In the wake of Sky’s landmark acquisition of rival public broadcaster ITV, the new BBC boss has revealed that the company is in conversation with Channel 4 about potentially combining their streaming services.
Matt Brittin, who took over from former BBC director-general Tim Davie in May this year, faced politicians at a U.K. parliament culture committee on Wednesday, where he detailed the necessity of a British “sovereign platform” that can rival U.S. tech giants like YouTube and Netflix.
It comes just two days after the news that Sky would be buying ITV for £1.6 billion. And a combined Comcast-owned Sky and ITV would create a formidable British media group in the face of a mass audience shift to digital platforms and streamers, but it’ll also certainly put fellow cash-strapped PSBs on their toes.
“We have had an approach and have had a discussion with Channel 4,” said ex-Google exec Brittin to MPs. “In the world of the ITV-Sky merger, Channel 4 looks very sub-scale. All of these mergers are driven by the need to have scale. One opportunity for them would be in partnership with the BBC, having content on iPlayer, but continuing to be ad-funded.”
“There are an array of commercial, audience, public service, and technical issues,” he continued, “but what we’ll do is explore that as quickly as we are able, because I think that’s something that’s going to be important for public service media… This is a moment of real jeopardy,” Brittin added, “because of the scale and because of the influence of a handful of U.S. and Chinese tech players [which] will dominate the creation and distribution of content.”
