Top prices, old shows - the Beeb's iPlayer goes global The BBC's ramping up efforts to launch an iPlayer-like internet video service outside the UK, but has rejected using ad-funded model to squeeze as much money as possible from its programming. BBC Worldwide managing director Luke Bradley-Jones told Paid Content the service would not offer the latest domestic UK shows to …
I'm an expat living abroad in Sweden and I would happily pay the whole of the license fee to receive all the BBCs UK channels streamed live. I'm sure there are many others who would also be willing to do this. Why isn't this even being considered? It's completely crazy. It's exactly the same as the situation with streaning music. Give customers what they want and they will pay. Give them something inferior, useless and too expensive and they will resort to piracy. It's as simple as that. Until media companies final understand how to use the internet piracy will always reign supreme.
Why couldn't they just offer a subscription something like the the licensing fee, divided into a monthly amount and provide it as a subscriber service.
I pay £5pm for a VPN connection and get the iPlayer that way, it works wonders. Why don't they just create an official version.
But, as the article says, if they overcharge I'll simply revert to iTunes purchases.
"Millions of people love Torchwood and would probably pay 10 bucks an episode rather than two bucks"
10USD to watch a streamed show and not keep it or be able to do anything with it? Are they taking the piss? OMFG! What planet is he on? 2USD, maybe, 1USD OK... but 10?? F*** off!
I and lots of other British ex-pats would pay an annual fee or monthly subscription to be able to access the normal UK Iplayer, including the radio channels in their full quality. It would be better than paying for a VPN, and you wouldn't have to have the torrents going all the time (cough).
Just a thought.
I am constantly stunned by the combination of arrogance and general lack of intelligence shown by so many senior people in the media industry.
They never seem to learn from the past and continue to treat their customers with contempt, then wail and gnash their teeth when people circumvent official methods to download content.
Luke Bradley-Jones is obviously only in his position because of cronyism and/or joined the BBC through some positive discrimination scheme for low achievers. Surely the only possible excuse for his opinions.
'rejected using ad-funded model to squeeze as much money as possible from its programming'
Unlike BBC news which now has adverts plastered all over it if you are outside the UK, and no longer allows you to get the news from a UK perspective.
Why not just let people outside the UK buy a license and then give full access to the iplayer content.
We're going to get 'content from the BBC's "deep archives"' are we?
Wait. Weren't we promised that back in the Greg Dyke era, back in August 2003, when he announced plans for the "BBC Creative Archive"?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3177479.stm
"Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives.
Mr Dyke said on Sunday that everyone would in future be able to download BBC radio and TV programmes from the internet.
The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added. " (continues)
Anybody know what happened to that?
Why will this new promise be any different?
lmao 10 dollars an episode so 10 episodes is 100 bucks lol clearly this fool has not heard of file sharing it's free and 10 bucks an ep becomes 20 eps = FREE ...
just when you think these people have some kind of brains they go and blow the one brain cell out of their head
i swear they must come up with a top 10 ways to make a service completely un-attractive lol.
Any chance of letting us license-paying UK folks access these archives via iPlayer? I might actually use it more often if I could delve into the Beeb back catalogue rather than being restricted to the gamut of mindless 'celebrity' cooking/dancing/arse-scratching TV that makes up most of the BBC's to-air content these days.
I already pay for a higher DishNetwork package than I would otherwise to get BBC America but lately I'm not seeing the kind of things I want on it. Doctor Who and Torchwood are great but Children of Earth aside, they run *months* after they air in Blighty, by which time I've watched them via BT anyway. Other than those two shows, the rest of the stuff they air is pants - old episodes of Cash in the Attic (good god no) and Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares over and over and over again so if some bigwig at the Beeb thinks I'll pay a huge premium for regurgitated BBCA content, he's got another think coming.
There's at least one service that streams the BBC's output (1, 2, 3, 4 & News 24) and a load of other Freeview channels (including ITV, C4, More4, Film 4, C5, etc) live, at a reasonable quality and free of charge. What planet does this prat think we live on if he thinks we'll pay ten bucks an episode for stuff I can already see on BBCA or watch live for now't.
I echo JB and Steve's sentiments - as an expat, I'd *happily* pay Auntie a $15 to $20 a month or maybe even a bit more for official and reliable access to the iPlayer from overseas but that will never happen, they're just too stuck in the past to offer a progressive, modern solution.
It seems that they would rather continue keeping draconian, frequently inaccurate and doubtless expensive to maintain blocklists of UK IP address ranges and bolting the doors to everyone else instead of realising that we're a potentially lucrative revenue stream.
And they wonder why so many people download their content illegally...
I love the BBC and everything it stands for but $10 an episode? Only the terminally stupid would pay that. Sheesh, the DVDs are often announced before a series has completed transmission and I'd rather pay $30 or $40 for a DVD that I can watch endlessly than an overpriced PPV series. An all-you-can-eat subscription scheme priced similarly to the Licence Fee would be a winner with every overseas Brit I know and the same goes for many other nationalities that would kill to be able to access the BBC output.
Brit expats do have brains and can do basic arithmetic...some can even operate a Bittorrent client. Get a clue, Auntie.
Like many, I balked at the $10.00 per episode figure tossed out by Bradley-Jones. That is motion picture go-to-the-theatre kind of money... not what the average person would pay to sit at home and watch telly.
Try to sell rubbish at inflated prices and your business model is sure to fail. A price of $1.25 - $1.50 per episode would probably work, but only if the content is good and only if it can be buffered... some "high speed" connections are more "high speed" than others, and latency and packet loss problems play havoc with streaming media.
Yes a $1.25 - $1.50, PER EPISODE. After all there is no freight as there is in physical product, no discs to manufacture, no cases for the discs, no artwork to have printed and assembled, and no shrink-wrapping or anti-shoplifting devices.
"would probably pay 10 bucks an episode rather than two bucks"
Yeah, perhaps on planet "I want to bum the BBC"
Would probably pay 50p an episode is probably closer to the mark.
Maybe....If it was a really good episode.
I'd rather they did everything on a pay per view basis, then the nation would be largely freed from all the PC agenda driven, utter tripe they produce.
* Fair enough, the BBC does produce excellent documentaries, it's just the fruity "Drama" side that produces all the drivel.
It doesn't really matter for BBC-owned shows, but for shows that they don't own (either the copyright is retained by the production company or it's an import), they may only have UK broadcast rights.
Of course, they also make quite a bit of money in selling international rights to broadcasters in other countries - probably a lot more than they'd get from a subscription service.
You have to rememeber that the licence fee is subsidised by the BBC's commercial activities, so if the BBC did move to a worldwide subscription service, you'd be paying a lot more than the UK licence fee for it.
"Millions of people love Torchwood and would probably pay 10 bucks an episode rather than two bucks,"
Ah-ha-ha--ha-ha! Oh my sides. My, that'd a good one! I won't even pay US$10 for a DVD you blithering moron. I wait until the appear in the bargain bin and pick-em up for about half that, or wait until they appear on TV.
Most BBC content is dumbed-down crap these days any way. Where is the hard-science, the investigative journalism, the exposes? No where. To busy "blue sky thinking" a keeping the meeja-luvies in white powder. BBC News is a complete and utter joke. It used to be that you could rely on the Beeb for hard-hitting reports and major scoops ahead of the other stations, this just doesn't happen and it's a sad day for Britain when the likes of Fox and Sky have better news output.
I don't mind paying a license fee (BBC Tax) but I object to paying it for the dross the output at the moment.
...I have access to a UK proxy, which means I can get access to the whole of the iPlayer anywhere with a connection.
But seriously- people want to pay MONEY to watch that PoS Torchwood? Man, it's like all the crap bits from several episodes of Dr. Who put together, without the Dr himself, and with zero actual plot as it's written by the dreaded RTD! And the acting is appalling- although it is admittedly better than in the radio version. When I first heard the trailer for that I thought it was a Mitchell & Webb sketch.
(AC because I don't want my proxy taken away)
I am not sure how serious the $10 dollar comment was. Whenever something gives a range of possible prices the press always like to jump on the higher price for their headlines.
As to hearing of filesharing I think Apple have heard of file sharing as well and it does not appear to have stop them selling a lot of tv programs through itunes.
The archiving process at the BBC has been a catalogue of errors - first putting all the taped stuff on to DVD. Then they realised it should be on HDD on their servers. So then they had to transfer stuff back from DVD to the servers. And they hadn't got anywhere near finished by that stage. In the meantime, they laid off hundreds of guys doing exactly that job, and then re-engaged some of them as freelancers, once Dyke made the announcement mentioned above.
A relative of mine was able to pay off his house with the redundancy, and continue doing exactly the same job...
Nice one licence fee payers.
but this new chap really seems to be trying to raise the bar.
I wonder why WW keeps getting people in who have no 'nouse' or understanding of the digital economy - or more importantly - audience needs.
I could pull a better marketing strategy out of my arse.
Don't come crying to me when Murdoch gets you disbanded and sold-off you eejuts!
Oh it's good at first sight, but we were promised archive material before it even came out, as AC23:42 points out above.
Content seems to appear and disappear from iPlayer, in strange patterns that probably have more in common with sales and marketing strategy than a convenience service for people who've already paid (via license fee) for the right to watch the material.
I have a ton of BBC DVDs (even a few Blu-Ray), from Life on Earth to Life on Mars, so they get their retail buck from me already, on top of the license fee. So what is iPlayer? Just a means to advertise their other box sets by showing limited runs of episodes in the hope that I'll go out and spend more money to fill in the blanks of what I've missed?
iPlayer is their own private advertising channel, the only difference is that all the ads are BBC ads.
As for the international viewers, I think the licence-cum-subscription model suggested sounds perfectly logical (if they can cope with the strange half-baked availability scheduling). Amazing they couldn't think of it themselves - or maybe they did, until some dickhead suggested they could get $10 per viewing of Torchwood. He clearly hasn't watched it, or if he has, hasn't seen Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Fringe, Firefly, Stargate, etc, etc, etc, etc... some of which are expensive as hell on DVD (Stargate?) yet still cheaper than $10/episode...and you get to keep them.
I gather that some stuff is now available via the archives (a few select episodes of Tomorrow's World for instance) but I'd have though there would be much more available now. Considering BBC Four are running the Electric Revolution season at the moment I figured they would maybe make old episodes of Micro Live and 'Making The Most Of The Micro' available on iPlayer (I've had to source them via alternative means).
Still it was fun catching up on some old episodes of Tomorrow's World.
Rob (who's looking forward to Micro Men on BBC Four tonight at 9pm).
P.S. $10 to watch Torchwood, I think they must have meant they will pay viewers $10 to watch Torchwood.
P.P.S Where is the Sir Clive, Sir/Lord Alan and Chris Curry icons?
...the ex-pat licensing option, PPV just seems absolutely pointless. As for "the service would not offer the latest domestic UK shows to audiences abroad" well, what's the bloody point, then? If I want to watch it months after broadcast, I'll just wait for it to eventually turn up on BBC Entertainment, as I do now
This is starting to show where I believe all TV will go ... pay per view. With content being digitally streamed, I believe it won't be long before we're all paying for the television that we specifically watch.
That will mean the unpopular programs sink to the bottom without trace, while others rise to the top and sing ... which will be a breath of fresh air rather than the executives deciding which shows to axe ... enough fan pressure should thus have greater weight to which programs to resurect from the grave.
Adverts in TV are soon to become a thing of the past; they are hated enough anyway and with more secure payment models, providing there is no ludicrous DRM on the downloaded shows, I believe that an audience will not challenge it ... especially if it would lead to reduced channels of things that people actually want to watch rather than the traditional re-runs of The Sound Of Music.
I mean ... why should I spend an extra quarter of an hour watching a show that I could get through in 45 minutes? Over an evening that could be an hour or so I'd gain ... that could be worth paying for.
Obviously, executives would still be able to syphon off profits from one cheap to produce show to another which costs more ... but I hate adverts. Just like the music industry needed an overhaul, so does the TV industry IMHO.
"You have to rememeber that the licence fee is subsidised by the BBC's commercial activities, so if the BBC did move to a worldwide subscription service, you'd be paying a lot more than the UK licence fee for it."
Umm... no.
The only Beeb related content I have watched in the last six months was the Last Night of the Proms - and that was only because there was no "Prom in the Park" anywhere in the North East.
I would quite happily pay the episode cost of that in place of the tv licence. The Mrs and I other viewings are either DVD based or Sky/FX/Sci-Fi and junior's viewing of choice is Playhouse. Disney.
$10 per episode! The BBC does make fine shows to be sure but let's face it - marketing and commercial reality has never been their strong suite.
I simply buy the DVD's on Amazon UK - and the UK DVD prices are often a lot lower than the US versions. The only downside is that I need region free DVD players but that's not exactly a problem these days. True - I could subscribe to BBC America but frankly I'd rather own the DVD's and watch what I want to, when I want to - and you can buy a lot of DVD's for the cost cable TV service as it turns out.
Anyway who wants to watch a great program on a screen the size of a pop-tart?
"...the ex-pat licensing option, PPV just seems absolutely pointless. As for "the service would not offer the latest domestic UK shows to audiences abroad" well, what's the bloody point, then? If I want to watch it months after broadcast, I'll just wait for it to eventually turn up on BBC Entertainment, as I do now"
That's the only thing they can do. Why do you think BBC Entertainment even exists, instead of just timeshifting BBC 1 and selling that internationally?
It's because the shows on BBC Entertainment are the only ones the BBC can clear international rights for, and they can only clear them some time usually after their UK airing. That isn't going to change, and even attempting to change it for all the UK schedule would cost literally billions of pounds to clear all the music tracks etc etc etc.
So there will never, ever be an option to subscribe to the UK iPlayer internationally - because at a rate equivalent to the UK licence fee it'd lose about £4 billion per year after rights costs were paid.
Economics lesson 101 for a few people here.
Doolar is currently about 60p, I think. Next year who knows. Some viewers might pay $10 for a good show, Americans are rich and stupid, but it's up there with the price of a sports match. BBC describes the price of Internet viewing of England v Ukraine as "at least £4.99", I dunno if the camera view from the best seats or VIP box is more. I think top boxing events cost more, but there you get to see famous big black men beating each other up to please you and maybe one of them is even killed. It's like bullfighting. One-on-one violence sometimes appears in soccer but it's rare. You get what you pay for.
On Thursday 8th October 2009 09:38 GMT, In "Where it is going" Michelle Knight wrote:
"This is starting to show where I believe all TV will go ... pay per view. With content being digitally streamed, I believe it won't be long before we're all paying for the television that we specifically watch.
"That will mean the unpopular programs sink to the bottom without trace, while others rise to the top and sing"
Unpopular does not mean bad. Popular does not mean good. Popularity is a matter of collective opinion.
With predictable income from the license fee, the BBC is able to take risks and produce content where other outlets don't see a profit. This means that the BBC can meet its universal obligation that includes representing minority interests and groups. Some initially minority interests which gain wider appeal.
Also consider serendipity (the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate): the license fee enables this to happen by offering things that you don't yet know you will really like. How else can you know what you are interested in - in the first place? Perhaps rhetorical question to you, Michelle: How do things become popular in the first place?
What internet delivered media will give broadcasters is precise audience viewing figures, so no need for BARB for TV or RAJAR for radio.
On Thursday 8th October 2009 09:38 GMT, In "Where it is going" Michelle Knight also wrote:
"why should I spend an extra quarter of an hour watching a show that I could get through in 45 minutes? Over an evening that could be an hour or so I'd gain ... that could be worth paying for."
Yes, and also even when the Sky subscription has been paid there are still adverts in those channels.
You made the choice to leave the UK, deal with it. You bunch of moaning losers.
Why the f*ck do you presume the BBC is are at your beck and call just because you are an expat.
Also, where in the article does it say $10 for streaming, he was making a comparison with iTunes. Any idiot would presume that he was referring a download service.
The BBC is a shining light in a shower of shit in which we live in this country. So shut the f*ck up moaning and go top up your leathery looking tan.
I also did write, "Obviously, executives would still be able to syphon off profits from one cheap to produce show to another which costs more" so this doesn't actually rule out serendipity. Whether something is good or bad didn't enter the equation really ... popular simply generates cash.
This would also not rule out the continuing development of new shows, either; any broadcaster/program maker would always need new content.
However there remains an argument over why should I pay more for my one or two hours TV viewing an evening than someone who spends all day watching theirs?
By the way, "Yes, and also even when the Sky subscription has been paid there are still adverts in those channels." I don't have sky, either. The adverts just slipping in and out with no barrier really mergs the adverts and the show in a way that I find, personally, distasteful. A number of the terestrial broadcasters are doing it as well now. That and I had the sky dish taken down because I don't like the satelite dish on the house.
Plus given the fact that during the recent re-tune I spotted something akin to BoobTV or ChannelBoob or something in the program list ... I expect satelite will be redundant shortly; a similar level of crap seems to be arriving on terestrial digital :-(
I have to admit that I agree with a number of other posters; by my side sits a newly delivered copy of "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" series 8. A copy of all the seasons of, "Press Gang" are also winging their way to me through the post. I expect it to arrive sometime 2011.
I want something that is a bit more challenging than the latest RTD drivel. In fact I would be hard put to think of any TV episode of any show that is worth that for a single viewing, christ a multi-million dollar movie will retail for that within a year of it's release. This particular BBC exec needs a swift kick in the nazzums.
All of the BBC's output is available on various club based P2P services within 2 hours of broadcast, cost nil, if the BBC offered a licensed service for its foreign followers these outfits would decline leaving only the tardest of freetards.
Wait for BBC Entertainment? If they send the same newly censored shows on international iPlayer as they do on BBCE, what is the point? For instance, Coupling was an excellent series, but now, see Coupling on BBCE and you get the fabulous 'Inferno' episode so cut to ribbons that you never hear the words 'Lesbian Spank Inferno' at all, and the whole speech at the end describing the nature of the feminist film collective competition is just missing. What is the point of paying for this, and so condoning the further nannying of auntie beeb?
If the BBC actually develops a substantial base of people buying Torchwood views at $10/episode, I will admit that it is actually a terrific show and I should be watching it, instead of pretending it and the whole DW revival don't exist like I do now.
OTOH, if the global iPlayer carries uncut Top Gear episodes, at a reasonable price, within a reasonable interval of when they first air in the UK, I'll be the first on my block to sign up.
""Obviously, executives would still be able to syphon off profits from one cheap to produce show to another which costs more" so this doesn't actually rule out serendipity."
Would a commercial programme maker want to cross-subsidise? Isn't it reasonable to expect that they would be obliged to return as much of their profits to their investors and shareholders as possible? Cross-subsidy is fine if everyone in the market does it, but not if others aren't doing it and therefore under-cutting those that do with higher returns on same initial investment.
Not against profits in programme making: public and private outfits are a healthy mix.
Cost is not necessarily proportional to quality either. Popular programmes aren't necessarily cheap nor are less popular/niche programmes expensive.
Perhaps the pay-per-view module will rule as you suggest. After all, when consuming other entertainment such as theatre, cinema or concerts, we pay per show, yet their prior promotion on our favourite media platform (newspaper, radio, magazine, internet...) enables the serendipity.
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