ITV to charge viewers for BGT clips
ITV could charge viewers to watch Britain’s Got Talent clips online as early as next year in a bid to boost revenues.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, ITV executive chairman Michael Grade said that he hoped to introduce a micro payments system for clips in the “medium term” and indicated such a scheme could be in place for the 2010 series.
Grade said the plan would work in a similar way to applications on a mobile phone, with viewers charged between 10p and 50p to watch a clip.
“I think that would work extremely well for us,” he said.
Grade expressed confidence that online clips could be made commercially lucrative. He said: “We’re all going to crack it, either when the advertising market recovers or [through a combination of] advertising and what we call micro-payments which is like 50p a time, or 25p.”
Grade added that the money made from the scheme would help ITV maintain its annual programming budget of £800m-£900m.
In the last series, singer Susan Boyle was watched by more than 200m people around the world on YouTube, but as Google and ITV did not have an ad sharing deal in place, no revenue was made from advertising around the clip.
Various analysts suggested ITV lost between £1m and £3m in revenue. Grade said no deal was in place because YouTube had offered a deal that was “derisory”.
“This is an issue that all content owners are struggling with,” added Grade. “[Britain’s Got Talent] did very well in the UK on ITV.com. Our advertising was sold out and we get a big premium for our online advertising. We are working on it, so watch this space.”
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Readers' comments (6)
Would you pay to rewatch a Britain's Got Talent clip?
Anonymous | 10-Jul-2009 3:37 pm
No, because I know that I'll be able to find the same clip for free elsewhere on the web.
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Lonni Faller | 10-Jul-2009 6:24 pm
I would pay to rewatch a video of Susan Boyle, but at this time not for any other.
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Anonymous | 12-Jul-2009 1:27 am
If people had to pay to watch clips of BGT, the Susan Boyle phenomenon would never have happened. ITV is assuming that all the people who watched, and are still watching, would do so if there was a charge. I do not believe that is true. I would not have paid to watch.
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Anonymous | 13-Jul-2009 12:49 pm
The greed of this man is astounding. Isn't he supposed to be stepping down before he completely ruins ITV?
And to think they've spent the last year marketing themselves as the home of free entertainment.
Whether 10p, 25p or even 50p, it's likely processing the payment will probably cost ITV more than payments received anyway - and they'd probably still expect users to sit through an ad as well so they can coin it in in both directions.
Hopefully Mr Cowell will put his foot down on this one.
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Anonymous | 16-Jul-2009 2:41 pm
I'd say charge 50p-£1 to watch a whole episode - without advertisements. Who on earth is going to pay to watch these clips when they can find them all over the web for free? Other 'tube' sites aren't as quick to respond to legal action as youtube, the clips are out there if you want to find them. As young people are more hooked into the internet they become better online researchers, finding stuff for free is a much better alternative than the same 14 year old fishing out a Visa Electron card.
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Anonymous | 14-Aug-2009 11:51 am
Why would anyone even consider paying to watch clips from BGT when the show is repeated about six times a week. As for the Susan Boyle clip, I didn't go near the internet and I must have seen it thirty times. It seems to me that ITV are desperately grasping at every money-making opportunity they can think of. You wouldn't even mind if the quality of the shows they were making was better but the thought that my hard-earned cash might be contributing towards the commission of something like 'Mumbai Calling' is just too depressing for words.
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