Competition watchdogs urged to act on 'commercial iPlayer' Competition watchdogs are probing Project Kangaroo, the commercial web TV venture set to carry BBC, ITV and Channel 4 programming, amid claims it could suffocate rivals. Sky has told the Office of Fair Trading it is worried that Kangaroo's backers could use their positions as public service broadcasters to promote and cross- …
Mr "Monopoly" Murdoch is crying he is getting some competition. Next he'll be complaining he doesn't own the BBC and that's not fair. Toys and prams anyone?
Why not offer a competeting service instead of crying foul, not as if you haven't had the satelite Monopoly for a good decade now. And as for Virgin, well......
Let's slap a public service requirement on Sky. Teach them that there's a reason that those other broadcasters get subsidies. I am sick and tired of hearing endless bitching about unfair competition every time someone comes up with an idea that doesn't promise millions to a select few companies only to be interspersed with some other corporate parasite telling me how much more efficiently they could run government services. They can't both be right.
If free market competition leads to efficiency and hard work amongs the competitiors, then those who are scared of it clearly know that they are bloated and lazy and would go to wall under truly competitive conditions.
Personally I want the government to *officially* tell Murdoch to fuck off and stop bitching - preferably carried out by some obscure privy councellor wearing ruffles and tights.
It's always funny when a commercial broadcaster complains that public service broadcasters are being anti-competitive. Presumably by offering anything for free the "anti-competitiveness" involved is the requirement on the commercial broadcaster to prove that their non-free offering provides value for money.
Fuck 'em, frankly, with something big and pointy, if they think that they're entitled to make money without having to offer the consumer something in return.
How ironic that this news should come at the same time as Big Brother is being once again inflicted on our consciousness. Neatly reminding me why television is the one area where I don't bother defending the free market, because pretty much everything on the commercial networks is absolute dross. They don't deserve to survive.
Dear Auntie Beeb, please keep on using state subsidy to unfairly compete with the commercial networks. Do more of it. If possible, drive them out of business altogether. Then burn their studios down and salt the earth so that nothing may ever grow there again and leave a sign in the ground reading "Cultural Wasteland".
The BBC didn't sort out the rights to offer programmes online commercially with the unions until a couple of months ago (and by no means have them for even 50% of their programmes now), so it's not hard to see why they said no to Joost at the time. But I'd agree with the point generally that the broadcasters shouldn't be able to hold the content exclusively to Kangaroo and not supply competing services. The question is, is there any sign of that happening? Does Sky want to take on BBC Worldwide or ITV programming for it's Anytime service? Really? Virgin already get it provided for their VOD service, so it doesn’t look like they're being shut out. iTunes again, already has some stuff from ITV and the BBC. If the public service broadcasters are trying to shut everyone but Kangaroo out as Sky claim, they're not exactly doing a good job of it...
If it was anyone but Sky I'd give this some credence, but they're not exactly averse to abusing their content dominance where they have it (e.g. football) . As for Virgin, aren't they incorporating iPlayer (so presumably Kangaroo) into their service anyway?
Personally I think Kangaroo makes sense because a common platform should save cash for all the players involved, and maybe Sky should consider joining them rather than whining about it.
Does this mean that if we were to watch any of the 'quality' programming from the BBC in the UK on this service (streaming or otherwise) that we would have to watch adverts too?
Paris because I'd rather watch crappy TV adverts than the TV programmes she is in (unless, of course it's some certain programme downloaded from t'internet).
Rob
"Sky has told the Office of Fair Trading it is worried that Kangaroo's backers could use their positions as public service broadcasters to promote and cross-subsidiser the service unfairly, The Telegraph reports."
If Sky had the content available viewers wanted to watch, what difference would it actually make?
Move on - nothing to see...
I used to use Joost an awful lot, but then they started changing it and made it pretty dreadful. The program used to be light and easy to navigate, today it is a complete mess with menus and buttons which fade in everytime you move the mouse.
Then there is the tech support or should I say lack of it. I switched from Hotmail to GMail and was told that I simply had to delete my account then sign up for a new one (to get the same username). Joost support told me this. Then when it didn't work, not a peep from them. They are worse than useless
Paris because she is slow and useless, a bit like Joost.
Virgin Media are probably bricking themselves at the thought of all their customers soaking up available ISP network bandwidth by using yet another public streaming video service. (I've been using the BBC i-Player ever since it went to Flash-Browser and it's great as far as I'm concerned.)
As a matter of interest, I'm also on Virgin's digital TV service and I noticed that the BBC picture froze a few weeks ago (pixelation, 0.5 sec judders, etc then a freeze). Instead of waiting patiently, I played with the remote control and the picture suddenly shrank a bit and I saw the BBC i-Player logo at the top right of the screen. The public i-Player service is for 'catch-up' BBC TV, so does this mean that the BBC use i-Player servers to deliver live TV to cable companies over the internet, for onward cable network distribution?
When oh when will you Pommes get the point that the Beeb is a money-creating / money-sucking commercial entity and not what your Mum's and Da's grew up with. This is why you must answer to Ofcom and file in the comments being asked about the viability of public hand-outs to BBC and ITV going forward.
Demand a share in the profits you should -- considering your loaning them money to make money.
The License Fee is the one tax I don't mind paying. It is a tiny cost to provide advertisement free, quality (or what passes for it these days) TV, and the BBC website is a somewhat reasonable source of news and sport.
It should probably be changed to a means tested tax, household income below £35k and you pay nothing. The government can make up the rest by trimming from the defence budget, once we stop going to war at the drop of a hat.
AC because of all the Aunty hating twats who bemoan £11/month.
>a somewhat reasonable source of news...
If you're a NuLab fanboi and like your news served with a liberal gloss of PC bullshit. If the BBC's news team were any further up Gordon Brown's arse, you'd be able to see his bloody tonsils in the background on the 6 O'clock news.
>and sport...
unless you like your footy commentators to understand the offside rule*.
*I admit that that last may be a bit too much to ask these days. Apparently you need to be Dutch, a FIFA official or be managing Italy to know what's going on these days.
Spot on, old bean.
I was finding it very tedious pointing out the difference between Licence and License to the linguistic hoi-polloi, and believing I was the only one not succumbing to some ghastly teenage dialect contrived from US ghetto language and those hideous SMS abbreviations.
One shouldn't be too surprised at our rebel colonial cousins though; just look at who they have elected as their supreme leader in their last two elections.
That fact alone speaks volumes regarding their collective intellect.
My coat please, waiter. It's the one with "Back in 42 days" across the back.
Relating to programmes, the market is shifting in favour of content providers (BBC, ITV, etc.) as opposed to TV channels that predominantly rely on imports (Sky), therefore it's no surprise that Sky is upset as a result.
Paris, because even she has more attractive content than Sky.
Do all the donkey work whilst employed by the originators, then take off and set up your own outfit to "commercialise" the currently 'free' output.
All for personal profit.
Allegedly.
Surely Not?
Still, why should we be surprised by all the money grabbing.
The image of pigs with their snouts buried in the trough grunting greedily springs to mind.
@Mark:
"So how can you compete when each side has their own copyrighted information to sell?"
Ur, let's see. You can make your own material that's better, and more appealing the marketplace. Which shouldn't be hard given the crap that's on offer.
There. Wasn't that hard was it?
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