The BBC is looking to expand its business in the US, the world’s largest media market, and wants to ramp up production of TV shows for American audiences.
The company is negotiating to extend a partnership with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., as well as exploring other options, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Those include raising money to fund production, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.
The companies declined to comment.
The British Broadcasting Corp. has a reputation for producing high-quality programs and would have little trouble raising funds. Third-party financiers, including private equity groups, invest billions of dollars a year in the US film and TV industry.
But it’s also a challenging time to expand. Many of the largest buyers of original programming in the US are cutting back. Walt Disney Co. is reducing costs by $7.5 billion, much of it from the company’s film and TV budgets, while Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Paramount Global are also paring spending.
The BBC produces the hit British show Doctor Who in the UK. Its commercial arm, BBC Studios, currently makes programs in the US under a deal with Lions Gate, the studio behind John Wick and The Hunger Games films. Ghosts, a sitcom on CBS, is a collaboration between the two.
BBC management wants a larger role than it currently plays in shows produced with Lions Gate, and is weighing the potential risks and profit from increasing its output in the US, according to the people. The company could also work with a rival studio, the people said.
The BBC is one of the leading TV services in the UK — its networks rank among the most-watched in the country and its streaming service competes with Netflix Inc., Disney and Amazon.com Inc. BBC Studios has a modest presence in pay TV in the US via the cable network BBC America, a joint venture with AMC Networks Inc., as well as the streaming service Britbox, which it owns with ITV Plc.
The BBC, which celebrated its centenary last year, is publicly funded by an unusual TV license fee levied on everyone in the UK who uses a live television or the BBC’s streaming platform iPlayer.
But in recent years the government has frozen that fee, effectively cutting the company’s budget given recent inflation and has questioned the funding model, leading management to explore other avenues for income.
--With assistance from Thomas Seal.
