A war of words between the government and the BBC broke out on Wednesday when Mark Thompson, the broadcaster’s director general, accused a small group of "ideologically focused" people within the UK government of trying to undermine his organisation’s financial security.

Mr Thompson, in a pre-recorded interview with a BBC Radio 4 programme, said that there were no circumstances in which so-called "top-slicing" – the use of part of the £3.6bn licence fee to make programmes for other channels – would be a good idea.

To remove any part of the licence fee would represent an attack on the independence of the BBC and its ability to deliver on its public service remit, he said.

Thee BBC chief directed particular attack on the government and Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, listing a series of causes – including the funding of Channel 4 and the provision of regional news programmes on ITV – for which the broadcasting regulator had been keen to top-slice the licence fee.

"There is a suspicion that for some years now there has been a small group of people ideologically focused on getting a wedge into the licence fee," Mr Thompson said.

His remarks are the BBC management’s first response to the Digital Britain white paper, published on June 16, which indicated that the government was going to take up to £130m a year from the licence fee to fund a number of projects.

Source: FT

Labels: BBC, TV Licence

BBC - Press Office - Press Release: "Joint statement from the BBC, ITV and BT

The partners in the proposed Project Canvas venture (BBC, ITV and BT) have welcomed the BBC Trust's statement, issued today.

'We welcome the Trust's statement and the opportunity to publish more information and we are keen to support a timely conclusion of the Trust's consultation process.

'The BBC Trust's announcement today states that their consultation 'found widespread support for the delivery of IPTV into the home' and the potential role of the BBC to 'coordinate and accelerate this process'.

'The partners believe that Canvas will maximise choice for consumers, sustain the long-term future of free-to-air broadcasting and promote broadband take-up. We also believe it will create significant opportunities for content providers and offer a real alternative in the TV market.

'Internet connectivity will have a transformational effect on TV. A viewing experience unconstrained by broadcast spectrum will give a far greater range of content providers access to the living room, creating unprecedented consumer choice and control over what content they view and when.'"

Labels: BBC, BT, ITV, Project Canvas, vod

The BBC is protesting to BT about its policy of limiting video speed on its “up to 8 Mbps” broadband connections to just 896 Kbps every evening.

The BBC told BBC News, “While customers listening to audio and lower quality video streams would be unaffected, we are concerned that at peak times some customers’ higher quality video streams may be interrupted by buffering before falling back to a lower-quality version.”

In reply, BT stated, “Where we manage bandwidth, we do so in order to optimise the experience for all customers, whatever they want to do online. We believe there is a real issue that content owners like the BBC need to address and we are currently in discussions with the BBC executive to ensure that our customers get the best possible experience in the future.”

What this essentially means is the loss of net neutrality. ISPs have to cover costs, and it is inevitable that we will see a gradual and then rapid increase in packages intended for particular uses which include throttling of speeds for content that fall outside of those uses.

Labels: BBC, BT, ISPs, Throttling

It really does amaze me how long it has taken for talks to be between YouTube and BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation, to allow shows like Top Gear and Torchwood to become available on the YouTube site in their entirety.

If the new highly anticipated deal is struck, viewers will be able to for the first time access former BBC shows in full, as opposed to short clips, for an open ended period.

Currently in Britain, YouTube only show clips of BBC programmes on dedicated channels.This arrangement was introduced in 2007 and has just been renewed.It will add several dedicated channels, including comedy and natural history, as well as a BBC America channel in the US.One channel, Explore, will feature clips making their debut on the Google-owned site.

Clips have been taken from BBC factual shows such as Amazon, with Bruce Parry and the Louis Theroux series, Gambling in Las Vegas.

The channel joins recently launched Food, which features clips from classic cookery programmes.The renewal of the contract is part of a BBC Worldwide's strategy of promoting its content to new audiences to support its suite of global channels, magazines and content across digital platforms.

As posted at The Telegraph

Labels: BBC, iPlayer, YouTube

MPs have voted for an increase in the TV Licence fee, to £142.50. Interestingly, the conservative leader David Cameron was against a rise. The Communication Regulation 2009 motion saw 156 MP’s backing the motion to freeze the TV Licence fee, but 374 MP’s voted for the two per cent increase adding three pounds to the licence fee.

With many Tories including Cameron voting against the rise, the BBC should be forewarned that if the Tories win the next General Election, the tide will turn.

Labels: BBC, TV Licence

BSkyB sees Project Canvas as a competitive threat. It isn't. Canvas will be help VOD via TV to be the tipping point for VOD. Rather than compete with BSkyB, it will complement it and drive interest in VOD, to the benefit of BSkyB and Virgin Media. There is also the supposition by BSkyB that a large proportion who don't current use BSkyB will eventually do so. They won't. We enlarge upon the reasons for BSkyB not to be overly concerned with Canvas in our recent VOD report.

Labels: BBC, Project Canvas, Sky Virgin Media, vod

I went to Bebo’s launch of ‘Open Media’ yesterday at BAFTA on Piccadilly (picture and video of Jamie Cullen below). Open Media allows broadcasters and labels – aka ‘Partners’ - to provide short and long form content totally free to Bebo’s 40 million members. Partners include CBS, MTV, BBC, Channel Four, ITN (which is either odd or hopefully unrealistic, given Bebo’s demographics)‘ and BSkyB.

As with YouTube, Partners’ will not be charged, and they can even use their own players. So, although the BBC will use a Bebo player initially, it will be moving over to using BBC’s own iPlayer. And although not applicable to BBC, Partners can advertise freely and even retain 100% of any advertising revenues.

Open Media allows users can store and curate their favourite video content within their own profiles, and virally distribute that content throughout their ‘friends’ network and the wider Bebo ‘community’. So for companies, it’s a no-brainer. Instead of waiting for people to come to their own sites (e.g. BBC iPlayer and 4OD), companies are going to where the hard to reach audiences are.

What’s in it for Bebo? Bebo claims that the addition of thousands of hours of premium content from major global entertainment and emerging new media companies will increase users’ engagement with the site and thus the value of Bebo’s own advertising and brand associations.

Because social networks are built for individuals, corporations need to tread carefully. In her blog, Jemima Kiss says companies need to be fronted by people that can talk with and engage with other users, or they need to present themselves as companies. Hence, instead becoming people becoming ‘friends’ of companies on Bebo, members can become ‘fans’. But I think that the problem with companies presenting themselves as such means that they are open to accusations of not engaging with the community. Bebo, YouTube and MySpace are characterised by interaction – being active members of communities. As with smaller online communities, people who don’t actively participate are considered lurkers and are even flamed. If companies aren’t there to participate and conform to the norms of the group, then other members will wonder why they are there.

Labels: BBC, Bebo, Channel 4