Publishers divided on BBC online shake-up

Cookery and travel publishers are divided over whether the removal of free recipes and some travel articles from BBC websites will benefit the industry.

The BBC announced this week that as part of its ongoing review it would close its BBC Food website that carried 11,000 recipes as well cut back on its travel content.

Recipes will be archived and available via BBC Worldwide's commercial site BBC Good Food. In addition, recipes from future TV cookery programmes will be searchable for 30 days. 

A 'Save the BBC recipes archive!' petition garnered 100,000 signatures calling for the BBC to reverse its decision, fearing the recipes would be deleted. While a BBC spokesperson confirmed "we have never said we'd delete all the recipes and nor will we" - recipes will not be searchable and harder to find unless users know the URL.

The "shake up" to its online services was the result of a creative review, published on Tuesday (17th May), part of a bid to make savings of £15m - 15% of the service's editorial spend following a white paper on the BBC published by Culture Secretary John Whittingdale on Monday (16th May), which said the BBC needed to be more "distinctive".

Stephen Lotinga, c.e.o of the Publishers Association, said: “There needs to be a careful balance between the BBC using the content it has paid for with public money to the maximum benefit of licence fee payers while having sensitivity to the fact that its activity has an impact on commercial alternatives. In the case of cooking recipes, the BBC themselves have concluded they got the balance wrong."

René Frey, c.e.o of APA Publications, which owns travel publisher Insight Guides, called the move to scrap travel articles from the website a "positive decision". He said: “We think BBC may have its good reasons for such decision, however it is certainly good for travel publishers because the need for solid information is growing and  publishers can take advantage of that. For Insight Guides it is certainly a positive decision because we provide a one-stop-shop with accurate information but also the possibility to plan and book online trips, designed by local experts.”

However, Georgina Dee, DK's publishing director for travel, disagreed. She said: "For DK Eyewitness, having travellers engaged with what the world has to offer can only be a good thing for us and the sale of our guidebooks.”

Cookbook publishers were also divided over whether the removal of recipes would boost sales, with some even suggesting the free online recipes helped to increase cookery book sales.

Amanda Harris, Orion non-fiction said: “I believe searches on the BBC website have introduced customers to new authors and their recipes, and publishers will not gain from this closure, she said. “Cooks searching for specific recipes will find them elsewhere online. Personally, I will greatly miss the website; as a publisher, I am pleased to see that the market is still buoyant for great cookbooks and curated recipe collections.”

Other publishers, meanwhile, said they didn't think it would make any difference either way.

Denise Bates, group publishing director at Octopus Publishing Group, said: “As book publishers we are always in competition with free content from many different sources and know we have to deliver an experience above and beyond that offered by ‘flat’ online information if we want consumers to pay for our books."

Paul Cocker, director of Meze Publishing added: “With regards to cookery book sales I’d be surprised if the removal of the content with make any difference. 2015-2016 was our best fiscal year to date, with our books are going from strength-to-strength. People like to own books, cherish them, and spend time pouring over the pages, I don’t feel that web content will ever replace this completely.”