BBC plans website cuts to fight FAANG

The BBC is planning to cut sections of its website to facilitate the user experience as it continues to compete with SVoD giants for eyeballs.

The corporation has put the BBC Earth and BBC Arts sections of its website on the chopping block and plans to run fewer features and less celebrity gossip.

According to The Daily Telegraph, which first reported the news, the BBC will instead focus its resources on eight key areas that generate a reported 90% of its online audience: iPlayer, news, sport, children’s content, music and spoken word, weather, education tool BBC Bitesize and the bbc.co.uk homepage.

Earlier this year, the BBC began incorporating iPlayer more seamlessly across its programme pages, allowing users to more easily access content on the catch-up platform.

BBC director general Tony Hall reportedly told staff on Monday that the corporation must concentrate “on a smaller number of services that deliver our best content online” in order to compete with cash-flush digital giants in a global market.

Hall has repeatedly called out US competitors such as Amazon and Netflix.

Speaking at the Swedish Charter Review Seminar in August, the director general said that “The deep pockets of the big, new global players have created huge super-inflation in the market.”

“I’m not saying that the existence of public service media is in direct and imminent danger, but I do see real risks,” he said at the time.