Re: [ox-en] BBC licensing
- From: "Niall Douglas" <s_fsfeurope2 nedprod.com>
- Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 02:15:44 +0100
On 13 Jun 2004 at 14:50, Stefan Merten wrote:
During the WOS I heard that BBC is going to open up its archives to
the commons. Does anyone have a reference to this? Any comments on
this?
Actually, they've been in the process of doing so for quite some
time. Around this time last year they went free to air on satellite
so anyone in Europe with a satellite receiver can pick up unencrypted
all BBC programming. This caused serious noses out of joint with
European media cartels, especially Murdoch's.
For audio-only programming such as radio, the BBC website already
carries a month's worth of most recent programming. You literally can
listen to any BBC programme aired during the last month at any stage.
For further back, certain programmes have individual archives dating
back years some indeed even searchable - however as yet, there is no
single unified archive.
Furthermore, video programming is much further behind. It's not a
problem of intent - rather that of funding the bandwidth that would
be required. All video content would be in a low resolution as so not
to damage the lucrative BBC DVD sales.
As Europeans may or may not know, the damming Hutton report caused
severe upset to the BBC and have threatened its charter renewal which
I think is this year. The UK government is said to have struck a
secret deal with Murdoch where they get his support for the next
general election in return for certain institutional changes. Murdoch
will really want to reign in any moves towards providing free content
- it's the total antithesis to his business model with Sky.
Cheers,
Niall
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