The BBC’s iPlayer goes from strength to strength hitting 21 million requests in April. During the same month on the other side of the Atlantic Venturebeat reports Hulu is thriving with 63 million videos served which led me to wonder whether the wag at Google who dubbed the service Clown Co is still laughing. YouTube is as popular as ever but apparently struggling to turn all those eyeballs into cash whilst coming under increasing pressure from content owners who want a slice of the pie.
In the UK, BSkyB Chairman James Murdoch has been complaining that the BBC’s access to its own content and free money in the shape of the license fee represents unfair competition for commercial broadcasters. Speaking as a consumer I like the streamed service and as TV is increasingly delivered over the web, demanding the BBC be prevented from streaming its content online is effectively asking it to be shut down.
I think the BBC’s position is justifiable so long as it behaves differently from commercial broadcasters and makes its content freely available to others. So far it appears to have done so, being one of the first major media conglomerates to enter a non-exclusive deal with YouTube. To me this approach encourages competition rather than stifling it. So long as the BBC continues with this open approach then good luck to them, maybe someone over there should get in touch with the Myka people.
All content owners are under considerable pressure from the dominant distribution system at the moment: piracy. There needs to be an answer as no company which makes a living from selling music and video to consumers and advertisers can move from an offline world which was 95% legitimate consumption against 5% piracy to an online world where the reverse is true.
For too long there has been a conflict between media and technology companies. Neither group has been completely in the right, the former having been too conservative in the face of the threat from piracy and the latter expecting swathes of content to be given up with little prospect of payment. Fortunately things are moving in the right direction, content owners are warming to new ideas and startups like ours are showing a clear way of monetising the traffic.
Intricate business!
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