So the Competition Commission has gone and done it, and killed off Project Kangaroo.
Our first reaction when we heard the CC’s preliminary judgment was ‘how stupid’. Who wouldn’t want what Kangaroo was planning to offer – free catch-up, and archive of top shows across decades of BBC, ITV & C4 programmes? And who wants to have to visit many different websites (or worse download many different applications) to watch TV on the web? You don’t have to have different TVs for BBC, ITV, C4 etc.
So to us this seemed like while the CC were preventing a monopoly, and avoiding a theoretical and technical price fixing scenario, in the process they were actually denying consumers’ choice. Or worse handing a bye to the US-owned Hulu to steam in and charge for what previously would have been free (well, free at the point of use).
But over the last couple of months, other parts of the story have emerged, and have caused us to change our minds.
Project Canvas is another cross-broadcaster initiative to put web TV in Freeview set-top boxes, bringing the iPlayer and other services, to the living room in a way that normal people might use. And it sounds like it is open from the start, providing a platform anybody (?) will be able to access.
To us, this means one of two things will happen:
- iPlayer will become the default platform for getting web video onto those set-top boxes. Someone (the BBC Trust, the CC) will make the BBC open up the iPlayer to other content providers. It’s easy to put Flash video on the web; the trick is making it scale. And why should the viewing public have to pay for that again?
- The opportunity of Project Canvas distribution will incentivise content providers to unify around a common set of web video standards, and the content will be set free of any particular destination, so we can just watch what we want without having to learn how to use multiple sites / apps.
Which will be A Good Thing, and we’ll still get the service we so yearn for as consumers. Maybe even a better version.
