English Entertainment
BBC Board names Damon Buffini as deputy chair
Mumbai: BBC chairman Richard Sharp has announced the appointment of Damon Buffini to the new role of deputy chair of the BBC board, in his capacity as BBC Commercial Board chair.
Buffini was a founding partner of the international investment firm Permira, where he was managing partner from 1997 to 2010. He has been the Royal National Theatre chair since 2015 and has held multiple non-executive directorships across various industries.
Buffini joined the BBC board as a non-executive director in November 2021 and was appointed chair of the BBC Commercial Board in March 2022. His appointment to deputy chair reflects the importance of the BBC’s commercial activity to the overall success of the organisation.
Talking about the appointment, Sharp said, “I am incredibly pleased that Buffini will take on the additional role of deputy chair of the BBC board, reflecting the integral part that the BBC’s commercial activity plays in the organisation’s overall success. As chair of the BBC Commercial Board, Buffini brings vast experience and expertise to the oversight of our commercial operations at a time when the BBC board is looking for significant and sustained commercial growth.”
Buffini has made three new non-executive director appointments to the BBC Commercial Board.
Gary Newman, Ian Griffiths, and Claire Hungate will all join the BBC Commercial Board as non-executive directors, following approval from the BBC board, with effect from 1 April 2023 for an initial term of three years.
Newman was Fox Television Group chairman & CEO, which included Fox Broadcasting and Twentieth Century Fox Television, until its acquisition by Disney. During his tenure at Fox, he oversaw the development and production of such shows as 24, Glee, Modern Family, Homeland, 911, and The Masked Singer.
Ian Griffiths was the deputy CEO and CFO of market intelligence agency Kantar from 2020 to 2022. Between 2008 and 2019, he served as ITV CFO & COO and was previously EMAP CFO.
Hungate has held the roles of Warner Bros. TV Production UK CEO, Shed Media COO, and Wall to Wall MD. Today, she is Team Liquid’s president and COO. This is an established esports organisation with a global audience reach of around 40 million.
Buffini stated, “The BBC’s commercial subsidiaries, already successful, have been tasked with a further step-change in performance. The appointment of three new non-executives, with spectacular industry experience, reinforces the Commercial Board’s commitment to support and challenge the executive in achieving these stretching goals.”
The new non-executive appointees join to replace non-executive directors Steve Morrison and Dame Elan Closs Stephens, whose full terms on the BBC Commercial Board are due to expire in March 2023.
He added, “I also want to record my sincere thanks to both Elan and Steve for their service. It has been a pleasure to work with them both; their commitment to the BBC’s commercial mission is deeply held, and they step down knowing that the BBC’s commercial activities are in excellent health.”
The BBC Commercial Board oversees the delivery of the BBC’s commercial activities. These are primarily made up of BBC Studios, a global company across production, distribution, licensing, channels, and streaming, and BBC Studioworks, which provides studios and post-production services to the UK’s broadcast and production industry.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
