Related news roundup - 2 August

Posted by andrew pascoe on August 2, 2009 · View Comments 

Once more into the breach of VOD/IPTV/regulation/general video news from the last fortnight:

  • Arqiva, the broadcast & radio infrastructure provider, was confirmed to have purchased the assets of the Project Kangaroo VOD project. The Guardian (article - 24 July) has the purchase price at about £8million and covering the hardware, software technology, related IP, and the intended to be consumer-facing “See Saw” brand name.  PaidContentUK (article - 24 July) has more info from Arqiva’s strategy director, saying the purchase is a “natural progression” for them, that the offering will be one to consumers, and that they are currently busy actually doing content deals. NMA (article - 31 July) says that Arqiva has it rumoured to have appointed Pierre-Jean Sebert as CEO of the new Kangaroo. The article says that Sebert for the last 3 years has been director of the rights negotiation and multimedia channel development at Reel Enterprises.
  • Microsoft UK got a lot of coverage of its announcement that it will launch a free-to-view VOD service, showing archive content from BBC Worldwide. It’s launching with (just) 350 hours of programming - shows include Peep Show, Hustle & Hotel Babylon. (Independent article  here  - 30 July). Pre-roll ads will be used to monetise (with launch ads all being bought by GroupM agencies including MEC & Mediacom - TheRegister article).
  • ITV has closed its future technology department. The department, headed by Simon Fell, was involved in ITV’s launch of HD & mobile & online services (including those ads to be inserted into VOD clips layed over white/blank spaces)   (article from BrandRepublic).
  • BT Vision continues to struggle to acquire new customers in any sizeable numbers. From Broadband TV News (article here) after accounting for inactive customers[(I'm not sure what BT are defining as an "inactive"] they have added just 10,000  new customers for the quarter ending June 30.
  • Sky will launch a true pull VOD offering to its HD customers next year, according to Paid Content UK - article here. (HD customers because the HD set top boxes have the ethernet connection needed.) Still with Sky, its like-for-like profit rose by 4% year on year (the total profit rise was much larger for the year to July, due to much less of the ITV stake writedown occuring in the last financial year than the previous one). Sky added 124,000 new customers in the last quarter.  Telegraph article is here.
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Related news roundup - 19 July

Posted by andrew pascoe on July 19, 2009 · View Comments 

  • 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.
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Update to related news post from last week

Posted by andrew pascoe on May 31, 2009 · View Comments 

‘Twas remiss of us not to make note of one particular item in the related news update from Friday. It’s an item to do with Project Kangaroo, the proposed VOD joint venture between ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide.

As we all know, in early February, the Competition Commission (part of the OFT) prohibited Kangaroo from going ahead, on the grounds that it lessened competition in the video on demand (VOD) market here in the UK.

Last Friday the Commission published the draft of it’s final undertakings on the matter. There are three main parts:

  • The BBC, BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 or ITV will not acquire any VOD activity from any of the other three parties (without prior permission from the Commission);
  • No senior management involved in the VOD activities at one party will be allowed to go and work with VOD at another of the parties (without prior permission from the Commission); and
  • Both of the above will be in effect for 5 years.

While each of the 3 parties have alread agreed to the undertakings, the Commission is accepting any public submissions on them until Monday 8 June.

The full document  is available here at the CC’s site (as a PDF), and Paid Content UK have a good post here.

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