The BBC offers a glimpse of downloadable TV’s controversial future

They drive on the wrong side of the road and suffer the delusion that scones are edible, but the British may know a thing or two about next-gen digital media delivery. The BBC put its iPlayer into limited beta early this week, and we got an invitation to try it out. Unlike the streaming media approach that major networks are using on this side of the pond, the BBC is using a download model. About 400 hours of the most recent programming is made available from a very attractive index that parses the material across the several BBC channels and by genre and day part. Users can access a show up to seven days from its on-air showing and in many cases the download is re-playable for up to 30 days.

 

It beats hands down the cluttered and overwrought players you find at the ABC, NBC and CBS portals. You don’t need to hunt and peek for the show you like and wonder whether the network has decided to put the episode online for free or consign it to iTunes for a fee. From the looks of the various grids at the BBC site, viewers simply can expect to find the last week of TV shows available for download and replay on a Windows PC. The general manager of the BBC likened this milestone of TV delivery to the coming of color TV. Well, we wouldn’t go that far but it is a very impressive model that meets consumer expectations of near-total- access in ways the U.S. networks might aspire to.

 

There are complaints already, among them technical limitations. For instance we couldn’t access the downloads on a Windows Vista machine and for now the downloads are only playable on Windows Media Player. We gather some of these limitations are related to the need for DRM to enforce time limits on the media and perhaps restrict them from being burned or swapped to other platforms too easily. The DRM inconveniences hacked off the reviewer at the Mashable social network news site, for instance. Over 10,000 people have signed a petition in the UK protesting the iPlayer’s reliance on Windows Media Player.

 

While there are other TV providers in the UK that have been ahead of the BBC in online delivery, this aggressive move into the Web space by such a pillar of worldwide TV is a major step. What the BBC has done effectively here is more than technical and more than hyper-distributing. Kludgy and inconvenient as it is, the design of the iPlayer portal makes the Web feel like the DVR complement to the TV network itself. In the U.S., the networks are still running branded promotional portals that just happen to have very select TV content. The iPlayer is closer to a DVR, brimming with selections form every part of the day schedule, and clearly working more as a service than another marketing tool. Let the British complain about the iPlayer all they want. Every TV company here should be fishing for their own invitations to iPlayer and come in prepared to take notes.

See Also

• BBC Home Page

Posted under Uncategorized

The Nielsen and comScore broadband video numbers cut many ways

Despite industry and analyst worries that broadband video was undermining Americans’ taste for traditional TV, Nielsen and the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) found in a new study that online video barely affects TV viewing time. “A Barometer of Broadband Content and Its Uses Report” saw in March 2007 a 16% jump in online video viewing overall in six months. The survey found 81 million people watching broadband video, about a third of whom say it actually increases their TV view time. Nielsen/CTAM claims that the top media brands also dominate online video usage, with ABC.com leading the TV brands and Yahoo Movies topping the movie category.

 

The CTAM report may be spinning the effect of online video viewing a bit too much the TV networks’ way, however. The latest comScore report on streaming video in May shows that Google/YouTube sites absolutely dominate the share of streams served to visitors (21.5%) compared to next-best Fox Interactive Media and its MySpace properties (8.1%). Viacom (2.8%), Time Warner (2.2%) ABC.com (1.2%) and NBCU (0.7%) are distant also-rans in terms of streams served, even if many of the TV-oriented videos come in longer lengths. It seems undeniable that online video does shift viewer loyalty and introduce new brands that ultimately can threaten traditional suppliers. comScore’s numbers underscore an inconvenient truth for cable and networks: social media, namely YouTube and MySpace, are the engines that really drive online video viewing. Unless the traditional companies tap into that current more effectively, they will be also-rans.

 

News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting is best positioned to merge social media and traditional TV with sister company MySpace. Yesterday, Fox and the Producers Guild of America announced a partnership to create “The Storyteller Challenge” on MySpace, which invites aspiring producers to submit 5-7 minute TV pilots on the social network to win cash and a possible development deal with Fox. The MySpace community will watch and respond to the pilots, of course. Big TV has to do more than just pour prime time onto the Web. The upcoming NBCU/Fox portal and CBS strategies seem to involve hyper-distribution, a determination to put their shows and their advertising everywhere on the Web. But even the ad media buyers who want to see more opportunities to advertise against reliable marquee brands want to see more creativity from the networks. Agency buyers tell me that they are looking for more unique online extensions of TV brands, iterations of prime time that make more sense in the interactive environment than just TV on the Web.

 

– Steve Smith

Posted under Michael's Blog