In a published today on the Inside the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website, PriceWaterhouse Cooper's assessment is that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã is on track to deliver £1.6billion cumulative annual savings in the 10 year period ending March 2017 and it will continue to improve this in the next Charter.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã Trust and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã asked PwC, as part of their work on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s efficiency, to look at the potential future efficiency rate that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã could achieve from purely productive efficiency over the next Charter period. That report is published here: [link]

As set out in – The Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s programmes and services in the next Charter, published on 7th September, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã will need to deliver significant savings over the next licence fee period to both balance the books and release money for new investments

The PwC assessment recognises the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s long history of delivering efficiency and should be considered alongside PwC’s July review of Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s progress reducing overheads.

Over the past ten years, the internet has transformed how audiences access and watch our programmes. Think back to 2005. Viewing on YouTube had only just gone live, the iPhone and the tablet hadn’t yet launched, Facebook was in its infancy, Twitter didn’t exist, and watching any content on the go was the domain of the tech savvy.

Today, audiences access our content in a huge variety of ways. Ö÷²¥´óÐã has played a transformative role in that digital content evolution in the UK. We launched our first websites in 1994, with Ö÷²¥´óÐã News online following in 1997. Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer launched in 2007 on Christmas day – one of the first online streaming services of its kind, making the unmissable, unmissable. Back then, iPlayer was only available on one device, the computer. It has seen a huge evolution since then.

Today, Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer is available on over 10,000 devices including over 1,500 connected TV devices in the UK for free, from smartphones to smart TVs and games consoles, and on operator platforms from Freeview, Freesat and YouView, to Sky, Virgin Media and BT. And our programmes are watched online in the multi-millions. Since iPlayer launched, we’ve seen a huge 15bn TV and radio programme requests, with 3.5bn in 2014 alone.

Viewings habits have fundamentally changed. Watching content online and on the go is now mainstream activity. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer app has been downloaded 35m times, and 46% of all our viewing today comes from mobiles and tablets. Every day, you see people on their daily commute watching Strictly or Bake Off on their mobile phones, iPads and Kindles.

From the earliest days of making the unmissable unmissable, we have also evolved our content strategy. Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer is no longer just a place to catch-up on your favourite shows. Today, you can watch (and restart) live TV. iPlayer showcases exclusive content, such as Adam Curtis’ brilliant Bitter Lake, comedies from established stars such as Bob Mortimer and Bill Bailey, and Private Lives brought to you by Tinie Tempah at the V&A’s Alexander McQueen exhibition. We feature collections of archive programming such as Ö÷²¥´óÐã Four’s Planetary Exploration Collection celebrating The Sky At Night's 750th episode. And we are experimenting with premiering programmes on iPlayer – for example, Peter Kay’s Car Share, which racked up a huge 2.8 million requests over four days it premiered on iPlayer. We will doing more of all of this over the coming months.

The wider world of on-demand viewing has also changed. Back in 2007, Netflix, Amazon and Google didn’t have the services they have now – and other players from UK broadcasters were still in their infancy. Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer has played a significant role in shaping that evolution and creating the UK video on-demand market- and to some extent the global market. Reed Hastings, CEO Netflix said “…iPlayer really blazed the trail. That was long before Netflix and really got people used to this idea of on-demand viewing.” Other broadcasters have followed with successful players of their own.

But the result is that consumers have to search across many different video players or platforms to find their favourite programmes, depending on where it was broadcast. Britain is losing out to global players, who are busy building platforms that bring global content together and could become gatekeepers to British content too.

Last week, , with one option to open up Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer to showcase content from other public services in the UK. 

Our aim would be simple – to increase the traffic to, and investment in, original British content. At its heart would be a free offer, with Ö÷²¥´óÐã content funded from the licence fee, and commercial content through other business models such as advertising. We would also aim to make it possible to buy and keep programmes, as we’re doing with Ö÷²¥´óÐã Store, due to launch soon.

And these proposals have a clear ambition: to create a platform for Britain’s creativity, and an even better experience for UK audiences and a gateway to that world. We believe that an aggregated service would provide audiences with greater access to UK original content, which in turn would increase traffic, usage and potential revenues for everyone.

One possible route would be to use Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer, which we could open up and put at the service of the sector, using its brand, technology and reach. But there are other ideas too, all of which we want to discuss and agree with partners. Those conversations are just beginning, and there is a lot to work through. I hope this gives an overview and a little more context to last week’s announcement. We believe the time is right for this idea – in fact, this may be the best moment we have to make this work – and I’m excited about the possibilities.

Ralph Rivera is Director, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Digital

•  more about our plans for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã over the next years on the Inside the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website. 

People from our Iranian audience recently gave Ö÷²¥´óÐã Persian’s editor their views on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. ‘The Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s PTV (Persian TV) is part of our family life – the presenters and reporters are like our family members’, said one. Another had an even more impressive message. ‘By broadcasting debate programmes, Ö÷²¥´óÐã PTV helps democracy’, he said.

This is a bold claim to make about a TV channel. But in many countries, accurate, impartial news – broadcast without fear or favour, representing different points of view, and holding the powerful to account – is a rare commodity. 

The Iranian authorities don’t make things easy for the Persian service.  Ö÷²¥´óÐã Persian journalists are banned from Iran. Their families are subject to harassment and taken in for questioning. Government officials are forbidden from speaking to Ö÷²¥´óÐã Persian TV.  Our satellite signal is periodically jammed.  And yet still, 12 million people in Iran – half of those with a satellite – watch the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.  That’s the power of the World Service.

On Monday we set out our proposals for the next ten years of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, including our vision for how the World Service can address the democratic deficit of impartial news around the world.

In the past ten years, the world of news media has changed dramatically. Digital platforms have opened up many new possibilities, yet many places, most obviously Russia, have much less media freedom. There has been a growth in big state-sponsored news organisations with billions at their disposal, speaking in the voice of their funders. 

So we are proposing to bring the World Service to more countries, through radio, TV and digital, especially those countries where impartial news is in short supply. This includes a new short-wave daily news service for North Korea and short- and medium-wave news for Eritrea and Ethiopia.

We plan a bigger digital presence in Russia through platforms such as YouTube and its Russian equivalent Rutube, together with TV bulletins for neighbouring states. And we’ll look into the feasibility of a satellite TV channel in Russian.

We would like to expand our digital and mobile offers in Nigeria and India. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s Arabic Service would offer more regional content to better serve its audiences with increased coverage of North Africa and the Middle East.

We think the World Service brings a great deal to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã – and to Britain.  It is our most important cultural export, with one in every 16 people around the world using Ö÷²¥´óÐã news every week. The respect and affection people around the world have for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã improves Britain’s standing in the world.

Licence-fee payers benefit from the World Service – either through listening directly, as millions do, or through the expertise and insight World Service journalists now bring to British news bulletins.

But let’s be clear – there are limits to how much British households can and should be expected to fund international news services.

So let me reassure licence fee payers that none of these proposed new services will place any extra demand on the licence fee.  It’s completely wrong to suggest that new plans for North Korea, Russia, or anywhere else would impact on any licence-fee funded channels or services in the UK. 

We will discuss with the Government their potential interest in investing in the World Service.  We know they recognise the World Service’s importance for this country – and the world.

And we’ve pledged to match any extra public funding we receive with ‘self-help’ of our own through increased advertising and sponsorship for our global news services, (although you will see neither in the UK).

There are some who’ve been questioning whether these new services are feasible or will reach their intended audiences.  Good questions – the Ö÷²¥´óÐã suffers censorship attempts - blocking, jamming and blackouts – throughout the world.  And yet we reach 283m people a week.

The world is changing fast.  Digital platforms have recently allowed us to reach new audiences – like those for the Thai Facebook-only pop-up news service we set up after the military coup last year.  Or our Whatsapp emergency news service in West Africa established as a response to the Ebola outbreak.

Sometimes, it’s more traditional technology which will have better results. We’re proposing a news programme on shortwave radio as we believe this is the most effective way of reaching people in North Korea. We’ll explore how best we can reach more people in Russia.

Above all, we cannot begin to address a democratic deficit without trying to reach some of the least free countries in the world – countries like North Korea and Eritrea.

Our loyal Iranian audiences show us that, despite the best efforts of the authorities, people still find their way to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã – repeatedly rated the world’s most trusted news source.  We want this to continue for the next ten years and beyond.

People love the simplicity of radio. Simply turn it on and it’s your companion for the day from when you wake up to going to bed. It works anywhere, combines entertainment seamlessly with news, sport, travel and weather, and the content on offer is hugely diverse and of great quality. Around 90% of the UK listens to radio each week and almost all of that listening is live but it’s increasingly becoming easier, and popular, to catch up on your favourite shows whenever and wherever you want to – whether it’s by downloading  when using the Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer Radio app on your phone or by subscribing to a range of podcasts ranging from Desert Island Discs and Private Passions to Friday Night Comedy and the new podcast from Radio 4. 

Every month millions of episodes of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio programmes are downloaded by our audiences - in fact over a million programmes were downloaded in the first month after we launched the new Ö÷²¥´óÐã iPlayer Radio app feature - so it’s clear to us that habits are changing fast for many listeners. We also know that there is also no shortage of brilliant radio produced every week by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã and all of that is available online to catch up on, but much of it can be hard for listeners to find or even to know about. So we need to make finding and accessing our radio content easier.

Our plan is to create a personalised radio station, for every listener.

When we started thinking about developing this we knew that we would have to keep it simple. But we also need to make radio more sophisticated if it is to stay relevant to both the new generations of listeners as well as our current audiences who now have new ways to listen. So our proposal for personalised radio is to aim for sophisticated simplicity - as simple as turning on a radio but giving you your very own Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio station based on what you like listening to.