BBC gets TV ondemand service OK
01 May 2007
BBC shows such as Doctor Who and EastEnders are to be made available on-demand after the BBC’s iPlayer service was given the green light. The service - which will launch later this year - allows viewers to watch programmes online for seven days after their first TV broadcast. Episodes can also be downloaded and stored for up to 30 days.
The BBC Trust gave the iPlayer the go-ahead after consultations with members of the public. About 10,500 individuals and organisations responded to the public value test after the trust gave its provisional approval in January. As a result, the trust amended two conditions it had earlier imposed on the BBC’s plans.
It had earlier called on the corporation to scale back plans to let downloaded “catch-up” episodes remain on users’ hard drives beyond seven days. Now all episodes of some series will be made available until a week after transmission of the final instalment. But this will only apply to 15% of all content offered by the service. And the storage window for TV catch-up over the internet has been set at 30 days from the day of download.
BBC director general Mark Thompson said he was “delighted” with the decision. But he took issue with a decision that classical music downloads could not feature in the service.
“Our research suggests that classical music audiences would wish to download classical music programmes from the BBC and to listen to them on their terms, free at the point of use,” he said.
The iPlayer computer application will only be initially available to those with Windows PCs in the UK. But the trust has asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer computer application can run on different systems - such as Apple Macs - within “a reasonable time frame”.
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(Source - www.bbc.co.uk)
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