The BBC is exploring its back catalogue, looking for shows to sell through iTunes, and began offering the first series of cult comedy The Young Ones through the Apple service this week.
First broadcast in 1982, The Young Ones featured Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmonson and Nigel Planer. The second and final series will also be made available in the coming weeks.
The Young Ones captures the essence of student life in Thatcherite Britain in the early 80’s, following four students studying at the aptly named Scumbag College. Read the rest of this entry »
Comedydemon.com has reached an agreement with BBC Worldwide to stream and offer for sale and download a range of shows, including modern classics such as The Catherine Tate Show and Harry Enfield, and audio versions of enduring shows, such as Dad’s Army. Comedydemon.com is a division of RDF Media. Meanwhile here’s a classic Dom Joly sharing a slice of telephone etiquette.
Video search engine blinkx is launching “blinkx Remote” today, the new service combines content from UK broadcasters the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, making it as easy to find the show you want as it is to flick between channels on a TV.
blinkx Remote provides users with a way to find their favourite TV shows from any network or provider with online content, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five and more.
“The online video landscape has changed dramatically over the past year – what was once the domain of short-form, user-generated material, has become the realm of premium television,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx. Read the rest of this entry »
Apple’s seeming ‘hobby’ the Apple TV may be on the edge of a market explosion, reading between the lines of the latest InStat report.
The report looks at the global digital set top box market, which the analysts expect to see hit a growth spike as digital television services explode.
InStat reckons the digital set top box market has been one of the fastest growing market segments in the CE business over the past decade, and 2007 was no exception, the analyst firm explained. Read the rest of this entry »
Peer-to-peer technology based on BitTorrent could power next-generation TV broadcasting in Europe.
A European Union-funded research project is exploring a new system that could replace over-the-air TV broadcasts, Ars Technica explains.
With €19 million in EU funding and a research remit stretching to 2012, Dutch academic Dr. Johan Pouwelse has spent a year studying BitTorrent as part of his research toward the new technology, which is being hatched-up to deliver live streaming video, rather than catalogue shows.
P2P-Next is based on BitTorrent, but adds support for video on demand and live streaming. The technology could ease the pressure on broadcasters, who must pay for huge quantities of bandwidth when they stream live material online. Read the rest of this entry »
The future of broadcasting is already here, with almost a third of people under the age of 25 already watching TV on the internet, a UK survey reveals this week. IPA Touchpoint asked 5,400 people about their media consumption habits, and found that 29 per cent of those between 15-25 years old and 18 per cent of adults aged 25-64 had watched TV online.
The report also found 13 per cent of mobile users watch video clips on their phones, a figure that climbed to 30 per cent in the younger, 15-24 year old age bracket.
Broadband penetration now stands at 73 per cent of all UK adults, with internet usage at an average of 45 minutes on weekdays and 1.07 hours at weekends.
During the week an average adult spends 24 per cent of their time awake watching the TV, 13 per cent listening to the radio, 7 per cent using the internet and 3 per cent reading a newspaper or magazine. In homes where the internet is used internet consumption rises to 10 per cent.
Worryingly, the notion of the digital switchover is still not understood by 20 per cent of all adults, rising to 30 per cent among over 65’s.
There’s a host of interesting additional statistics revealed by the survey: The most popular type of web pages visited in the last seven days by all internet users are banking and finance (48 per cent), followed by news headlines (42 per cent) and maps/travel news/directions/public transport (35 per cent). For 15-24s though the most visited sites are social networking (58 per cent), in comparison with all internet users (26 per cent). The most popular websites visited by all internet users in the last seven days are Google (74 per cent), BBC (37 per cent) and E-bay (33 per cent).
YouTube was accessed by 22 per cent of all internet users in the last seven days and 32 per cent in the last four weeks. This rises to 45 per cent and 59 per cent, respectively, for 15-24 year-olds. Podcasts were only downloaded by 9 per cent of internet users in the last six months.
The BBC’s iPlayer service is setting the bar for an online television destination, with US broadcasters now looking to take a leaf from the BBC’s book. In Europe, Italy’s RAI and Germany’s RTL are looking to replicate the BBC’s service in their own home markets, Business Week reports.
iPlayer lets UK users access full-length streaming footage of BBC shows from the last seven days on demand. Windows users can also download shows for offline viewing, though these are protected by technology which means the downloads stop working after a set period. The BBC offer is so tempting – and, given recent updates to the service, so increasingly slick, the broadcaster now attracts in the region of 2.2 million pairs of eyeballs to its iPlayer service every month. The BBC says more than 60% of its viewers are 35 or older—and they stay online for almost 30 minutes per session.
Bobby Tulsiani, a JupiterResearch analyst said: “From day one, the BBC’s iPlayer started with the right experience,” he says. There’s increasing tension between the BBC and the ISP’s, who complain the service is impacting their networks because it uses up so much bandwidth. ISPs want content providers to contribute to ramping-up infrastructure, content providers, naturally, argue that content is what convinces people to sign-up an ISP in the first place. While analysts predict that partnerships will be forged between content providers and ISPs, we at Distorted Loop believe that ownership of the network will emerge as the next great battle ground for the content industries. We anticipate some movements in which some content providers will buy ISPs, Virgin Media in the UK could be considered an early example of the content/infrastructure combo. We’ll see.
The OFT has referred the jointly-held plans of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and their mooted Kangaroo service to the Competition Commission, sparking fury from the three UK players.
A joint statement on Kangaroo referral from BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 reads: “We’re naturally disappointed by the decision from the OFT and are frustrated that it will delay the launch of Kangaroo, however all parties remain committed to what the venture offers.
The OFT’s decision shows that the assessment of the proposed joint venture involves some very complicated issues. The parties are confident that when properly subject to more detailed scrutiny by the Competition Commission, the Competition Commission will conclude that the joint venture will provide wider choice for consumers and be seen as a pro-competitive force in the market place.
Once the Competition Commission process is complete, each broadcaster will liaise with its board for approval and BBC Worldwide will liaise with the BBC Trust for approval. Our aspiration is that Kangaroo will offer a wealth of British content and provide an example of UK innovation and collaboration for the benefit of consumers and advertisers alike.”
ITV’s executive chairman Michael Grade said: “While I understand that the Office of Fair Trading is carrying out its statutory obligations, there is a serious problem with a regulatory framework that seems unable to take the most important interest into account – that of British viewers.
The UK’s three biggest public service broadcasters together invest £2.5 billion per annum in original UK production, representing over 90 per cent of the total spend, as the recent Ofcom report highlighted. As digital distribution gathers pace, we want to make our content available for free to online users in the most accessible way through Kangaroo.
This venture has been delayed by a reference to the Competition Commission, at the very same time that non-UK companies like Google and Apple are free to build market dominating positions online in the UK without so much as a regulatory murmur.
There must be a level playing field for those of us whose investment sustains UK production. Companies without that commitment, who financially contribute virtually nothing to the UK creative economy, are trying to use a narrow regulatory remit to exploit our investment at little cost or risk to themselves. If they succeed, the losers will be UK viewers, UK advertisers and UK producers. Today’s ruling suggests that the regulatory framework does not seem to take that wider public interest sufficiently into account.
In the meantime, as joint shareholders in a ground-breaking venture we feel passionately about, we will engage in the continuing process with the Competition Commission”.
The BBC will introduce an all-new version of its iPlayer catch-up TV service online tomorrow, calling this iPlayer beta 2.0. The new service will offer all the existing features of the increasingly popular catch-up television service, but adds a variety of useful widgets, including RSS feeds, and a new More Like This widget at the bottom of the page.
iPlayer also offers much-improved video performance – 640 pixels wide, up from the previous 512 pixels – a 25% size increase. BBC has also combined radio and television within the service, and also introduced a range of personalisation features for users. For example, iPlayer will remember which shows a user has recently played, so when new episodes of those programmes become available they’ll automatically show up in the Last Played widget.
“One of our most common feature requests is for an indication of whether a given programme is scheduled to appear in iPlayer or not,” the BBC reveals. iPlayer 2.0 will offer a full schedule view showing all programmes that were on TV and radio, with an indication of which are available for viewing in iPlayer now, which are coming soon, and which (usually for content licensing reasons) are not scheduled for iPlayer.
For users hoping to use iPlayer to catch up on last night’s TV the BBC has introduced a dedicated widget for that purpose on its homepage.
Anthony Rose, Head of Digital Media Technology, BBC Future Media and Technology, added: “iPlayer gets five million page views per day now, which the BBC thinks will double when it adds radio, and then double again over the next few months.”
There have been over 100 million requests to view programmes since BBC iPlayer launched. In May alone, there were 21.8 million requests to view, some 700,000 per day on average.
The new-look service, which launches in beta tomorrow, will ‘dual run’ alongside the existing iPlayer for the next few weeks.
The new-look BBC iPlayer will be available on other platforms for TV catch-up, including the Apple iPhone & iPod touch, and the Nintendo Wii. Audio on demand and live streaming will become available in due course.
UK regulator Ofcom today published the Terms of Reference for its Market Impact Assessment (MIA) of the BBC’s proposed Local Video service. Ofcom has also invited stakeholders to respond to a list of questions published today.
The BBC’s Local Video service expands upon existing BBC Local websites on bbc.co.uk with a focus on 60 areas, typically a county or conurbation, across the UK.
The BBC wants to create and deliver local video news, sport and weather programmes to complement its existing service, offering Local information in both Welsh and English in Wales.
Diane Coyle, BBC Trustee and Chair of the Trust’s Public Value and Fair Trading Committee, said: “Last year the Trust challenged BBC management to respond to licence fee payers wanting better local services. We wanted a proposal that would deliver public value with minimum adverse impact on local newspapers and other commercial media services.
The Market Impact Assessment of the proposed BBC Local Video service will examine the likely impact of the service proposed by the BBC on similar and related products and services, examining in particular the extent to which the service might affect innovation and investment in the commercial sector.
BBC management believes the proposition will help the BBC meet its public purposes and close the gap between the importance that audiences attach to the BBC’s local role and their view of current performance.
Ofcom, however, will consider the impact of the plan upon:
* local newspapers and associated online services;
* local radio stations and associated online services;
* local and regional TV services and associated online services;
* mobile TV services; and
* other online services.
The results of the MIA will be published alongside the BBC Trust’s Public Value Assessment on 18 November 2008 with a final decision on the plans set for February 2009.
The BBC is exploring its back catalogue, looking for shows to sell through iTunes, and began offering the first series of cult comedy The Young Ones through the Apple service this week.
