Project Canvas gets approval from the BBC Trust
It was telegraphed yesterday on newspaper site after newspaper site , but this morning the BBC Trust confirmed that it has given its provisional approval to Project Canvas.
The Trust has attached some conditions to its approval of the venture. The below are copied directly from the BBC Trust press release available here:
Main conditions of provisional approval
The Trust proposes to place a number of conditions on the BBC’s participation in the joint venture. Many of these are designed to secure elements of the proposal where we saw particular public value as well as lessen negative market impact where possible. These conditions cover:
- Industry engagement – the core technical specification must be published well in advance of launch to allow all manufacturers to adapt to the Canvas standard. The BBC must report to the Trust within twelve months of final approval or within three months of launch, whichever is the sooner, and at regular intervals on its progress in achieving industry consensus around technical standards.
- Access to the platform for content providers – must be on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, with minimal technical requirements and content standards and access charges calculated on a cost recovery basis.
- Access for ISPs - any quality standards for ISPs should again be set and applied on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis. This is designed to keep barriers to entry for ISPs to a minimum and avoid the proposal being linked to any one provider or service.
- Syndication – a Trust review, twelve months after launch, to assess what, if any, effects Canvas has on the partners’ incentives to syndicate their content to other platforms.
Other key conditions of the BBC’s involvement are designed to ensure public value:
- Free-to-air – it must always to be possible to access the Canvas platform without a subscription.
- Accessibility and usability – one year after launch, the BBC must report to the Trust on whether the proposed accessibility features, such as audio description, have been incorporated. At that point the Trust will also review signposting of content and parental controls, which we have asked Canvas to provide where possible.
- Cost – the BBC must return for further Trust approval should costs incurred by the Corporation exceed (or be expected to exceed) the Executive’s projections by more than 20 per cent in any one year.
Finally, there are some conditions to ensure compliance with the law:
- An independent audit must be carried out of relevant BBC research and development spending in order to verify that pre-launch Canvas-related BBC expenditure costs have been or will be shared equally between the partners.
- Where the BBC has already or proposes to frontload project spending by making initial commercial loans to the other Canvas partners, loans should also be available to the other or any new partners of the same creditworthiness on commercial terms.
- BBC involvement in Canvas must be kept operationally separate from its involvement in Freesat and Freeview.
Finally, a public consultation period on the provisional decision commences today, and closes on 2 February (after which time the Trust will make their final ruling concering the BBC’s involvement, in the spring).
A provisional approval from the BBC Trust?
We were hoping there’d be some news from the BBC Trust on Friday about their decision regarding Project Canvas. The Trust had a regular, scheduled meeting on Thursday, and in the past updates on the initiative have also tended to be right at the end of the week.
Friday came and went with no news, however this morning both the FT and The Guardian are reporting from “sources” that the BBC Trust is about to / has already approved Project Canvas.
The FT article is here, and says the project has gotten Trust approval, with some minor conditions.
The Guardian article is here, and says the project is being approved now, with some significant conditions.
Not surprisingly, the official Canvas site and twitter feed are staying quiet for now.
===========
A reminder too about our Twitter feed - @ProjectCanvasUK - where we’ll often post links/articles link the ones above quicker than a blog post here.
===========
Update - 13.00: PaidContent UK says the BBC Trust will publish their provisional conclusions on their site at 10am Tuesday (22nd).
Channel 4 & Talk Talk both join Project Canvas
11. 15am: This just in: Channel Four and Talk Talk have are both joining Project Canvas as partners - brining the total number to 6.
Right at the moment, Project Canvas.info, the official Canvas site, is down (the error msg says “projectcanvas.info is being upgraded”), but it looks like the news/announcement page should be here when the site is back up.
There is also a Broadband TV News article here, and a Media Week article here.
One huge benefit to securing two new partners is that the cost of involvement will fall from £24m for each partner, for the first 4 years, down to £16m.
Project Canvas news roundup - 14 Dec
All things Project Canvas from the last few weeks:
- 14 Dec: The BBC continues its charm offensive with an article about Project Canvas with future media and technology controller Erik Huggers in The Indpendent here.
- 3 Dec: The Project Canvas partners have launched a dedicated site for the initiative: ProjectCanvas.info . The BBC Internet Blog post here (from Richard Halton, project director). There is also a Twitter account - @canvasinfo (albeit a bit light on currently).
- 2 Dec: Freesat is looking at using Project Canvas standards to deliver progressive HD on-demand downloads . TechRadar article here.
- 25 Nov: Erik Huggers, at The Media Festival, has warned that Canvas boxes might not go on sale until 2011 (instead of the original target of 2010) if approval from the BBC Trust does not come by the end of this year. The Telegraph article here.
- 25 Nov: A provisional conclusion on Project Canvas is still hope to be delivered before this year is out, the BBC Trust has told Paid Content UK. Blog post here.
- 24 Nov: Sky, in its third submission to the BBC Trust, again criticised Project Canvas: specifically the BBC’s involvement; and that the relaxed condition of becoming a partner in the project - no longer is it only PSBs allowed - still does not practically allow any organisation to join up because of the high cost of partnership. Guardian article here. Sky’s submission document here (PDF - 85kb).
- 13 Nov: Sky & Virgin agree there is no need for Project Canvas - at the C21 Media conference. PaidContentUK post here.
- 11 Nov: Ben Bradshaw, culutre secretary, has been urged by the House of Lords communication committee to “strong arm” the Competition Commission into approving Project Canvas (so it does not suffer the same fate as Kangaroo) . Broadcast article here. Digital Spy article here.
- 10 Nov: Richard Waterworth has been promoted to the new ITV position of platform marketing, covering Project Canvas as well as itv.com. Marketing Week article here.
New Project Canvas costs see an increase
C21 Media and Guardian.co.uk both have articles covering new information on Project Canvas reportedly released by the BBC Executive today. C21 Media article is here. The Guardian article is here. We’ll update the post when the full info is released on the BBC Trust or BBC sites, but below are some of the points from the two reports:
- The total project cost, for the first four years, has been revised up to £115.6m.
- This would put the cost for each of the current 4 partners at £24.7mill, after a projected £17mill in cost recovery
- However the project is going to be opened up to 6 partners in total, which would bring the cost per each partner around the original forecast cost £16mill.
- These two new project partners could be non-public service broadcasters, a change to the BBC’s original plan for the partners to only be PSBs. (There is no change to the actual participation - from hardware producers to content providers - being open to all-comers.)
Update (14:30): The statement and all the relevant documents can be found here on the BBC Trust site. The Trust is soliciting feedback on the revised proposed structure and cost until 18 November.
Canvas news roundup - 26 Oct
Directly related to Canvas:
- Oct 12: Sky once again publicly released its submission to the BBC Trust - this time it was their response to the second consultation on Canvas. Unsurprisingly Sky’s views aren’t a ringing endorsement - or any endorsement - of the Project. Our blog post here has the relevant links including the full Sky submission, and a response from the BBC on behalf of all the Project Canvas partners.
- Oct 8: It was announced (at Mipcom) that Canvas is trying to work with HbbTV (the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV initiative - a ‘European Canvas’ of sorts, at least in result if not structure) IPTV News article here.
- Sep 24: The Digital TV Group (DTG) had its first open meeting about Project Canvas. We’ve only been able to find one wrap-up of the day, from Informitv here, and it is less than glowing. Definitely worth a read.
About VOD & IPTV more generally:
- Oct 21: It’s increasingly looking like VOD poster-child Hulu will introduce paid access of some form in 2010. Most likely is it will be for some form of premium access, with the bulk of the site and recent shows remaining ad supported. B&C article here.
- Oct 20: The BBC Trust has rejected the proposal from BBC management to create Open iPlayer. The reason given? The mix of public and commercial aspects of its current state made it too complex to evaluate. This was the initiative that was originally know as Project Marquee, and concerned a single gateway site for public service broadcasters’ VoD efforts. The actual full proposal was never made public due to cited commercial confidentiality reasons. First found via article here at BroadcastNow. Plenty of coverage at Google News.
- Oct 15: Channel 4 & YouTube announced a deal that will see all of their original shows put up YouTube in their entirety, supported by ads. The deal sees Channel 4 able to sell YouTube inventory beyond just their own shows too, and the rumour is that C4 keep the majority of sales revenue. First found via TechCrunch UK. Plenty of coverage at Google News.
Don’t forget too - a lot of the above news we mention via Twitter as and when it’s happening - @ProjectCanvasUK .
Sky criticises the BBC for Canvas, again
Still to grok this properly, but for those coming here via search in particular:
- The FT this morning ran an article covering Sky’s criticisms of the BBC’s involvement in Project Canvas. The article is here. It’s based on Sky’s submission to the second and latest BBC Trust consultation on Canvas. (Sky incidentally did the same thing with their response to the initial consultation - released it to the media & then published on their own site. Their full response hasn’t been published yet, but it will likely be here on their news page when it is.)
- Richard Halton, project director of Canvas, has just published a response here on the BBC Internet blog, on behalf of all the Canvas partners (so, BBC, ITV, BT, FIVE).
Update - 18.29: Here is Sky’s full submission to the BBC Trust’s second consultation - PDF file here.
DTG’s Project Canvas meeting - tomorrow
Update: Just so it doesn’t escape anyone’s attention - especially those coming from Google searches - this meeting took place on 24 Sep, and is no longer upcoming “tomorrow”.
As part of the BBC’s extended proposals to the Trust, integration with the industry body DTG (Digital TV Group) was raised as a key way to ensure the Canvas standards would be practical & realistic to adopt from the perspective of non-BBC stakeholders.
The DTG is holding a meeting tomorrow (23 Sep), open to all industry bods, to kick off all things Canvas. Unfortunately at this stage all the available places are filled, but for those interested, below is the agenda for the day care of the DTG:
“The DTG is to hold a meeting to kick-off the profiling and/or development of a common set of standards for hybrid broadcast / IP delivered television in the UK for incorporation into D-Book 7.”
Agenda:
- Introduction and Project Status
- Canvas Proposition, Trade Mark and Relationship with Freeview and Freesat
- Agreed Principles of Engagement with the DTG
- Approach to Standards Adoption and Standardisation
- User Experience
- DTG Project Scope and Structure
- Key Issue Resolution: CA, DRM, EPG
- Test and Conformance
- Project Plan, Key Dependencies and Milestones”
If you’re going along tomorrow, drop us an email (ProjectCanvasUK@gmail.com) during or afterwards to let us know what was covered.
RSS feed