Project Canvas gets final BBC Trust approval
So it has taken some time since their very first proposal, but the BBC Executive yesterday (Friday, 25 June) had their plans for Project Canvas cleared by governing body the BBC Trust.
We’ll come back to some of the detail over the coming days, but in summary, the BBC is now allowed to continue to be involved in the initiative (which involves 6 other companies too, with a possible 7th to join later on too).
The Trust did impose some conditions on BBC involvement - all of which can be found in summary here at the BBC site - but there really wasn’t anything there that the BBC Exec wasn’t planning on doing already. The Trust’s conditions just ensure those plans are committed to by all companies in the venture, otherwise the BBC - and its cash - will need to drop out.
Below is a word cloud of two documents from Friday - the final conclusions from the BBC Trust (the top cloud), and those submissions made to the Trust after its provisional conclusions earlier this year that were not held as confidential (the bottom cloud). (Both word clouds made with Wordle.net). Both have had the terms “BBC” “Trust” and “Canvas” taken out.
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 gets approval from the BBC Trust
It was telegraphed yesterday on newspaper site after newspaper site , but this morning the BBC Trust confirmed that it has given its provisional approval to Project Canvas.
The Trust has attached some conditions to its approval of the venture. The below are copied directly from the BBC Trust press release available here:
Main conditions of provisional approval
The Trust proposes to place a number of conditions on the BBC’s participation in the joint venture. Many of these are designed to secure elements of the proposal where we saw particular public value as well as lessen negative market impact where possible. These conditions cover:
- Industry engagement – the core technical specification must be published well in advance of launch to allow all manufacturers to adapt to the Canvas standard. The BBC must report to the Trust within twelve months of final approval or within three months of launch, whichever is the sooner, and at regular intervals on its progress in achieving industry consensus around technical standards.
- Access to the platform for content providers – must be on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, with minimal technical requirements and content standards and access charges calculated on a cost recovery basis.
- Access for ISPs - any quality standards for ISPs should again be set and applied on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis. This is designed to keep barriers to entry for ISPs to a minimum and avoid the proposal being linked to any one provider or service.
- Syndication – a Trust review, twelve months after launch, to assess what, if any, effects Canvas has on the partners’ incentives to syndicate their content to other platforms.
Other key conditions of the BBC’s involvement are designed to ensure public value:
- Free-to-air – it must always to be possible to access the Canvas platform without a subscription.
- Accessibility and usability – one year after launch, the BBC must report to the Trust on whether the proposed accessibility features, such as audio description, have been incorporated. At that point the Trust will also review signposting of content and parental controls, which we have asked Canvas to provide where possible.
- Cost – the BBC must return for further Trust approval should costs incurred by the Corporation exceed (or be expected to exceed) the Executive’s projections by more than 20 per cent in any one year.
Finally, there are some conditions to ensure compliance with the law:
- An independent audit must be carried out of relevant BBC research and development spending in order to verify that pre-launch Canvas-related BBC expenditure costs have been or will be shared equally between the partners.
- Where the BBC has already or proposes to frontload project spending by making initial commercial loans to the other Canvas partners, loans should also be available to the other or any new partners of the same creditworthiness on commercial terms.
- BBC involvement in Canvas must be kept operationally separate from its involvement in Freesat and Freeview.
Finally, a public consultation period on the provisional decision commences today, and closes on 2 February (after which time the Trust will make their final ruling concering the BBC’s involvement, in the spring).
A provisional approval from the BBC Trust?
We were hoping there’d be some news from the BBC Trust on Friday about their decision regarding Project Canvas. The Trust had a regular, scheduled meeting on Thursday, and in the past updates on the initiative have also tended to be right at the end of the week.
Friday came and went with no news, however this morning both the FT and The Guardian are reporting from “sources” that the BBC Trust is about to / has already approved Project Canvas.
The FT article is here, and says the project has gotten Trust approval, with some minor conditions.
The Guardian article is here, and says the project is being approved now, with some significant conditions.
Not surprisingly, the official Canvas site and twitter feed are staying quiet for now.
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A reminder too about our Twitter feed - @ProjectCanvasUK - where we’ll often post links/articles link the ones above quicker than a blog post here.
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Update - 13.00: PaidContent UK says the BBC Trust will publish their provisional conclusions on their site at 10am Tuesday (22nd).
Canvas & related news roundup - 1 Sep
Canvas news:
- Today (Sep 1) sees the close of the BBC Trust’s latest public consultation on Canvas. The next step is for the Trust to publish their provisional conclusions, sometime in the autumn, which will then kick off a final four week consultation period.
- NDS, the middleware provider, has reportedly said it wants Canvas to use its audience measurement system. C21 article here (subscription only I’m afraid, so I’m basing this just on tweets).
- In this Telegraph article CEO of Five, Dawn Airey, uses the example of micropayments as a way to watch episodes before linear transmission.
IPTV & VOD-related news:
The two biggest related news stories this week first:
- Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) was launched. It’s a consortium made up of European / pan-European companies including Canal+, France Televisions, SES Astra, ANT, and OpenTV. Like Canvas, it is about specifications that bring broadcast and internet content together into devices. Unlike Canvas, it is aiming to be a pan-European effort. Will HbbTV have made a submission to the BBC Trust’s consultation that closed today?
- James Murdoch uses his McTaggart Lecture spot to blast the activities of the BBC. He has called for either a greatly reduced scope (& licence fee) in the activities the organisation provides for free.
- Dawn Airey, in the same Telegraph article, says two VOD-related announcements will be made “imminently”, but has ruled out either to have any Hulu connection. That would leave Arqiva & YouTube as the most likely - but of course, far from the only - candidates. Update: 3 Sep: One of these announcements has now been made: it is a trial with Sony on their internet-connected Bravia TVs. The Guardian article here.
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Canvas & related news roundup - 25 Aug
In Project Canvas news roundup:
- Digital Spy have a Q&A with BBC’s director of IPTV Richard Halton here. The resulting article is here (in which Halton restates the 2010 launch aim).
- We mentioned it on Twitter when it happened, but early last week, Sky hit out again at the BBC Trust over its handling of the Project Canvas consultation - FT article here. Sky’s two main issues: that the Trust has not submitted Canvas to a full public value test, and that the 5 weeks between the release of the further detailed info and the close of the consultation period (Sep 1) was vastly insufficient.
In VOD & IPTV-related news for the last few weeks:
- Channel 4 is to run a week of 3D programmes in autumn. 3D glasses will be available from Sainsbury’s. The programmes include unspecified movies, and footage of the Queen’s coronation.
- Speculation continues around a UK launch for Hulu: The Tele yesterday on its site ran two different articles: one claiming ITV is signing up imminently including exclusive rights on a few of its programmes; the second saying no content partners have been signed (and also that Channel 4 is reportedly going to start showing full length episodes on YouTube); both saying a 2010 launch is the earliest possible. PaidContent points out that no one at Hulu itself (or any of the potential content providers) has ever come out and given timing objectives around the UK launch.
- Blinkbox adds BBC Worldwide content. Some shows will be free/ad-supported while others will be paid (Broadband TV news article).
- ITV will launch ITV1 HD on Freeview, starting with London by end of 2009 - Broadcast Now article.
- A consumer survey by Deloitte & Yougov has found more than half of people wouldn’t watch more VOD even if they had a faster, more reliable broadband connection. 29% said they didn’t see the point in watching TV online. Media Guardian article here.
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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.
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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.)
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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?
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Visualising the Canvas submissions
As we mentioned last week, when the BBC Trust made public all the submissions to its consultation on Project Canvas, there was 392 pages of content from 60 submitting parties who were happy for their sumbmission to be published. Just for a bit of Friday fun, we’ve thrown those 392 pages - 146,000 words - into a Wordle.net word cloud. Click on each image to be taken to an enlarged version. The total results are seen below: 
And if we take the two words “Canvas” and “BBC” out of the text we get this: 
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