Earlier this year, UKTV’s reboot of Bergerac caused a bit of a stir. There were ads at every tube station, ‘The Rest Is Entertainment’ devoted a whole episode to the show and pundits obsessed over the whereabouts of John Nettles’s famous leather jacket. Being old enough to remember watching Bergerac with my parents in the 80’s, I couldn’t help but notice all the fuss, which gave rise to these thoughts on streaming brands and UX…
The Bergerac reboot was commissioned by UKTV, which markets the show under its U brand and makes it available on the U app. If you haven’t heard of U, that might be because the brand and app only launched last year, when UKTV created a single, unified positioning and service for its legacy brands (now U&Drama, U&Gold, U&Dave, etc.). It was the U logo that appeared on the bottom right of all those Bergerac tube ads, rather than the legacy brand, U&Drama.
This caught my eye because UKTV seems to be positioning U as a ‘frame’ brand, in place of its legacy ‘flag’ brands. ‘Frames and flags’ is an idea Magnus Willis, my old boss at the research consultancy Sparkler, came up with to describe different types of TV brand. In the old-world of Electronic Program Guides, frame brands sat at the top of the listings and flag brands languished at the bottom. Frame brands like BBC One had to contain and give coherence to a broad range of content (news, sport, comedy, drama, etc.), while flag brands like Dave planted themselves firmly in a specific territory (‘the home of witty banter’).
This distinction still holds true today, despite the dominance of streaming giants and user-generated YouTube channels. Netflix is a frame brand – it has no sub-brands and must give coherence to a vast content repertoire that includes everything from Korean dramas to American sitcoms. Crunchyroll is a flag brand – it’s the standard bearer for anime and looks to attract a particular audience with shared interests and tastes. In short, frame brands make an appeal to the maximum addressable market through a broad and flexible offer; flag brands build communities through tightly-focused content curation.
UKTV will be hoping that positioning U as a frame brand enables it to build a strong and memorable identity that can more easily stand out in the crowded streaming landscape. I’m sure it will also be looking to widen its appeal beyond traditional viewer segments and interest a broader range of people in its shows and movies. While there’s obviously a risk that the specificity and differentiation of flag brands like U&Gold and U&Dave are lost in the process, the launch of U provides an opportunity to tie its wide variety of shows (Holby City, Annika, Red Dwarf, QI, etc.) into a more integrated offer.
This change of brand positioning has significant implications for UX too. As content choices become less tethered to the UKTV legacy brands, U will need to ensure that search and discovery remains quick, easy and tailored to the audience. Without prominent sub-brands to guide navigation, frame brand apps must:
- Assist navigation through strong recommendation algorithms, multiple browsing pathways (homescreen, search, personalised lists, etc.) and clearly defined genre categories
- Ensure the home screen showcases breadth while still feeling personally relevant (this is a tricky balancing act; too much personalization feels narrow, while too little feels overwhelming)
- Facilitate discovery across content types, encouraging users to explore outside their comfort zones while maintaining a sense of coherence
Different streamers do this in different ways. For instance:
- Netflix is the most personalised streaming service but leavens its personalised rails with straightforward recommendations (‘Top 10 movies on Netflix right now’, etc.).
- Max offers mood-based discovery, through categories like ‘Just for Laughs’ and ‘Comfort Viewing’
- YouTube delivers ‘progressive disclosure’, where broad recommendations quickly develop into highly specialised suggestions based on viewing patterns
For frame brands like U, the risk of getting this wrong is that too many options overwhelm the user, potentially leading to choice paralysis (where nothing gets watched because everything seems available). On top of that, valuable shows can get lost in an expanding library of content, frustrating users seeking something new and different. There’s also a risk that viewers end up with a generally bland and interchangeable experience vs. flag brands, which can more easily set themselves apart as experts in content curation.
As U finds its feet and those Bergerac nostalgists explore its offer more widely, I expect the service will need to develop stronger recommendation systems to help users discover content across boundaries previously defined by its legacy brands. Personalization will become more important as the app attempts to serve diverse audiences via a single brand. U will also need to find new ways of recommending content that users might not be familiar with, through top-10s, mood-based discovery and other mechanics.
While that plays out, I might make myself a cup of tea and find out how the last 40 years have treated Bergerac. I can’t imagine John Nettles watching Netflix; those were simpler times all round. Now, whatever happened to that leather jacket…?