Quick Summary
A BBC executive has revealed that BBC iPlayer could be "gated" in the future, by refusing access to UK viewers who don't pay the TV Licence fee.
This would effectively mean that you are paying to use it, although technically you're meant to anyway under existing licensing rules.
BBC iPlayer could be locked behind a paywall in the future, as the Beeb looks to restrict its content from those who refuse to pay for a TV Licence.
Its chief consumer officer has revealed that locking out licence dodgers from its "free" streaming service is one of the options that is being considered.
It comes as the corporation finds itself at a crossroads. It recently revealed that while 94% of UK households watch programming covered by the paid TV Licence, only 80% pay for one. And that disparity is resulting in the loss of jobs and budgetary constraints for future productions.
Some ideas have been touted around, including from the UK government's secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy. She revealed that streaming services that are currently exempt from TV Licence requirements, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, could be added.
Currently, viewers need a licence to watch platforms that show live TV (including, confusingly, live broadcasts on Netflix and Prime Video), while the only streaming service that is covered fully by the TV Licence is BBC iPlayer.
Now it seems that could be about to undergo change, too.
Could BBC iPlayer go behind a paywall?
As reported by Deadline, the BBC executive, Kerris Bright, told staff during a call on Monday that there is a future "opportunity" to lock down iPlayer to licence payers only.
However, Bright also admitted that it didn't make sense in the short term: "iPlayer is the only service really that’s licensable where you could actually decide to put a gate in front of it. But, the data today says that actually [there’s] not really the return on investment for doing that," she said in the leaked call.
"The vast majority of people that are watching iPlayer are people that are paying their TV Licence... that would make it a very difficult experience for people that are paying for the licence."
Times are a-changing though, with new streaming services coming to the UK regularly, while Sky's acquisition of ITV (pending regulatory approval) will present the corporation with new challenges.
It could create a market where it is much more financially viable to put a paywall in front of iPlayer, for the BBC to compete. That's Bright's thinking, anyway: "It is something we should absolutely keep looking at because it might be something that you actually would want to do in the future," she added.
