Auntie hires API firm to manage new online BBC Store API company Apigee has been brought in to pull together all the suppliers of BBC Worldwide’s "direct-to-consumer retail platform". The software will be used as a traffic manager. In the world of inclined playing fields, little beats your TV licence fee going towards setting up an online store to compete with online stores that …
"In the world of inclined playing fields, little beats your TV licence fee going towards setting up an online store to compete with online stores that are not governmentally subsidised"
BBC Worldwide is a commercial organisation that is not supported by the licence fee. In fact it subsidises it.
-A.
BBC Worldwide is a wholly owed subsidiary of the BBC. Its entire purpose is to sell BBC and other British TV programming abroad. In the last financial year, it generated headline profits of £157.4m and headline sales of £1,042.3m and returned £173.8m to the BBC. I'm wondering how it managed to generate such poor profits on sales of TV shows from the BBC, unless it pays the BBC (and ITV comnpanies maybe) large amounts of IP fees for those TV shows.
In 2013-14, BBC income from license fees was £3.7 billion, with a total income of £5 billion. I assume some of the extra £1.3 billion came from IP fees from BBC Worldwide?
So, BBC Worldwide is a corporate front to let the BBC get more money (and why not) and it mostly relies on the license fee to get a product to sell.
I believe it's BBC America that actually cuts it up and inserts ads.
Either way, I for one would also welcome a way to watch it just as it appeared in the UK. Maybe even, dare I hope, just after it airs, instead of waiting for some arbitrary period for the news to get stale?
For £150.00 per year (under Cdn$300 even now), and you give me full on-line access to all BBC TV programming in HD (as well as all BBC radio too, of course), where do I sign up? Live and Play It Again, just as if I lived down the street and had an aerial. Including Top Gear and everything. None of this 'Not Available in Your Area" crap. I'm paying, let me in.
Seriously. Please. Make it so.
And don't forget all the pointless talent shows that you could ever wish for, cookery programmes galore and lots of cheap programmes encouraging you to sell your heirlooms at knock down prices to some conman in a funny hat and bow tie.
And next to no sport neither.
If only it was that easy.
Good old licence agreements for different territories means you have no chance. Better to try and get CBC or Corus etc to buy the content from Worldwide, and employ the iPlayer people (company that made it not BBC staff that claim to) to make a good platform to watch it on.
Wait, you want to stream video over tor?
You know how tor works right? Seems like a bit of a dick move wanting to use so much bandwith (other peoples bandwidth) just to watch TV.
Have a read of the TOR faq page and find out why.
Spoiler, if everyone did it the whole thing would be shit for every one.
Does anyone know if they're using Web Service Modelling Ontology for this?
I quick glance suggests that might be compatible with apigee's interests. Certainly solving your problems with linked data \ ontologies is an area in which the BBC are very much leading the way and providing some useful examples for the rest of us. It would be good to see a British corporation investing in this area.
There's a lot more to API management than just connecting multiple consumers to multiple providers (although this is an important aspect) - just to name a few other reasons:
- Throttling (so APIs do not get abused),
- Developer portal goodies: online documentation, interactive API consoles, forums, social features, feedback forms, rating buttons, etc,
- Subscriber management (let new ones sign-up, approve them, block rogue subscribers and apps, etc.)
- API lifecycle management,
- Statistics and analytics.
Disclosure: I work for WSO2 API Cloud: http://cloud.wso2.com - so is partial to that space. :)
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