Every time the BBC starts an initiative that means that it will take over some aspect of the internet ‘ Project Canvas, a set top for viewing internet TV on a real TV; Project Kangaroo for VoD of TV material to PCs, and of course the iPlayer – it usually ends up having to give the technology away and is told to stop playing with the internet. This is because it is funded by direct consumer payments of around $5 billion a year.
But that doesn’t meant that the assets and technology that it has lined up don’t work or that the technology isn’t cool. Usually it is.
What is usually so unfair about these efforts is the fact that the BBC will tell anyone that asks that the effort of getting permission to view even one program online is so huge, in terms of producer, director and actor rights, that it is sorry but no you can’t have access to Doctor Who or ‘Fawlty Towers’ unless you pay for the rights process. It then launches Doctor Who and Fawlty Towers on its own service and extends its public broadcasting role into an internet monopoly.
So with the launch of Seesaw this week from Arqiva, it is a relief to know that all of the streaming server technology as well as all the programming permission rights, have remained in place, since Arqiva bought out the assets of Project Kangaroo for just £8 million last Summer after the BBC was forced to move out of the project.
It has gone from beta test with some 20,000 people around the country, to live this week, and will give access to what it claims are 3,000 hours of content. The content is all full length pieces, some are catch up TV from the previous weeks, some is made up of entire prior years popular TV series, such as the legendary Green Wing. It is all funded by pre-roll advertising, which at present mostly comes from the three content suppliers, but we are told that major brands like Ikea, Diageo and Kraft will shortly be supporting it. In feels like a particularly good TV channel and the streaming is the same quality, if not slightly better than the BBC iPlayer (the catch up service for its own programming used by millions in the UK).
What remains disturbing is that this is really just content from the BBC, BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and Channel Five (not even ITV which is still thinking about it and which was supposed to be in the original Kangaroo). No other content owners have had any chance to use the service as yet. However Seesaw says that it will introduce paid for content shortly so that it has another stream of revenue with the addition of around 2,000 further hours of paid programming.
ITV is not currently pursuing the service simply because it is undergoing a change of management and the new bosses will want to make the decision, but also because ITV is known to be being courted by Hulu, a similar US operation that wants to launch in the UK. Hulu is owned by NBC, Disney and Fox in the US, and has web viewing figures roughly ten times that of the BBC iPlayer, so you can understand ITV’s interest.
SeeSaw reckons that once Project Canvas gets off the floor it will be on it (probably after the BBC is told to get out of the business of specifying consumer electronics platforms). Then there will be set top boxes to take internet content directly to the TV set. Canvas is being pushed by the BBC, ITV, C4, Five, BT and ISP Talk Talk.