Engaging with audiences

The BBC’s Charter requires that the BBC must ‘carefully and appropriately assess the views and interests of the public and audiences, including licence fee payers’, and ‘to ensure that the diverse perspectives and interests of the public and audiences, including licence fee payers, a are taken into account in its decision-making’.

How we have met our audience goals are set out in Our audiences. In this section we set out the channels through which we directly engage with audiences.

Value for All

The BBC’s Value for All strategy is built on a deep understanding of audiences across the UK.

We draw on a wide range of audience insight, feedback and data to inform decision‑making across the organisation - from content commissioning and journalism to digital product development and marketing.

We use industry‑leading media measurement and digital analytics to understand people’s media choices across viewing, listening and online platforms, both for BBC services and across the wider media landscape.

This is supported by rich digital insight from our own services, including our signed‑in user base of over 50 million registered accounts, alongside regular surveying and polling to track public attitudes towards the BBC, our content and our services.

Alongside large‑scale data and research, the BBC places a strong emphasis on hearing directly from audiences - listening first‑hand to what matters to people and what they want from the BBC.

In 2025, this included Our BBC, Our Future, the BBC’s largest ever public listening exercise.

Every day, people across the UK contact the BBC by phone, email, letter and online to share feedback, whether raising concerns or expressing appreciation. Last year, our Audience Services team handled 291,917 direct contacts from the public, ensuring audience views are heard at scale.

Virtual In Person (VIP) engagement

This direct feedback is complemented by Virtual In Person (VIP), the BBC’s flagship programme of real‑time audience engagement. Now in its sixth year it is a vital way for teams across the organisation to stay closely connected to the people we serve.

Each week, the VIP team delivers sessions where colleagues can dial into live, online 60–90 minute video conversations with members of the public. Its remote nature means we can literally to talk to anyone anywhere in the UK as long as they have internet access. Participants share their media habits, their relationship with the BBC, and their views on our content, products and services. BBC staff watch the discussion unfold in real time – offering an unfiltered, authentic window into the thoughts and opinions of real people.

Over the past year, the VIP team has delivered 83 additional sessions, involving 519 audience contributors and attracting 1,542 BBC attendees. Since launch, the programme has run more than 600 sessions, bringing insights from over 3,600 members of the public to more than 12,200 BBC staff.

Audience contributors reflect a wide range of ages, backgrounds, demographics and locations across all four nations of the UK. Discussions span a breadth of topics including viewing and listening habits, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, national and local news, sport, children’s content, on‑screen representation, impartiality, and perceptions of licence fee value.

This work feeds into the Board and other governance structures. At each Nations Committee, members received a full audience report, including a playback of recent relevant VIP sessions where audiences helped inform BBC output choices. The Committees heard views from audiences all over the UK, with meetings held in key locations including Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, Jersey, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stornoway, Cardiff and Bangor

Finally, the BBC also undertakes targeted engagement to hear from specific audience groups. In 2025, this included UNBOXD, a live engagement event designed to connect directly with 16–24‑year‑olds, delivered in partnership with youth‑focused organisations. UNBOXD created space for young people to engage openly with BBC teams, sharing their views on media, creativity and representation, and their expectations of the BBC’s role in their lives.

Consultations

The BBC’s Charter requires the BBC Board "to have regard to the benefits of consultation with interested persons" and is a key element in our engagement with stakeholders.

We reported last year that the BBC had concluded two Public Interest Test consultations on proposals for new DAB+ music stations and to extend the broadcast hours of Radio 5 Sports Extra. The proposals were referred to Ofcom, the BBC’s regulator, which in July 2025 approved the launch of three DAB+ stations - Radio 1 Anthems, Radio 1 Dance and Radio 3 Unwind. It rejected the proposals on Radio 5 Sports Extra and the Radio 2 extension on grounds of market impact. The decision can be found on the Ofcom website.