AdAge writes: At a time when many newsrooms are contracting or consolidating, the BBC is growing its editorial operations with an original news site aimed at the American audience. Launching Thursday, BBC.com will feature U.S.-focused articles on politics and general news to be produced by a staff of around 10 journalists based in the company’s Washington bureau. BBC.com defaults viewers to BBC.co.uk, the U.K. home page, but will change over for the launch.
“We want to build on the momentum of our business,” Miranda Cresswell, senior VP for BBC.com, explained about the enterprise. The BBC operates under a public trust, and its website cannot serve any advertising to computers based in the U.K.; readers outside of the Commonwealth, however, have been seeing ads for the past two years, most of which comes from the U.S. market. “We tripled ad revenue last year from the year before, and we plan on doubling this year,” Ms. Cresswell said. “We were listening to what advertisers and the audience was telling us in terms of what they needed, and the launch of BBC.com is a response to those needs.”
Indeed, this latest effort is part of the company’s ambitions to nab more U.S. online media dollars, and the inception of BBC.com underscores the importance of original content to that strategy. BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, does not break out revenue figures by site, but the company’s overall digital-media division reported a 9% increase in annual revenue of 30 million pounds, or $45.3 million. BBC.com represents a bulk of that amount, according to company insiders. The site draws 17.4 million U.S. readers, according to ComScore, compared with 57.8 million worldwide.
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