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.
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.
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.
Summary of new information on Canvas
It’s hard to know whether it was the Friday-lunchtime release, or if there is some sort of Project Canvas fatigue (already!?), but the additional information on Project Canvas released by BBC management has received very little coverage so far.
Here is a summary of what we’ve seen written so far:
- The most comprehensive, no-nonsense summary of points is this post at PaidContentUK. I won’t repeat it all here, but go have a look.
- Broadband TV News in this article covers the the co-operation: how DTG (Digital Tv Group) will work closely with Canvas, as well as open up their membership to ISPs.
- Brand Republic / Media Week focus on the timetable and timings, leading with the feted 2010 launch. Article here.
- The FT’s article from Sat’s print edition has a nice general summary, as well as mentioning the EPG prioritisation issue, and that there will be plenty of commercial opportunities.
And here is the BBC Trust’s statement from Friday, and each section of the additional info (all PDFs): S.1 Venture proposal, S.2 EPG and enabling access for content and service providers , S.3 The agreement of the Canvas specification and industry engagement, S.4 IP distribution and related issues, S.5 ‘Project Canvas’ and fit with wider BBC platform strategy , S.6 Costs.
[Update] There’s also a reaction here from @Nevali. And @BenedictEvans has some thoughts in his tweets.
Breaking: Additional Project Canvas information from BBC management
More than 7 weeks ago the BBC Trust made its first public announcement regarding its consultation on Project Canvas: “We need more information”.
Today (at about 1pm) that additional information - given to the BBC Trust by BBC management - was published.
We’ll have a wrap-up of responses and coverage (as well as some of our own thoughts) over the new few days, but in the meantime here is:
- the full statement (including a revised consultation timeline)
- the actual additional information to the areas the Trust highlighted (most linked from that page as PDFs)
And of course, to see coverage/responses as they happen around the web, you can do a Twitter search , a Google News search, and a Google Blogsearch.
(Update - 27 July: Here’s a new post linking to some of the press coverage so far.)
Related news roundup - 19 July
- Broadcast Now: Rahul Chakkara, controller of TV platforms at the BBC, is understood to be leaving the corporation, after deciding not to move north to Manchester in 2011. The site reports that the R&D division is leading Canvas, along with the TV platforms group.
- BrandRepublic: Carphone Warehouse is now not as keen as it once was to close the IPTV operations of Tiscali. CEO Charles Dunstone has said they’ll look at all options, including becoming a part of Project Canvas.
- PaidContentUK: The Project Kangaroo shutdown cost BBC Worldwide £9.1million, it was revealed in their annual report released this past week.
- And finally, TechRadar has a great summary of Project Canvas to date. Read it here.
Lost: 1 new consultation timetable for Project Canvas
Today (July 16) marks 6 weeks since the BBC Trust announced that its original timeline for consultation/approval process on Project Canvas was going out the window.
The reason for new a timeline stems from the Trust in the announcement on June 4 recognising that, while in principal Canvas is merited, there was nowhere near enough substantive information provided by BBC management (a call also loudly made by many stakeholders including Sky, Virgin Media, Intellect).
So the Trust asked the executive for more information. And a revised timetable was to be drawn up the the executive to reflect this development.
It’s now 6 weeks later, and there has been no new timetable publicly announced. Where is it, and when will we see it?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=2d4dd712-c3ab-408f-a0f6-8fd7c87a4a1d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=0ca1bee7-fc96-4b2e-93df-31236a24cc6c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=1a2a540a-a372-40c6-9816-736e4d4561d6)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=401d5eeb-5ad9-4766-a8fc-8f6d2f1ab55c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=87bdb7ca-f1f3-4da9-8151-bdf8bbbc478e)