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.)
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.”
Related news roundup - June 6
Link-worthy news from the past week from the world of TV, VoD, IPTV:
- Sky announced it’s Sky+ Anytime capabilities - true pull VoD over the internet - will be switched on in Q4, with staff trials currently underway. Telegraph article.
- A deal between Sky & Virgin Media was announced, in which Sky will buy the latter’s TV channels including Virgin 1 (to be re-branded or closed), Living, Bravo & Challenge. Carriage of Sky 1 and Sky Arts on Virgin were also part of the deal, as was some on demand content from Sky. Broadband TV News article here.
- PaidContent UK has it that YouTube is considering linking out to the VoD sites of broadcasters, in a similar way to the feature BBC iPlayer announced last week. The article notes it’s all very early days though.
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.
Related news roundup - 09 May
A few noteworthy news items from the world of VoD and IPTV from the last couple of weeks:
- 08 May - YouTube is said to be looking to offer content owners a mechanism whereby they can charge for access to their videos in a self-service manner (CNET article). Understandably it will only initially be available to those who are already content partners.
- 04-06 May - Some of the latest stats around VoD consumption: Virgin Media saw 200 million VoD views across 2.1 mill homes (TechRadar); time-shifted TV consumption is at 6.9% of all Tv viewing (& 13.7% in households with PVRs) says TV marketing body Thinkbox (MediaWeek); Five served 51mill total VoD viewers online in 2009, with 1.3mill long-form videos per month (PaidContent UK); ITV served an avg 16.4 million views per month to 8.7 million unique viewers per month over Q1 (ITV release).
- Not directly related to VoD yet, but Sky announced record growth in its HD boxes - adding almost half a million of them in Q1 (Broadband TV News). This is important because the Sky+ HD box has the ethernet connection that will allow for Sky’s true-pull VoD offering to be launched to the entire HD install base later this year.
- 04 May - Robert at PaidContent UK has a post showing some of the BBC iPlayer’s socialised aspects out in the wild (on Twitter). ‘Version 3′ of iPlayer has long been touted by Huggers & Rose as the social version, but as far as we are aware, there’s not been any publicly discussed launch/roll-out date.
- 27 April - Hulu has reportedly ‘abandoned’ plans to launch in the UK. Emma Barnett at the Telegraph has this article. We say reportedly however because - like all the past Telegraph pieces about how close a Hulu dea/launch was claimed to be, there is still no official statement from any party including Hulu - just the “sources close to…”. For the record, the reasons for Hulu’s withdrawal are the oft-repeated ones: ITV is not syndicating it’s VoD content, and C4 and Five want to sell ad inventory around their content in any syndication deals they’re striking.
- Bill Scott at Easel.tv has a piece on what a good app store could mean for TV.
Related news roundup - Mar-Apr
It’s been a while since we’ve had a roundup of news from the worlds of IPTV & VoD that is related in some way to Project Canvas and its surrounds. Here are some things worth knowing:
- 12 April: Another social TV startup has been announced. Starling was launched at MIPTV in Cannes. Contagious has some details about the offering which is aiming to provide more structure than the current Twitter environment, but not as high entry costs as a more traditional walled garden of programmed content.
- 26 March: The regulatory environment around VoD continues to be added to: VoD will be co-regulated by Ofcom and the Association for TV on Demand (ATVOD). The two bodies have come out and said 150 VoD services must between them pay the £375,000 needed to finance the regulation. PaidContent:UK article.
- 26 March: FIVE’s owner RTL has said that potential commercial tie-ups with Channel 4 are being discussed again, seeing that the latter is to have a new chief exec in the form of David Abraham. The Guardian article.
- 18 March: ITV repeats its stance that it has no interest in syndicating its content to YouTube (like competitor broadcasters Channel 4 and FIVE have been doing for a while now). The Guardian article. There is also still no firm news about a ITV - Hulu deal of any sort for the UK market.
- 14 April: As we mentioned in yesterday’s blog post about pragmatic evidence against Canvas, Sky announced a deal with the biggest UK set top box manufacturer that will see Sky Player come to Humax boxes. The Guardian article.
Pushes to show Canvas is redundant
Potential competitors continue to give food for thought to the BBC Trust and its final Project Canvas ruling.
From its first submission to the Trust’s public consultations Sky’s view has always been that there is no need for a publicly-funded IPTV standards project (although now of course the BBC is just one of seven contributors overall - but that has not lessened Sky’s protests), and that the market if left alone will develop its own products, and de facto standards. What is significant however is that in the last few weeks Sky has been busy turning the theory into hard evidence - which they’ll no doubt be able to wave in the BBC Trust’s face - and striking deals to bring video on demand to the TV screen through third party TV & set top box (STB) manufacturers. Deals struck so far include 3View, Cello, and one last week with Humax, the UK’s biggest Freeview STB provider. (Humax are also one of Project Canvas’s ’supporters’.)
Yesterday, a ‘David’ added their voice to Sky’s ‘Goliath’ protests. 3View is the maker of a STB that offers HD & SD Freeview channels as well as on demand content such as BBC iPlayer and, yes, Sky Player (the box will be available from the end of May, and will retail for £299 - it is not yet clear how the additional pricing for Sky Player will work). MD John Donovan has said a few interesting things to Digital Spy including the soundbite “”We do not understand what Canvas’s remit will be and we do not subscribe to the belief that Canvas will provide something the commercial market can’t. We have proved that we can do it.”, and his belief that Canvas will likely be killed by the OFT/Competition Commission in the same way that Kangaroo was (as well as the vague possibility of legal action). It is a convincing story: small privately owned technology company already offering a product that consumers want, but one that will be duplicated - and made redundant ultimately because of Canvas’ size - come any eventual launch of Canvas STBs. Enough of a story for the BBC Trust to listen, and consider.
Update - 18 May - I’ve expanded on these thoughts somewhat over in this blog post here.
Project Canvas news update - 24 March
Quite a few noteworthy items from the last few days around Project Canvas:
- 22 March - The project announced that Arqiva has joined as the seventh partner to the venture. (Arqiva is the communications infrastructure company; it has a share in Freeview, and it also launched SeeSaw, the VoD project that came out of the defunct Project Kangaroo). News release here (PDF). Arqiva have made no secret of their desire to bring SeeSaw to the TV.
- 22 March - At the same time, it was announced that Project Canvas made a submission (on its own initiative) to OFT (the Office of Fair Trading). The goal is to satisfy OFT that the venture is not any form of merger. Post on the official Canvas site here. The submission has triggered a consultation. There is a page here on the OFT site, but it is not clear how to comment, or who is eligible to comment. Comments close on April 7.
- It was mentioned in an article (which we can’t relocate!) that the BBC Trust’s final ruling on the BBC involvement would be delayed from the spring target - apparently tied to the OFT consultation - but we can’t find any official mention of this. (Do you know more? Drop us an email - ProjectCanvasUK@gmail.com) (Update - C21Media & TechRadar are 2 sites that mention the delayed final ruling.)
- 23 March - From the IPTV World Forum, Julian Clover (from Broadband TV News) tweeted this: “Halton: Canvas in ‘private discussions’ with HbbTV to ‘take two programmes into alignment’ ”
- 18 March - BSkyB made public its full submission to the BBC Trust’s final consultation on Canvas. It is available here as a PDF. PaidContent:UK has their usual good summary.
- 17 March - BSkyB COO Mike Darcy argues in The Guardian Sky’s main objections again (that the market will develop standards, shephered by the industry body DTG (Digital TV Group), & that the BBC should not be using license fee money) and also says that BT could be one of the biggest (unfair) beneficiaries of the BBC money, with Canvas boosting it’s ailing BT Vision product.
- 23 March - Presumably in response to Darcy’s piece, perennial supporter Michael Cornish, CEO of VoD provider Blinkbox, has a piece in the Guardian pushing the benefit to end consumers of an open standard. (On this note, the PR guys must be very happy - check out all the tweets that mention the whole takeaway of “great for consumers” alongside the article link.)
Project Canvas news roundup - 11 March
- 11 Mar - It was mentioned in our tweet-round-up of last week’s DTG (Digital TV Group) Summit, but Will at Broadcast has an article about the tensions between Canvas and the DTG.
- 4 Mar - Virgin Media has again objected to Project Canvas, as well the BBC Trust’s actions. From this Telegraph article:
- “Mr Berkett objects to proposals to force all broadcasters to use a single ‘Project Canvas’ brand controlled by the BBC and its partners, which he claims will penalise commercial rivals.
“The BBC Trust has stubbornly ignored all requests to address our concerns by imposing safeguards to prevent the BBC emerging as de facto gatekeeper of the digital world.” he will say at the Cable Congress conference in Brussels. “This is a blatant demonstration that the Trust is incapable of regulating the BBC’s activities in an objective way.” - 2 Mar - The Project Canvas site has published a “your questions answered” post. Questions included cover openness, how the EPG will work, & whether/how it Canvas clashes with HbbTV. The answers to the questions don’t cover too much though.
- 1 Mar - Talk Talk - already one of the six partners in Project Canvas - is looking to that involvement to become a quad player in the media-comms space. An offering off the back of Canvas, and a MVNO launch later this year, will cement Talk Talk in the TV space (remember it already owns Tiscali), and get them into the mobile space. The FT has the article (while The Reg has it for non-FT subs). A few days earlier on the CPW earnings call CEO Dunstone said it is (was?) too early to say exactly how they would make use of Canvas c.f Tiscali (PaidContentUK article) (Also worth noting, the plan was revealed during details of the demerging of Carphone Warehouse - from March 29 there will be two separate listed companies - New Carphone Warehouse, and Talk Talk. )
- 25 Feb - Broadcast point out the split screen interaction that Project Canvas will provide, for things like tweeting and other social network activity. Their article talks about the demo shown at trade show BVE. It’s not definite, but it sounds like the demo Erik Huggers has shown previously, including at a conference in Salford - this video on Yotube of the talk given before Christmas was posted earlier this week. Canvas-related info starts 14mins 20sec, while the demo itself starts at the 17mins 40sec mark.
And now a few bits of news from the vault - these were from back in late December last year, just after the BBC Trust gave its conditional approval to Project Canvas:
- Canvas is being given extra leniency by the BBC Trust with regards to costs incurred by the BBC. One of the approval conditions was the BBC exec would have to get approval from the Trust if it realistically expected the BBC costs to exceed 20% more than budget. Marie Bloomfield from Screen Digest says the normal approval figure is anything over 10%.
- Sky’s full statement against the Trust approval of Canvas can be found here at Paid Content UK. It includes “The key concern with Canvas is the leading role that the BBC wants to take in the project. … There is no need for public money to be spent on replicating what’s set to be delivered through commercial investment. …Yet again, this is nothing short of BBC mission creep”
- Geek.com has a post saying that the Trust’s approval of Canvas could led to BBC-branded set top boxes, but the source is as vague and uncredible as “industry watchers” speculating.
Tweet roundup from today’s DTG Summit
Here’s the Project Canvas-related new & info that came out of Digital TV Group’s (DTG) Summit, held today in London, told via the medium of interpretive dance twitter:
- “Canvas bloke* says he’ll have all docs available by May.” @WillStrauss - that tweet here
- “Ooh, got a bit tense there. Canvas bloke* accused of not sharing his spec wit the DTG.” @WillStrauss - that tweet here
- “There are between 2m and 3m Freeview main-set homes that will be interested in Canvas offer: Freeview’s Ilse Howling” - @GLovelace - that tweet here
- “Relationship between Project Canvas and DTG is ‘critical’ and we need to get it right, says Canvas’ Richard Halton “ - @GLovelace - that tweet here
- “Richard Halton acknowledges the role of Humax in the support of the development of Canvas.” - @Bobdvb - that tweet here
- “Project Canvas’ Richard Halton: Cisco, Humax, Technicolor, LG, Sagem, Amino, TVOnics and others keen to make canvas devices” - @CanvasInfo - that tweet here
- “‘Free-to-air catch-up TV is here and can be in every broadband home via Freeview HD and Freesat’“** - @WillStrauss - that tweet here
- “Futuresource predicting 9.5bn on-demand video views in 2013, 8% of total TV viewing, up from 2.3bn and <2% in 2009″ @GLovelace - that tweet here
And speaking of Twitter, don’t forget you can follow us, and say hi, @ProjectCanvasUK.
* presumably referring to Richard Halton, programme director for Canvas at the BBC.
** we’re not sure who Will was quoting here - likely it was one of the MDs of Freeview (Isle Howling) or FreeSat (Emma Scott)
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