Strategy Verdict - BBC

The BBC is in danger of skewing this horribly through the development of
its Integrated Media Player, which will make its programmes available to
view and download online.

While it's admirable that the BBC is innovating and working hard to make
content available on the web, the result to date has been a bit of a
dog's dinner. Trying to find a sports webcast on a Saturday afternoon is
a particularly frustrating and patchy affair. Sometimes it's available,
sometimes not, sometimes on audio, other times as video. The quality is
invariably poor.

The new services will compete unfairly with commercial broadcasters
trying to make their content available using pay-per-view or advertising
supported models. The counter argument is that the licence payers have
already paid for the content and therefore should have access to it at
any time, on any device. As a viewer, I have sympathy for this argument,
but as a businessman, I do not.

In effect, we are all subsidising a competitor through the ridiculous
model of the licence fee. Content owners and producers, who finally have
the means of building their own services direct to customers, will have
to cope with Wal Mart-like competition from the BBC. And the corporation
will serve a double whammy as it resells its content on the market.

No doubt the public service and commercial services will continue to
live side by side, but the BBC will slow down this development. In
trying to innovate itself, the BBC will stifle innovation in the open
market.

Most worrying of all, the BBC has sold off its broadcast and technology
arms, but is still seeing itself as a technology innovator, rather than
outsourcing these functions and concentrating on what it does best -
great programme making.

- Iolo Jones is chief executive, Narrowstep.