Slashdot Mirror
Why the BBC's iPlayer is a Multi-Million Pound Disaster
AnotherDaveB writes "As part of 'Beeb Week', The Register discusses the 'multi-million pound failure' that is the iPlayer. 'When the iPlayer was commissioned in 2003, it was just one baffling part of an ambitious £130m effort to digitise the Corporation's broadcasting and archive infrastructure. It's an often lamented fact that the BBC wiped hundreds of 1960s episodes of its era-defining music show Top of the Pops, including early Beatles performances, and many other popular programmes ... The iPlayer was envisaged as the flagship internet 'delivery platform'. It would dole out this national treasure to us in a controlled manner, it was promised, and fire a revolution in how Big TV works online. For better or worse it's finally set to be delivered with accompanying marketing blitz this Christmas - more than four years after it was first announced.'"
"It's an often lamented fact that the BBC wiped hundreds of 1960s episodes of its era-defining music show Top of the Pops, including early Beatles performances, and many other popular programmes."
At a time when video tape was very expensive and it made sense to re-use the tape rather than loading a huge amount onto the cost of each apparently ephemeral program. This "lamented fact" seems to be utterly irrelevent to the main "story" that the Register is reporting, but it does add a nice up front negative spin to everything.
The article lambasts the BBC for spending £4.5m on the iPlayer. While it seems a lot, it should be viewed in the context of other media distribution systems: it will be accessible to 10 million homes with broadband in the UK. Given the popularity of BBC content, I'd expect at least 50% to use it at least weekly. Which would work out to an initial cost per home of £1, or about 35p per user, which seems more reasonable. Remember that YouTube sold for $1.65 billion, and it owns no content.
You are missing the point here. The BBC is not a company. The BBC has a guaranteed source of income - the license fee. This is not affected if it puts stuff online, goes and hides in the corner with regards to the internet, or whatever it decides to do outside of certain parameters. The BBC Mandate is here. If the BBC decided to sit in the corner and ignore the internet, it could.
What I would be much more pissed off about is the fact that all British people watching television pay directly to the BBC, by law, and some (ie those who run Linux, Macs etc) are excluded from some services because of this DRM. People have _already_ paid for the content with their license fees (nearly $300 a year), that is the problem. The BBC is giving preferential treatment to those who have bought a particular American company's operating system, despite those who fund it all paying the same.
As you know, all media in the world and much shopping right now are funded on the BBC model. This model is that you shall be legally obliged to subscribe to one service, in order to be allowed to buy other competing services. In the UK, if you want to watch any TV you are obliged by law to subscribe to the BBC, or you will go to jail without passing GO.
This is the standard practice in many areas of life, doubtless in imitation of this great British innovation.
It is the norm in the US, I hear, for you to be obliged to pay for the New York Times, whether you read it or not, because that is a condition for being able to read Newsweek or the LA Times. And quite right too. One can only legally read novels in Australia if one can prove paid ownership of the complete works of John Barth. This is just as well, since otherwise no-one would buy them. Not to mention the general practice of supermarket management. If you have not visited Belgium recently, you may not be aware that if you are caught in a supermarket without your Delhaize loyalty card you will simply be thrown in jail. I could go on. In France, for example, a man can drive whatever car he pleases, as long as he has a Peugeot in his drive. Not his garage, his drive. And not financed - owned outright.
So I fully realize that what I am going to propose is a wild revolutionary and radical idea, and fellow slashdotters, I am delighted for you my dear friends to be the first ones to hear it suggested. I do not think anything like this has ever been suggested before on the subject, and while I am aware of the revolutionary implications for the way in which we buy goods in general, we must start small, and start carefully, where the need is most obvious, and that is why I confine the present suggestion to the way we fund the BBC.
What we need to do is very simple. We need to make this fee voluntary. We need to stop making everyone subscribe to the BBC, and instead let them subscribe if they want to watch it, and not if they do not.
Now before everyone bursts into howls of anger, or tells me I have taken leave of my senses, which I agree is quite a natural reaction to a proposal to treat the BBC so differently from all other goods and services in the Western World, let me point out that it might solve a couple of the problems the iPlayer reveals.
The BBC would no longer be drowning in a flood of money, and it would have some slight incentive to offer services which its voluntary subscribers wanted. It might even focus its efforts on giving them what they want, instead of what it chooses to give those who have been forced to pay, and now will take whatever they are given.
Yes, it is shocking and radical, and it could lead to a shakeup of the whole of Western Society. But, we are only talking about one broadcaster in one small country. I think fellow slashdotters you may agree when you think about it, that this is an experiment worth trying.