BBC Store to launch next month

Marcus Arthur

The BBC is due to launch its buy-to-own digital content store in the UK next month, BBC Worldwide’s president of UK and ANZ, Marcus Arthur has confirmed.

Speaking at IHS’s PEVE Entertainment Business Futures 2015 event in London, Arthur said the BBC Store will go live in November, following a press launch next week.

The delayed Store will act as another avenue of electronic sell-through for the BBC’s commercial arm – alongside stores like iTunes, Amazon and Google Play.

In his presentation yesterday, Arthur said that with BBC Store, it will be simpler for audiences to “buy, watch and keep the BBC programmes they love” and that it will help “grow the market for download”.

“BBC Store is the most comprehensive collection of BBC programmes ever including recent shows, classic TV favourites and previously unreleased gems from the BBC Television Archive,” he added.

According to details previously released by BBC Worldwide, the store will sit “inside and alongside” the BBC iPlayer – both as a standalone service and integrated into UK catch-up service.

The download-to-own service is built on technology provided by TV software provider Seachange.

Speaking at the Digital TV World Summit in London last December, Arthur said that the BBC Store would likely be rolled out internationally after its UK launch, but said at the time that Worldwide was still mulling whether to adopt a subscription or a transactional model for the international service.

Since then, BBC director general Tony Hall said the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention in September that a BBC OTT service is in the works for the US market. “Next year, we’re launching a new OTT video service in America offering BBC fans programmes they wouldn’t otherwise get – showcasing British actors, our programme-makers – and celebrating our culture,” said Hall.

In September 2014, at last year’s IHS PEVE event, Arthur said that BBC Worldwide was planning to launch the BBC Store in the second quarter of 2015.