2021年经济学人 BBC大厦将倾,溃在旦夕(3)（在线收听）

Commercial media outfits are rushing to bulk up. Warner Media, creator of “Game of Thrones”, “Harry Potter” and other hits, has announced plans to merge with Discovery. France’s largest and third-largest channels, TF1 and M6, will also try to merge, to provide une reponse francaise to the Americans. The BBC has teamed up with ITV, Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster, to run BritBox, an international streaming service. With 2.6m subscribers it is a minnow.

商业媒体公司正争相壮大。《权力的游戏》、《哈利波特》和其他热门剧集的制作公司华纳传媒宣布了与Discovery探索频道合并的计划。法国最大的频道TF1和第三大的频道M6也将尝试合并，以此对美国竞品作出法国的回应。英国广播公司与英国最大的商业广播公司ITV合作，运营国际流媒体服务BritBox。但只拥有260万用户的BritBox还无足轻重。

No big streamer does news, an area where the BBC remains strong. Last year 70% of Britons with internet access said they had absorbed its reports in one medium or another during the past week, according to the Reuters Institute at Oxford University; among 18- to 24-year-olds the figure was 51%. This represents a drop since 2015, when 79% of all adults and 68% of young people tuned in. But the BBC remains “undoubtedly, and by a massive margin” the main source of news in Britain, says Rasmus Nielsen of the Reuters Institute.

由于没有其他大型流媒体公司涉足新闻领域，BBC仍保持一家独大。据牛津路透社研究所统计，去年有70%的英国网民表示，他们在过去的一周里通过一种或多种媒介收听过BBC的新闻报道。在18岁至24岁的群体中，收听比例为51%。该收听比例相较2015年的数据有所下降，当时有79%的成年人和68%的年轻人收听BBC新闻。但路透社研究所的拉斯穆斯·尼尔森表示，毫无疑问，BBC仍以绝对优势成为英国的主要新闻来源。

The corporation is at least stronger than other national broadcasters, which have seen similar declines in reach. Fully 86% of Britons say they are satisfied with their public-service media, versus between 50% and 61% of French, German, Spanish and Italian viewers. For all his complaining about the BBC, “Boris is intelligent enough to see that shutting it down would back-fire,” says one senior Tory. The elderly, who make up the core of the Conservative vote, remain BBC addicts. And Mr Johnson’s healthy poll ratings mean he owes no favours to Mr Murdoch, who has long lobbied for the corporation to be trimmed.

BBC至少要强于其他国家广播公司，后者的影响范围也出现了类似的下降。足足86%的英国人表示对本国的公共服务媒体公司感到满意，相比之下，法国、德国、西班牙和意大利观众感到满意的比例在50%到61%之间。尽管鲍里斯一直不满BBC，“但他足够聪明，知道关闭BBC将引火烧身”，一位保守党高级官员表示。构成保守党选票核心的老人仍然是BBC的忠实用户。而约翰逊良好的民调支持率意味着他不欠默多克任何人情，后者一直在游说削减BBC规模。

Still, as the variety of entertainment from streamers grows, a compulsory levy to fund comedy, drama and the like looks odd. In the age of linear viewing, public service broadcasters had to combine news with lighter fare to get people to tune in. The on-demand era has decoupled the two, making it harder to argue that everyone should pay for “Strictly Come Dancing”. Expect a smaller, newsier BBC in future — and direct the blame, or credit, not to Westminster but to Hollywood.

尽管如此，随着流媒体推出的娱乐种类不断增加，BBC对喜剧、戏剧等强制征收许可费的行径似乎有些奇怪。在线性收视时代，公共服务广播公司必须将新闻与较低的收费结合起来，才能吸引观众。按需定制时代已经将两者脱钩，让所有人付费观看《舞动奇迹》的主张变得更难。预计未来的BBC会变得规模更小、更具新闻性，但好莱坞才应承担直接责任或功劳，而不是威斯敏斯特。