BritBox’s President isn’t Afraid of the Streaming Wars: “We’re Fine”

In a time where major media conglomerates are hitting up war chests and spending millions of dollars for exclusive streaming rights, BritBox might just be the little streaming service that could. Built from a partnership between the BBC and ITV, BritBox has managed to secure a unique space in the streaming market: as a thriving niche service for American Anglophiles. Headed up by President Soumya Sriraman, BritBox has steadfastly expanded its library of British crime faves to include daily soap operas, weekly panel shows, and even news and live events, such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

During BritBox’s recent presentation at Summer TCA, Sriraman confirmed that BritBox not only had netted over 650,000 subscribers, but that they were seeing single-digit churn from that base, suggesting that BritBox fans are invested in the brand. Decider caught up with Sriraman after the panels to touch base on how BritBox was faring and how they saw their chances of survival on the edge of the Streaming Wars.

DECIDER: So you mentioned you have 650,000 subscribers now and that’s up from last year, and you guys are holding onto your subscribers it sounds like too.

Yeah. It’s been a nice growth.

So how are you trying to attract new subscribers now? Do you think it’s through Amazon channels, word of mouth? What is the way that BritBox finds the Anglophiles in America?

So I would say we use both the traditional and nontraditional methods. It’s everything from advertising where you think you’re going to find them. But I think the thing we have going for us now is we have the ballooning effect of the people who are already within the service. They become the advocates. So you get the touchpoints to increase, and I think that’s been fortunate for us, the flywheel of success.

You mentioned today that Father Brown is going to be exclusively on BritBox. So it’s on Netflix as of today and I didn’t see any announcement that it’s leaving. Do you have a time when it might be leaving Netflix?

We do, except I’m not sure that I know what it is off the top of my head.

Are you looking to get more exclusives like that from Netflix, and take things from Hulu?

So the way our programming team looks at it is they are constantly thinking about what the connections are with the viewing patterns that we see. And of course, as you know, there are licenses and deals that were done that we have to honor, and then they come up. We look at everything and go, does this make sense for us now?

Obviously, BBC and ITV, how do they determine what shows they want to be BritBox shows versus other ones? Or do you guys have to pursue that?

We have to pursue that. It’s one of those things where they have a job to do. They have channels to run. They have productions to run. We’re one very small part of their big business, and we’re fighting.

So among my fellow editors and writers, we’re looking at this fall and next spring as being huge for streaming in terms of you’ve got the Disney+, WarnerMedia’s HBOMax… It’s just going to be a much more crowded space. So where do you see BritBox’s position going into the so-called “Streaming Wars”? How do you see competition? Do you see competition in Disney+ or is it that you’re kind of playing your own game?

It’s fascinating you ask this because we always thought that we were not in the business of competing with the big guys. What we were trying to do was create a destination. And look, people will make choices based on what their needs are at the moment. We still think we’re a distinct-needs state. We don’t compete with any of the things that other people are doing today in this phase…we’re fine.

You said don’t really have a lot of competition with the big guys, but I always feel like Acorn TV gets lumped in as your primary rival. And you guys also share co-parents as AMC owns stakes in both of you. Is there ever a concern that you guys will be consolidated?

I think the market has shown that we can coexist. AMC owns all of Acorn. They have a participating interest in us. I mean, having said that, I think the market has shown that we can coexist. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve created a closer to the U.K. experience. They’ve obviously done a pretty good job, I think, getting programming from Australia and New Zealand and Europe and elsewhere to round out their offering. Very clearly, BritBox was created by BBC and ITV, and we take you close to that.

I have always been a big advocate for your “Now” section as an Anglophile who loves seeing things come in a timely fashion. I’ve noticed that some other streamers have started to kind of – not break in there, but I know Hulu has a great deal with Love Island. Do you feel like you’ve broken that boundary in terms of licensing? Or do you see that as competition on the horizon that maybe Hulu, particularly, might try to get more BBC content?

You know, it’s interesting you say that because I do think that people have to know that this is something people want. I think all of us as users, all we said is just give more a more convenient way to watch the programming I already do. And that means I watch some of my stuff live. I watch some of my stuff on demand. And I watch some of my stuff binging. That’s just the choice and the freedom that we all want to be able to make. And I think that it behooves us to create that platform. We’re fortunate because we plug right back into the BBC iPlayer backend, so we can provide you this content in real time. I don’t think it’s as easy to do that technologically for many.

So I would be curious to see how it goes. Everyone will find solutions. I think you heard me say this last time, but Jurassic Park said, “Life finds a way.”

Last year you told me how there are these interesting demographic pockets that some people like the “Now,” some people like the quiz shows, some people like the soap operas Has that changed at all? Have you seen any interesting shifts in who your demo is?

Fascinatingly, what I’m finding is each of those segments grows and hence the overlap between them grows. The panel shows have grown really nicely. And what’s fascinating is the people that are watching panel shows are now also watching contemporary comedies. Where it seemed like all they were watching at the beginning was panels. That was their comfort zone. They did some documentaries.

Speaking of documentaries, it’s kind of an interesting blend you’ve got in Lifestyle. You’ve got Mary Berry. I personally love Gardeners World. It’s so nice. You’ve also got great docs like the Lucy Worsley stuff. Do you see that growing more in the year and are there any lifestyle brands that you would love to bring over or you’re eyeballing?

So I don’t know if you noticed that we created a British home and garden mini-channel within our channel. We did that about a month ago and we found that just creating a destination for this kind of programming because we were putting it, to your point, into our factual, but it wasn’t all together. Now it seems to have created a momentum that’s making us now think, “Oh that means we could be considering other things.” So the team is looking at it differently.

So you’re saying that the way you actually package the genre almost creates the new demographic?

It seems that way. I don’t know that we expected that, but that’s what happened.

I know last year the live stream of the royal wedding was a big deal for you guys, I’m sure got you extra subscribers. I also seemed to notice an uptick in the royal programming. Is that another kind of demographic that you’re seeing a lot of growth and traction? Or is it down since the hullabaloo of the wedding is over?

I do think it’s slowed down. I do think it’s slowed down. As a British service, we cannot not offer royal programming, and we do our fair bit. Would I say that that’s our big focus for the year? No. Is live a big focus for us? It is because I think it’s important, to your point, to connect people back to things that are happening, whether that’s Gardener’s World in real time or Chelsea Flower Show in real time, even the Edinburgh Fringe

So last year we heard The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco was the first original program you produced yourselves. Could you give insight in terms of ratings or popularity? And what lessons did you learn from that that you want to utilize going forward?

Bletchley Circle was a fantastic learning experience all around. It did incredibly well for us. We don’t share specific ratings, but we were very pleased with it. What did we learn from it? What we learned from it, I think, was that we shouldn’t be afraid to try different things. Since then, I think last year we did a few other originals. We did Click & Collect. We did Luminous London, which was a documentary, just sort of slow TV format, going through the lights of London. So we’ve got a few of these that we’re excited about.

Going forward are you going to be commissioning more projects like Bletchley Circle?

Yes, stay tuned. You will see more of that.