Comments on: Saving Public Service Media

By: Steve Bowbrick

Steve Bowbrick — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:27:51 +0000

@The Phazer I think these are fascinating questions. For instance, is it economically rational for quite small broadcasters like C4 and Five to own and operate their own playout infrastruture? Both are tiddlers in even the UK’s media landscape.

Is there any realistic scope for innovation in playout/distibution, especially for firms struggling to break even already?

Wouldn’t the experience of marrying the BBC’s playout system with iPlayer be of direct application to the commercial operations’ players?

As to bandwidth, high quality bandwidth could surely be bought more cheaply if part of a co-op buy with the BBC?

By: The Phazer

The Phazer — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:28:42 +0000

“ITV, C4 and Five would be foolish to turn it down.”

Quite the opposite. It would cost them many millions of pounds to adapt their playout systems to cope, and the reason they use the systems they do is because they want better protection from the streams being ripped. Indeed, they have likely given contractual guarantees to third parties that they cannot realistically get out of.

Why would ITV/C4/Five want to hand over their distribution infrastructure to a rival so they couldn’t make any innovative changes themselves?

One of the main reasons all of the commercial services have problems is because none of them want to pay for proper peering bandwidth. That wouldn’t change with iPlayer.

By: links for 2008-12-17 | I’ve Said Too Much

links for 2008-12-17 | I’ve Said Too Much — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:43:27 +0000

[...] BBC Common Platform: Saving Public Service Media "So Public Service Partnerships lays out a route to a more open BBC but does so in such a hedged and politically defensive way as to effectively neutralise its intent: sharing iPlayer will only make sense, finally, when anyone who creates content of public service value can use it. When it becomes a hub for the exchange of the nation’s public service genius. Openness at the BBC is surely about more than sharing the vast licence fee dividend with the anointed few. Can an Aussie import and impatient tech guru like Rose make a genuinely open iPlayer a reality? I hope so." (tags: bbc iplayer) This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:39:52 +0000

“why can’t the secondary school in my area that’s producing media literacy podcasts or the County museum that’s made a documentary about the Diggers or, for that matter, The Telegraph or Penguin Books or me.” — hmm, publicly owned organisation, a product funded by the license payer, Open Source????

By: Dadblog » links for 2008-12-17

Dadblog » links for 2008-12-17 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:01:35 +0000

By: Dan Sumption

Dan Sumption — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:58:17 +0000

ITV, C4 and Five would be foolish to turn it down – any quick Tweet-survey shows how unpopular and incomplete their offerings are compared with the iPlayer. It makes so much more sense for them to cut their losses, and all work together to produce the best showcase for UK PSB.

By: Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:14:15 +0000

Let’s not forget that the real reason the BBC offered to share the iPlayer technology/platform with the other big broadcasters was as a means of protecting the license fee. I’m sure once ITV,C4 and Five turn down this offer the idea of letting Tate, British Library etc on will be quietly dropped.

By: atomoil

atomoil — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:52:48 +0000

perhaps they were worried about you invoking the ghost of reith?