With the cultural capital that BBC had especially 7 to 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure they would have been at league with Netflix and the like if they had opened it up. Dr Who was huge back then in the US, and you had Sherlock and a few other shows. I think people were just pirating it (?) but lots of people I knew were huge fans.
Given a) they started experimenting with iPlayer pretty early in the streaming came, and b) they have a huge and valuable back catalogue, it's always amazed me that they didn't open up pay-per-view and subscription options for an ex-UK audience.
I've always suspected there's a good reason why not behind the scenes - maybe because a successful PPV operation would lend huge weight to people in the UK seeking to abolish the license fee?
There was something called Kangaroo [1] which was a partnership between BBC, ITV and C4 but it got blocked by the competition commission. Now it's run under Britbox I think!
