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).