Doctor Who BBC Worldwide's biggest-selling TV show internationally

Doctor Who was BBC Worldwide's biggest-selling TV show internationally last year and, along with brands including Top Gear, Lonely Planet, the international version of Strictly Come Dancing and BBC Earth, helped earn more than £300m in revenue.

The exploitation of everything from TV programmes to live events, DVDs and magazines for the five BBC power brands raked in £308.1m in revenue for BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, in the year to the end of March.

This represented a 12.6% year-on-year revenue increase for the elite group of brands, which will be soon be joined by Walking with Dinosaurs. These brands accounted for 27% of the total £1.16bn revenues BBC Worldwide made last year. BBC Worldwide said that 45% of its total sales now come from just 12 brands.

The top five individual TV series sold internationally by BBC Worldwide in the year to the end of March were Doctor Who series five, the debut series of Sherlock, the 15th and 16th series of Top Gear, and Human Planet.

The Doctor Who franchise made the biggest value leap last year with revenue climbing 49%, thanks to significant growth in the US. BBC Worldwide has seen a 45% increase in DVD and download-to-own sales, with Doctor Who the third-biggest seller in the US iTunes chart behind Mad Men and Glee.

Sales also increased in Europe, moving the revenue mix to 50% from outside the UK. In the previous year 70% of revenues had come from sales of Doctor Who DVDs and merchandise in its home market.

Overall the top TV brands by revenue – when sales of all series and programme titles are combined, not just for a single series – were Top Gear, Doctor Who and Waking the Dead.

BBC Worldwide's Facebook pages for Top Gear and The Stig now have more than 11 million fans, and around 25% of traffic to topgear.com now comes via Facebook.

The BBC Worldwide chief executive, John Smith, said that much of the final negotiations to sell its BBC magazine portfolio, which includes titles such as Top Gear and Radio Times, had centred on protecting its key brand assets.

Smith added that he hoped the deal, which is being negotiated with private equity firm Exponent, would be signed by "the end of August".

"We are negotiating the final details and are very close to concluding the deal," he said. "We want to look after the interests of our staff and the BBC's brands. Quite a lot of the negotiations have been about that. We have structured a deal that makes sure we can be actively involved in brands in our top five. We must be sufficiently in control of those brands."

Smith also said that the aim was to launch a full international version of the BBC iPlayer in the "coming weeks". When pushed he said he hoped it was "before the summer is out, at the end of August".

The iPlayer will be made available in Western Europe first as an iPad app. It will be free to download but then there will be a yet-to-be announced monthly subscription fee.

Users will be able to download as well as stream programmes. The international iPlayer will "have the potential" to run ads and will launch with an un-named sponsor partner.

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