BBC is Entering the Online TV Realm and the Impact of Free Content Anywhere, Anytime.

Internally at the BBC, we have a fantastic new trial which allows us to listen to a massive catalogue of backdated radio as well as view the last week’s broadcasts from BBC 1, 2, World and News 24. This is a great help in the work environment, but better than that it allows us to catch the episode of Spooks we missed on Monday, cuz we were in the pub too late!

Seriously, last night I missed the Imagine that I was most looking forward to. The one about modern film auteurs aired and now I have a week to watch. In case you missed it, here is the brief:

The Movie Brats: Take Two
Something interesting seems to be happening in American Cinema with a new group of maverick American directors led by Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino who have emerged to revitalise Hollywood. They include directors such as Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and David O Russell. Alan Yentob meets them and asks how they managed to radicalise American cinema with Hollywood backing. [S]

I mention Imagine, because I am currently managing post for a few in the current series on TV Pioneers and Guitars.

Why is this of interest to you?


Well, the BBC, like pretty much every other media company/content owner is trying to figure out how they are going to deliver content to people over the internet.
The BBC has the additional concern that their funding, unlike commercial competitors, comes from the licence fee paid by 90%+ of the population who own televisions. If, and I stress if, the population abandons TV’s in favour of computers, there is the possibility that the BBC will need to rethink how it comes by its charging demographic. At the moment you can use the BBC’s website and radio while avoiding licence fee.
When the BBC allows content to stream over the net it will need to rethink this approach. The answer may not be too clear and whether this becomes a problem is still to be determined. I think most people, as HD and home theatres gains wider adoption, will still fancy the TV as the centre of the living room. This should be the case, even if most of their consumption comes from the net.

I digress…

The BBC is piloting the method it intends to use to get its content to consumers. The BBC iPlayer is moving into the patent stage.

UKFree.tv has a breakdown of what the player is going to look like. The five tabbed layout includes Home, Guide, Search, Your Downloads and Player.
Below the post is quite an interesting comment exchange about DRM issues. Again DRM affects the BBC differently than commercial companies as is stated. We have all already paid for the content via the licence fee!

What the BBC Site Says:

iMP is an application in development offering UK viewers the chance to catch up on TV and radio programmes they may have missed for up to seven days after they have been broadcast, using the internet to legally download programmes to their home computers. iMP uses peer to peer distribution technology (P2P) to legally distribute these programmes.Seven days after the programme transmission date the programme file expires (using Digital Rights Management - DRM - software) and users will no longer be able to watch it. DRM also prevents users emailing the files to other computer users or sharing it via disc.

Now, if you are interested in DRM issues and indeed the commercial issues involved with the BBC iPlayer check out this article from UKFree.tv as well. It reads…
Ofcom is asking anyone who feels that the BBC iPlayer (due to start in April 2007), that will provide a free internet (plus Homechoice and cable TV) seven day TV catch up service, a podcast of each BBC radio show, plus live versions of the BBC television and radio stations over the internet will effect their revenues and profits to complain to Ofcom before 13 October 2006.
It remains to see which organization claim that the BBC, by making the services that the British public have already paid to produce available 'any time, any place, anywhere' are causing problems. The consumption of BBC services is "non zero-sum", which means that no matter how many (or how few) people watch or listen, the cost to the BBC (and hence the licence fee payer) remains the same.

This is a very interesting and unique dilemma. On the one hand, as I have stated above, we have all already paid for the content, but alternatively does this ‘tax’ model hold up in the business realm of internet television distribution?