK adults use BBC News on average per week, well ahead of the nearest provider
• 1.3 million 12-15 year olds in the UK follow the news, with the BBC being the leading organisation to follow the news
• We deliver the UK's voice, values ​​and influence to a weekly audience of 450 million people around the world
• We are the world's most trusted provider of international news

We support the best local stories;

• We contributed almost £5 billion to the UK economy last year and for every direct economic activity the BBC generates £2.63 billion in the UK economy.
• Half of our economic impact is outside London, compared to 20% for the sector as a whole
• 99% of our original content is made in the UK. We are the largest investor in UK-made programming.
• We won 14 BAFTA TV Awards in 2024, more than any other broadcaster or streamer

We bring people together;

• BBC coverage reached 25.2 million people in the UK on the day of the coronation of HM the King and HM the Queen Consort
• There were a record 8.1 billion streaming requests on BBC iPlayer, a 10% increase on the previous year
• Of the top 10 most-watched programmes in the UK in 2023, seven were on the BBC, highlighting our continued importance and relevance to today’s audiences.
• People spent an average of 5 hours and 44 minutes per week watching BBC TV/iPlayer, more than all the major SVOD streamers combined

BBC Press Office

Notes to editors:

• The BBC also published today its progress report on the Diversity Commissioning Code of Practice and its Commissioning Bid Report for 2023/24.

• The Content Commissioning Report demonstrates that, in a challenging year for the sector, we delivered a wide range of distinctive content across television and radio, working with 525 production companies and with the support of a number of industry partners. We continued to deliver commissioned content across the UK, including achieving our target of 60% of network TV spend in the Nations and English regions ahead of schedule, and we made progress on our contestability commitments with 61% of eligible network radio hours open to competition.