Posts Tagged ‘BBC’

"Significant opportunity" for advertisers as online video popularity surges

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Brits watched 5.5 billion videos online during February 2010, resulting in a 37 per cent increase from the previous year.

Thanks to the popularity of Google-owned video site YouTube, the US search giant attracted the most viewers, who watched a total of 2.5 billion clips in February. The BBC was the second most popular site, bringing in 140 million viewers – an increase of 143 per cent on 2009 figures.

The data was compiled by comScore’s Video Metrix service, which also revealed that Facebook had seen the most rapid rise in popularity with a 205 per cent jump in videos viewed over the past 12 months to 43 million.

The growing popularity of online video content has not been lost on digital advertisers and February’s figures are likely to further bolster its growing reputation.

Mike Read, managing director of comScore Europe, said: “The U.K. online video market continues to soar and is attracting a greater and greater share of Internet users’ attention.

“In particular, we’ve seen eyeballs move towards the online channel to watch more long-form, professional video content, such as popular broadcast network TV shows.

“This trend presents a significant opportunity to advertisers, as comScore research has consistently shown that online video advertising is effective at building brands.”

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Streaming, YouTube | No Comments »

BBC Apple iPhone app plan postponed

Monday, March 29th, 2010

A plan by the BBC to release an iPhone app to bring its news and sport coverage to a wider group of people has stalled.

Following “representations from industry”, the BBC Trust, the corporation’s governing body, has decided to delay the release of the new iPhone apps. Publishers such as the Guardian and Sky already have their own iPhone apps offering free and paid-for news and sport on demand.

The commercial news providers say the BBC apps go beyond the remit of the corporation. According to a BBC News report, the Trust’s investigation will decide whether the apps are an extension of the BBC’s existing services or a new product. If it is the latter, the Trust will then conduct a more detailed review.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are focused on making BBC Online’s core web propositions more user-friendly, convenient and accessible, and using existing content to create truly distinctive products around our core public service areas.”

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Internet access is a human right, according to BBC poll

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Nearly four out of five people think having access to the internet is a basic human right, according to a BBC World Service survey of 27,000 people.

The poll, which was conducted across 26 countries, also shed light on people’s views with regard to state regulation of the internet.

More than half of the people asked in the UK said some government regulation of the internet could be justified. Most people questioned in South Korea however said the state should never be involved.

According to the BBC report, access to the internet is already classed as a human right for people living in Finland and Estonia.

Overall, 87 per cent of people polled said access to the internet is a “fundamental right of all people”, while over 70 per cent of those questioned who weren’t connected to the net felt they should be.

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Posted in BBC News, Internet | No Comments »

Microsoft ad purchase helps new TV website clean up

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Computer technology giant Microsoft is one of 17 major brands to have bought advertising space from new online TV service Seesaw.

The website only launched a matter of weeks ago, but Seesaw said it has sold its entire planned advertising inventory until May, with no discount selling required.

In an article by New Media Age, the commercial director of Seesaw, Matt Rennie, said he was “blown away” by the response from advertisers. Other international brands which have bought space on the site include Coca-Cola, Barclaycard, Diageo and Santander.

The internet service allows users to watch up to 3,000 hours of television content from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Seesaw currently has access to shows including The Apprentice, River Cottage, The Inbetweeners, The Young Ones and Hustle.

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Mircosoft | No Comments »

Plans for future BBC include cuts to digital services

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Anger and accusations of attempts to appease political and commercial interests were among the first reactions after the BBC – the publicly-owned state broadcaster for the United Kingdom – unveiled its blueprint for the future of its myriad services on Tuesday.

The plans include the closure of half of the BBC’s websites by 2013, as part of efforts to divert GBP600million – one-sixth of its current income from the licence fee – towards improving the quality of its television and radio programmes.

Among the planned closures announced in the draft of the strategic review of the Corporation were two radio stations, 6Music, which focuses on contemporary and up-and-coming talent, and the Asian Network.

Trade unions immediately attacked the plans, broadcasting union BECTU’s general secretary, Gerry Morrissey, calling them “totally unnecessary and purely politically motivated.”

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, added: “These plans smack of an attempt to appease commercial and political interests. Hard-working staff shouldn’t be used as a political football and we will fight any compulsory redundancies.”

The BBC consultation document which outlined the plans said that a future objective of the Corporation should be “to develop and back open platforms and standards…and (it) will therefore continue to make sure that open broadcast platforms (like Freeview, Freesat and proposals for internet-connected television) succeed.”

It added that the current upsurge in local, national and international community web coverage mirrored the founding principles of the corporation. “Wikipedia, Twitter and many other websites broaden and enrich public space in new ways which can be very close to the spirit of public service broadcasting,” it said.

“But digital also threatens to disrupt traditional public space,” the report went on.

“Fragmentation of audiences and consumption is weakening traditional media business models, including their ability to support quality content”.

The result of this, the report said, could be that “societies around the world (were) left with fewer reliable sources of professionally validated news. The risk of bias and misinformation and, in some countries, of state control, may grow.”

 “The BBC’s mission to ‘make the popular good and the good popular’ should continue,” the report also said.

Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, later conceded to staff that online services aimed at a youth audience, specifically the corporation’s Switch and Blast services, were in a market where Channel4 had proved it led the way.

The plans are to be discussed by the BBC Trust, the body which represents licence fee-payers’ interests, and are also open for any member of the public to comment upon. The consultation will run until May 25 2010.

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Posted in BBC News, Online, Television | 1 Comment »

BBC to roll out iPlayer across Freesat HD

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The BBC's highly successful 'on demand catch-up' service, iPlayer, is to expand its reach substantially when the corporation makes it available through Freesat high-definition digital boxes and high-definition TVs.

The move follows a successful three-month trial which involved 300 viewers whose homes were equipped with a Humax Freesat set-top box.

It will make the BBC the first broadcaster to provide subscription-free catch-up services for both itself and its commercial rival, ITV, without viewers needing to buy new equipment.

Media Week reported that Emma Scott, managing director of Freesat, said feedback from the trial had been “really positive”, and resulted in many people accessing the iPlayer service through their televisions for the first time.

Freesat‘s website has detailed instructions about the service which include a video to help viewers to set up the player.

BBC iPlayer launched on computers on Christmas Day 2007. It is now available on more than 20 devices, including TV services, games consoles and mobile phones, and receives more than 80 million programme requests per month.

The on-demand service allows UK audiences to catch up with BBC content broadcast over the previous seven days. Audiences have a choice of streaming or downloading their chosen programme and, with series catch-up, entire seasons of selected programmes can be viewed.

Last year, the BBC’s motoring show ‘Top Gear’ was the most-watched TV programme of the year on the iPlayer.

Last month, the BBC Trust gave its provisional approval for the corporation’s involvement in the joint industry venture Project Canvas, which aims to bring multiple VoD services to Freeview and Freesat.

The joint project, which counts the BBC, BT, Five, ITV, Channel 4 and TalkTalk as partners, aims to promote a common technology standard that would allow viewers with a broadband connection to watch on-demand services on their TV sets.

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Posted in BBC News, Streaming, Television | No Comments »

BBC websites relaunch expected to focus on content-sharing

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

The BBC's massively popular Strictly Come Dancing show is expected to be among the first of its programmes to pioneer new social media applications in its online content.

It is part of a much wider move to integrate more social media capability into all of the corporation’s online content

The BBC is planning a radical relaunch of its website to include more social media, according to the Guardian.

BBC sources told it that the new-look site will launch by March 2010.

Anthony Rose, the BBC’s controller of Vision and Online, at first declined to reveal specific details, but he did say that social media would play a big part in the relaunch of the BBC’s family of websites.

He explained that the BBC is not only working on a new homepage and the underlying hosting platform, but his team is currently researching “what the next generation in social media will be”.

He confirmed that the BBC is planning several innovations to the site: “Among them for example, is the plan to enable users to comment on particular moments while watching and see what other users said about the same moment or simply rate moments with ‘Boo!’, ‘Good!’ or ‘Gosh!’.”

He also confirmed the development of an open version of the successful iPlayer, which will allow third-party platforms to embed BBC content while it remains on the BBC site.

Rose also said there are plans for the BBC to open up and work together with third-party platforms such as MySpace to allow users to link to recommendations and even include content from outside, delivering a personalised feed when you return to it.

The BBC has also been planning radical changes in the navigation design of its news sites. These are expected to underline that the site – which attracts 10 million users a week – covers breaking news, and adds 500 stories a day as well as a lot of local content. The relaunch is also said to be aiming to help them find this information more easily.

It is suggested that, while previous relaunches have only concentrated on minor tweaks to BBC online content, this time will see a complete overhaul of its services.

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Posted in BBC News, Social Media, Social News | No Comments »

E-commerce sites found to be violating buyers’ rights

Monday, September 14th, 2009

More than half of websites selling electronic goods to customers all over Europe were found to be breaking European laws aimed at protecting consumers.

An EU investigation found that, out of 369 websites selling mobile phones, DVD players and games consoles in 28 European countries, 203 were providing misleading information, and now face further investigation by EU officials.

According to a BBC report, the biggest failure found was sites not mentioning a consumer’s right to return a product bought on the internet within seven days. Any websites which continue to break the law face fines.

“We know from the level of complaints coming into European Consumer Centres that this is a real problem area for consumers,” said EU consumer commissioner Meglena Kuneva.

“We discovered that more than half of the retailers selling online electronic goods are letting consumers down.”
Trading standards departments and other officials carried out the investigation in May, to check whether the websites were following rules on providing clear information about the trader, the product, the price, and customers’ rights.

Traders in 25 EU countries (all members except Slovakia) as well as Norway and Iceland were checked. The targeted sites sold all manner of electronic goods, including digital cameras, mobile phones, personal music players, DVD players, computer equipment and games consoles.
The swoop concentrated on the EU’s 200 largest online retailers, and another 100 were checked because they had been the subject of previous consumer complaints.

Of the 203 cases facing further investigation, two-thirds (66%) failed to adequately explain that consumers had seven days to return a product bought over distance for a full refund and without giving a reason.

Others failed to explain the right to have a faulty product repaired or replaced for at least two years after sale
• Details about extra delivery charges were missing or difficult to find on the website in 45% of cases.
• A third (33%) did not fully outline the trader’s name, address or email details so they could not be contacted if there was a problem.

All of these traders will now be contacted by the authorities and asked to clarify the position or correct the problems identified in the investigation.

Any website that fails to make corrections could face warning letters and then enforcement action. If this was ignored the operators could be prosecuted and face fines.

“This is a Europe-wide problem which needs a European solution. There is a lot of work to be done in the months ahead to clean up this sector, Europe’s consumers deserve better,” said Ms Kuneva.

Every website checked in Cyprus and Hungary during the sweep was found to require further investigation. Six of 14 websites checked in the UK revealed irregularities.

Only Iceland, Norway and Latvia have published a list of the websites that will face further investigation.
About one in four consumers across the EU who has ever bought anything on the internet bought an electronic product, according to the European Commission.

The market is estimated to be worth 6.8bn euros (£5.9bn). More than a third (34%) of complaints about online shopping in 2007 concerned some aspect of the sale of electronic equipment.

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