It looks as though BBC Worldwide is planning an overseas video on demand service which could be branded as the global iPlayer that has long been rumored and hoped for. The only problem is it won’t be free, and in fact, it could be rather expensive.
We Want It All
At the moment there exists a strange situation where people in the UK and beyond feel they’re missing out due to Hulu not being available to them and people in the US and beyond feel they’re missing out by the BBC iPlayer not being available to them.
The whole situation is crazy and wholly down to international rights licensing which sees television networks and content creators only catering for citizens in their home countries. It all makes the idea of a World Wide Web a rather pointless one.
But things could be about to change. Kind of.
Works Both Ways
We already know Hulu is planning to break out of the States and set up shop, first in the UK, and then beyond. The only problem it seems to be having is finding partners with any content worth watching.
And now comes news from PaidContent that BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the publicly-funded BBC is planning a similar move for the iPlayer. Although, it’s actually too early to tell whether the proposed service will use the iPlayer brand, and details are sketchy at best.
Global iPlayer
BBC Worldwide is planning to create an international video on demand portal. It won’t, however, carry BBC programming from the UK, instead being home to 1. BBC America content, 2. Premium programming such as Doctor Who and Top Gear, and 3. Archive programming, probably similar to what is already available on MSN Video.
Paid For But How?
The service will not be free, although how it will be paid for is as yet unclear. BBC.com Managing Director and Executive Vice President Luke Bradley-Jones said:
“It’s inevitable that we, the digital media business, need to move to a mix of paid services. There just aren’t enough ad dollars to support traditional media models. Consumers will pay for services they truly value… we can exploit many more monetizable opportunities, including in the paid space.”
Which is starting to sound like something Rupert Murdoch would say. He who is keen on making Hulu a paid-for service. But if anything, Bradley-Jones goes further than Murdoch when he states, “Millions of people love Torchwood and would probably pay 10 bucks an episode rather than two bucks.”
Ten dollars for one episode? That might be pushing it a little, especially when the shows are available already via other means for two dollars, as Bradley-Jones alluded to. If the shows were to be removed from iTunes and the like and pushed onto this global iPlayer then I foresee most people turning instead to torrent sites. And the BBC will lose all its revenue for being greedy.
Conclusions
It’s good to see these country-specific operations looking overseas and realizing there’s a whole world out there which wants to watching their programming. But if they’re going to exploit the rest of the world they may as well not bother.
A global iPlayer would be brilliant, as would Hulu complete with American shows be, but this sounds more like a method for printing money.
