By David Meyer, 4 February 2009 15:25
NEWS
Project Kangaroo, a proposed single platform for viewing BBC, ITV and Channel 4 programmes on a computer, has been blocked by the Competition Commission.
The commission suggested in December it was unlikely to approve Kangaroo, and on Wednesday it officially blocked the joint venture. Commission chairman Peter Freeman said in a statement that the cross-channel, video-on-demand (VoD) project "would be too much of a threat to competition in this developing [VoD] market and has to be stopped".
"The case is essentially about the control of UK-originated TV content," Freeman said, adding that the commission found UK viewers particularly value UK programming.
"BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 together control the vast majority of this material, which puts them in a very strong position as wholesalers of TV content to restrict competition from other current and future providers of VoD services to UK viewers," he said. "We thought the joint-venture parties would have an interest in doing so, in order to make Project Kangaroo a success."
Freeman said "viewers would benefit from better VoD services if the parties - possibly in conjunction with other new and/or already established providers of VoD - competed with each other".
Kangaroo would likely have been similar to the BBC's iPlayer platform, only with more channels available to watch live or catch up with on-demand. The man largely responsible for the iPlayer's success, Ashley Highfield, left the BBC to head up Kangaroo in April, but left in November to become Microsoft UK's consumer and online managing director.
iPlayer has caused some controversy in the ISP industry, with many blaming the peer-to-peer platform for congesting networks. On Wednesday, however, Ovum analyst Jonathan Doran told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK that such complaints were probably overstated. He also said the Competition Commission's blocking of Kangaroo was unlikely to alleviate any network congestion from people watching UK TV online.
"Without Kangaroo, people will still want the same content," Doran said. "Now they'll just have to go to different sites and download multiple players to their PC."
The commission's decision represented "a missed opportunity in the further development of British broadcasting", BBC Worldwide, UTV and Channel 4 said in a joint statement reacting to the news.
Channel 4's new media director, Jon Gisby, said in a separate statement that Kangaroo would have offered clear benefits to viewers as well as a valuable opportunity for Channel 4. "Video-on-demand currently makes a small contribution to our revenues, and the short-term effect on our business will be limited," Gisby said. "Longer term, VoD still represents an opportunity for growth."
ITV chairman Michael Grade said in a statement that he was surprised by the commission's decision, but claimed "the success of ITV.com has proved that [ITV's] UK content is attractive enough to stand on its own".
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Ian Sargent
This is one area where having a common standard to view all channels clearly outweighs the need for competition. It's the programme content that people want to watch, not the particular channel that produces it.
Making people run different players for the different channels makes no sense. Taking this back a step, imagine if you had to buy different TVs to watch different channels broadcast over the airwaves!
2. Gareth Evans
There are so many things the commission could be looking at rather than making half baked decisions like this. Why do I need lots of people providing VoD ? I just need the channels that produce the programs serving up content and doing it through a single player where I can view all the choice in one screen would be perfect. Thanks for nothing.
3. Chris Anderson
The last thing we need is different systems is there any way the competition commission can be made to review its decision with the addition of a little common sense?