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 - 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.
Five officially joins Project Canvas… Yes?
We have read that Five, the RTL-owned broadcaster, has officially joined Project Canvas.
It started with an article on The Telegraph site yesterday afternoon - here. This morning both The Guardian and C21Media have the same story.
Yesterday when the Tele’s story appeared, we wondered (on Twitter) if Five had actually officially confirmed their joining, or if the article was totally based on the mention of Five in the extra information documents supplied by the BBC management to the BBC Trust on Friday - in Section 1 (PDF) that gives more detail on the structure, Five are mentioned on page 3 as an “anticipated” one of three PSBs (see our post here on the extra information).
Now The Guardian and C21 Media have run the story, it is starting to sound official. The Guardian article has a quote from chief exec Dawn Airey, but it’s not entirely clear its current (to my mind it sounds familiar to views she gave at a broadcasting conference earlier this month - although I can’t find it verbatim at all).
There is nothing on the Five site - their press release page is here - but it hasn’t had anything of any sort added in the last week, so not sure how timely that page is. (There’s also nothing on Five owner RTL’s site, but that’s not unexpected.)
So the question is a simple one: Can someone from Five please confirm whether you are officially now involved in Project Canvas?
Update - 20:00: Five put the press release on their site during today, and the announcement has gotten coverage from many sites . The same two para quote that everyone is running, from chief exec Dawn Airey:
“Project Canvas is an important step forward because it will extend choice and significantly improve the television experience for viewers. Its widespread adoption is central to driving Digital Britain.
“It’s vital for broadcasters and other industry stakeholders to form partnerships such as Canvas if they’re to open up new commercial opportunities and thrive in the digital world.”
Also - Silicon.com have an interview with Five’s head of strategy. Their key rationale? Joining lets them be involved in the platform itself, rather than just being a content provider (in the way they are with Freeview).
Related news roundup - 15 June
In video & industry-related news from the last week:
- BBC News: Setanta is still around, and is reported to be talking to Endemol about the producer taking a stake. There’s also a bid for 51%, for £20, from Access Industries.
- FT.com: Dan Marks, CEO of BT Vision (and also deputy MD of BT consumer) has quit. He has cited Sky’s dominance in sport rights as a critical factor in such poor BT Vision uptake.
- The Independent: Expands on the story of BT officially coming out and claiming that video-intensive content providers like the BBC should subsidise the cost to the ISP with an article that no other ISPs are prepared to make similarly public claims.
- Ofcom: FIVE has officially been awarded the last (last for the next 3 years) HD Freeview slot.
- ITProPortal: Ofcom’s latest report from their tech research programme suggests that the costs needed to upgrade ISP networks to handle video demands equates to an additional £1 - £3 per subscribing household per month. The full report is available here on the Ofcom site here (PDF). That particular section is on page 4.
- Brand Republic: Blinkbox is to start offering paid streams (DTR) of films, after a change in their agreement with Warner Bros.
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