By silicon.com, 20 July 2004 10:20
NEWS 20.07.99: The BBC has dismissed reports that it is considering floating its Beeb.com Net service on the stock market as "speculation".
A report in UK newspaper The Times yesterday came in the light of a UK government-backed inquiry, set up to review the BBC's compulsory licence fee and to look at other ways of raising finance for the public service broadcaster.
Beeb.com - which receives 8.8 million impressions a month - is a commercial service which carries adverts, sells its content to other sites and runs an online shop, unlike the publicly funded BBC Online. The report claims a Beeb.com flotation could raise up to £500m.
20.07.04: The BBC has been the source of some heated debate lately on the pages of silicon.com.
And this story proves that even five years ago arguments were raging about the fact the BBC's positioning as public service web content provider, competing in the commercial sector, with a commercial arm, creates more grey areas than John Major's wardrobe (That wouldn't even have been topical 'five years ago'. Ed).
This awkward and controversial positioning ensured the rumoured flotation never came to pass and Beeb.com was reined in as a commercial venture in the intervening years. Its shopping services, guides and links to third party retailers were brought down and the advertising replaced with in-house banners and links to BBC content. Finally Beeb.com - like many less well-backed dot-coms - turned up its toes as a brand and turned into BBCshop.com - selling everything from DVDs of BBC programmes to DVDs of BBC programmes.
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