Project Canvas news roundup - July
After a quiet few weeks in June (except of course for a key approval from the BBC Trust), July has seen interesting developments on the Project Canvas front:
- Five pulls out as a venture partner (July 9) - the cash-strapped broadcaster said it couldn’t commit the necessary cash until it has completed a strategic review to see what role Canvas might play in its future.
- Orange was rumoured to be in talks to join the venture - this first came up in mid July, but nothing has been confirmed as yet.
- Kip Meek - ex-Ofcom as well as ex-Phorm director and ex-Ingenious Media - rumoured to be appointed Chairman, and then confirmed (23 July). Meek will be responsible for finding a CEO for the venture.
- Five set to return to Project Canvas - after the broadcaster was bought by Richard Desmond, who has a desire for the broadcaster to continue to be involved as a venture partner. Desmond bought Five on 23 July.
(Remember there’s a full timeline page over on the unofficial Project Canvas wiki.)
Graphing Canvas key news over time
We mentioned on Twitter late on Friday that it seems Five leaving Project Canvas was getting a lot of notice, judging by the number of tweets about it.
So we thought we’d look back and see just how popular that news has been, compared to other phases in Canvas’ life. The graph below doesn’t show anywhere near the whole life of Canvas (we might revisit later on and add more historical data), but it does show the ebb & flow of key Project Canvas news announcements between April 1 and yesterday (July 10).
There’s no doubt that the Five news tweets will keep going over the weekend & Monday, so we’ll try to remember to update the graph below mid next week…
It’s a wide image, so click the preview below to open up the full size.
New news: Five pulls out of Project Canvas
Citing a pending review of its digital strategy, and that it was too hard to convince owner RTL of its value. Broadcaster Five is now no longer of the partners of the Project, who now number 6.
Ouch.
From this FT article:
“We are very disappointed but I don’t think anyone feels the fundamental strategic rationale [for Canvas] has been diminished,” said Richard Halton, programme director at Project Canvas. “We don’t think this changes the likely scale or impact of the platform.”
Canvas news roundup - May 31
So since the news last week that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) won’t investigate Project Canvas as a merger, there’s been some more information both about Project Canvas:
- Tim Bradshaw (his twitter) at the FT has it that a final brand name being considered from the shortlist for the initiative is ‘YouView’. FT article here. One of the Intellectual Property Office marks referred to in the article is here at the IPO site.
- The same article has the project partners conceding that a likely revised launch date to consumers is spring 2011, rather than end of 2010 as originally hoped for, given the delays caused by regulatory approval.
- One part of the advertising duties for Project Canvas has been awarded, to agency Saint@RKCR/Y&R. The agency will look after the digital advertising for the project (while it wasn’t explicitly mentioned, chances are high that this includes the consumer-facing website too). The rest of the advertising - which presumably means the offline advertising and the strategic work - is still out to pitch. Campaign Live article.
- Two days after the OFT’s decision, chairman of TalkTalk - one of the Canvas partners - Charles Dunstone had a piece in the Guardian defending the initiative. In it he admits there have been differences over the strategic direction of the project at times.
- Post the OFT approval for Canvas, Sky’s COO Mike Darcey has come out and said he believes BBC & ITV knew how to work the regulator, based on their experience with the blocked Project Kangaroo. Telegraph article.
- Sky’s director of on-demand Griff Parry has repeated that Sky are not altogether ruling out appearing on Project Canvasas as a platform (and re-iterated that it is the BBC’s involvement that Sky objects to). TechRadar article.
- Channel Five appointed Capablue to handle Five’s involvement in Canvas, including strategy and technical requirements. NMA article.
OFT clears Project Canvs
Breaking: The Office of Fair Trading has reportedly said Project Canvas does not qualify as a merger.
This leaves the initiative freer to progress (although it still needs final approval from the BBC Trust for the BBC’s continued involvement) having by-passed one big potential regulatory hurdle.
More as the OFT’s findings are published on their site.
Update: 15.47 - OFT’s media release is here. The key reason for their decision: none of the partners are contributing an existing business to the venture.
Marketing Project Canvas - Part 1
Towards the end of 2009, when more details emerged around Project Canvas, one of the most-reported aspects was the plan to spend £48.4m over the first four years on marketing the service. When viewed as a proportion of the total venture cost it seems excessive - after all the total projected cost is £115m over the same first four years.
Below however are some figures that provide a little context to the £50m figure - all drawn from some aspect of the consumer electronics and broadcasting areas that Project Canvas will play in. While the comparisons are not exactly like-for-like (for example the Canvas marketing spend will no doubt be front-weighted rather than split evenly over 4 years, and broadcasters’ spend will no doubt increase over the 2009 figures shown) it gives us a rough idea of how the c. £50m for Canvas is set to massively outspend other similar initiatives such as FreeSat & Freeview and even broadcasters, and pale in comparison to only some of the broadcasters & pay-tv efforts.
Two Project Canvas news items - 30 March
Two bits of news from last couple of days (both come from the official Canvas site , which is finally starting to break Canvas news itself rather than update its own news page behind everyone else.)
- 26 March: Two key personnel appointments on Project Canvas were announced: Anthony Rose was named Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Tim Hunt was named Director of Marketing. Anthony has come from the BBC where as Future Media Controller, Vision and Online Media Group his main responsibility was iPlayer, and Tim joins from heading up marketing at Freeview. (PaidContentUK also has the email from BBC’s Erik Huggers where amongst many other things related to the BBC F&MT he mentions Anthony will start May 1 at Canvas, and continue to work for the BBC for 1 day per week for 3 months.)
- 25 March: A deadline of April 23 was set for any more potential venture partners to raise their hand in interest. Release here. In that release it’s mentioned that the Project Canvas would consider one more potential partner, which would bring the total to 8.
And one bit of gossip & speculation: As Patrick Goss, editor of TechRadar, points out in a tweet here, if Talk Talk is in fact bought by Sky as this FT article mentions in passing as a possibility, then Sky will in fact be involved as one of the venture partners.
RSS feed