This week saw the continued story of just how the UK broadcasters are going to make the transition from broadcasting to online delivery with the rumor that the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are all working together on a single peer to peer platform code named Project Kangaroo.
The name is almost certainly a reference to the way a P2P stream bounces off one PC and onto the next and so on, when P2P streaming is used in simulcast with broadcast services.
There are going to have to be some hard questions answered before such a system gets off the ground. Both ITV and the BBC have been playing with the Verisign owned Kontiki platform for a number of years now.
And last month the BBC Trust, the organization set up to police the BBC’s activity, decided that the Kontiki based BBC iPlayer can go ahead and launch this autumn, designed to allow BBC made content to be shipped free to any UK license payer.
It appears that the BBC now thinks it has been cleared of further scrutiny, over this issue, but since it gets the benefit a $5 billion license payer subsidy, questions must be asked in any kind of service merger, about whether or not the advertising based services will be being subsidized by the BBC’s deep understanding and installed base of iPlayer. The more P2P clients that are installed, the better such a system works, and if the other channels are reliant on a BBC initiative, then the license payer might want to keep it for the BBC or get some money back or the effort.
Also there is the ticklish issue of revenues streams. The BBC wants to give away content for a week after it has been viewed in broadcast, and thereafter charge for it. Presumably it will immediately charge for such content to the 25 million or so overseas web visitors which the BBC’s legendary web site attract. But for the other free to air broadcasters there will have to be delivery of advertising on the client to master, and that might both go counter to BBC aims and also raise the idea in the minds of the UK government that the BBC could take adverts on the same platform and then its license fee could be cut or lowered.
Currently ITV and 4oD are existing server based services and involve full program simulcasting for ITV, a move that was hailed as ahead of its time and an example to existing US broadcast networks.
Also if all the content is to be pooled and available from one iTunes-alike interface, then will adverts be allowed on it at all?
We have predicted in the past, and still believe, that services like Joost and Babelgum will be up and in strong revenues before the UK broadcasters get anything sensible off the ground. We see no reason to change this view.