Archive for April, 2007
BBC gets go-ahead for TV on- demand
April 30th, 2007
The BBC’s on-demand service, iPlayer, has today been given the thumbs up, meaning that viewers will be able to watch programmes online for seven days after their first TV broadcast.
The decision follows a public consultation by the BBC Trust, which involved 10,500 individuals and organisations. The move will bring the BBC more in-line with other TV broadcasters, and will help to keep it relevant in the digital age.
Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of new media and technology, spoke of the service’s importance in his keynote speech at MIPTV earlier this month. He claimed: “All our evidence is that the provision of this free seven-day window will stimulate usage and demand for downloading TV programmes over the net and boost the market for both paid-for download-to-own programmes and advertising revenues on programming from outside the seven-day free window…
“Where we have already been offering the ability to download programmes from our website the statistics speak for themselves. There have been nearly 4 million downloads since our video podcast trial began last August (including 1.3 million downloads of Breakfast and 1.1 million downloads of Newsnight).”
With rival on-demand TV services like Joost hitting the headlines, its about time the BBC brought itself up to speed. This decision couldn’t have come at a better time.
April 26th, 2007
Well, not quite, but blinkx certainly think they’ve got the jump on Google in terms of video search, and according to Rick Wray’s piece on MediaGuardian today, blinkx is about to be demerged from Autonomy in preparation for a listing on AIM (Alternative Investment Market).
The Press release confirms blinkx will join forces with Autonomy’s consumer division as part of the new blinkx company and develop a video-based search product for the consumer market.
In a quote from the release, Suranga Chandratillake, Chief Executive Officer of blinkx, confirmed: “The development of television, for example, is at a pivotal moment - technologies such as IPTV, on-demand, non-linear, personalisation and implicit query are expected to significantly change how consumers interact with content. Autonomy’s technology made it the world leader in the enterprise space, and we believe the same technology arms blinkx for success in this new, complex rich media environment.”
Apparently blinkx already allows internet users to search more than 7m hours of video and UGC, and it has search deals with 200 media partners including MTV and the New York Times.
Video is certainly a key consideration for search, and blinkx is ahead of the game, taking it in a slightly new direction.
However, the future of search must consider text-based, video and social media searches, so although I don’t think this is ‘the answer’, it is certainly an interesting avenue to investigate.
It will be fascinating to see how this develops, and to see how Google gets involved. Maybe another future acquisition if all goes well? But in reality, I suspect Google is quite well covered in video search considering recent acquisitions.
April 25th, 2007
You may have noticed that the Liberate Media website has relaunched this week, with the blog still very much at its core. If you have an RSS feed set-up to our blog, then we’ll let you off not noticing the change!
Our loyal followers will remember the initial dilemma we faced when setting-up the company back in September - should we get a blog going straight away and allow the website to come later, or wait to launch everything at once. We decided to jump straight in with the blog, and it’s a decision that we’ve never looked back on.
Speaking from first-hand experience, we’ve seen the level of influence a blog can have in building a new brand. Our search rankings have benefitted massively, as well as our industry profile and reputation. We’ve received compliments from industry and media contacts, which proves that we must be doing something right.
It has been hard at times keeping our blog up-to-date amid the volume of work that comes with getting a new business established, but it has all been well worth it.
We hope you feel that our website reflects the personality of our blog. Thanks to 2merchdesign for the design and build.
All comments gratefully appreciated, as that’s what a blog is all about!
Biting the hand that feeds you? Daily Telegraph takes on Google…and Yahoo
April 24th, 2007
Comments from the Daily Telegraph’s editor Will Lewis have reignited the newspaper v search engine copyright argument, which recently saw The Belgian court rule that Google infringed copyright and must stop aggregating Belgian newspaper content.
According to Roy Greenslade, Lewis spoke at Friday’s Ifra newsroom conference in Paris on behalf of his CEO, Murdoch MacLennan, and started by confirming that newspapers should embrace new media as a friend rather than treating it as an enemy, but went onto argue that search engines are seeking to build a business model on the back of newspapers’ own investments:”Our ability to protect content is under consistent attack from those such as Google and Yahoo who wish to access it for free.
“These companies are seeking to build a business model on the back of our own investment without recognition. All media companies need to be on guard for this. Success in the digital age, as we have seen in our own company, is going to require massive investment… [this needs] effective legal protection for our content, in such a way that allows us to invest for the future.”
So, does he have a case, or is he simply biting the hand that feeds him?
Roy Greenslade also covers the argument in detail, confirming that the newspapers are on one hand reaping the benefits as aggregators such as Google provide links to news stories and are therefore actually doing the providers a favour, giving advertisers a wider reach, and journalists more readers.
While on the other hand, traditional news-gatherers still have a lot to offer and therefore they should receive compensation from the aggregators who are reaping profits while apparently doing so little.
Personally, I agree newspapers should be rewarded fairly for their content, and any licensing agreement should be developed across the board, rather than with specific titles, as suggested by Greenslade. However, the rules have changed. The way we consume news is constantly evolving, and we have to be careful not to make traditional rules fit into a web-based environment.
If pioneering newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph, are putting the effort in to embrace a web-based news service and therefore evolve, then it also needs to realise the new environment comes with a new set of rules. Traditional content rules do not necessarily apply, and it’s the business model that needs to evolve as well as the technology and reporting strategy.
I’m not suggesting a free for all, but I think both sides need to adjust their expectations.
What’s the alternative here? The newspapers withdraw from search engines and lose the related traffic and wider exposure. In that case, they had better get their collective feeding hands down to A&E (ER).
April 23rd, 2007
The Financial Times relaunched today with the objective of becoming more modern and accessible for today’s readers.
The launch has been well documented by the press, but what’s interested me has been the interviews given by editor Lionel Barber, and the insight they give into the newspaper of the future that he is aiming to create.
In recent months we’ve read more about newspapers relaunching their websites than print papers, and taking this into account, the language and reasoning that Barber has been quoted on today is more akin to him discussing a website launch than print newspaper.
In the interview he gave to the MediaGuardian, Barber talks about providing “better navigation, liveliness, accessibility, sharpness, modernity and …making [sic] the paper easier to scan.”
To Brand Republic he similarly said: “These changes are evolutionary and will provide extra news, deeper analysis and comment. By improving the navigation of the newspaper we’re aiming to help our busy readers get more out of the paper so that they understand that the Financial Times is not only an informative and entertaining read, but also an essential business tool.”
It may be that we’ve all been brainwashed by internet terminology, or, does Barber forsee a change in print newspaper readership behaviour, where people will come to read them in the same way that they would scan a website for news?
It’s an observation that intrigues me. I personally believe we have a long way to go before that happens (in my generation at least), but for the younger generation who have grown up in the age of online media consumption, might their reading habits be evolving in line with the digital revolution?