BBC postpones iPhone apps

[stustaff]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I believe that you do need a TV licence if you use the BBC's live streaming services (eg of the BBC News Channel), or if you download TV programmes from the BBC iPlayer. That's why these services are restricted to people in the UK, whereas radio programmes (for which no licence is needed) are available world-wide.

Close, actually its kind of ridiculous as on iPlayer you do need a tv licence to watch live programmes but NOT the downloads or watching shows that aired earlier.

[Mike L]

Harry,

A few months ago, the Radio Times published a letter from a reader asking if he needed a licence to watch streaming video via the iPlayer. A BBC spokesman replied No; a licence is only needed for receiving broadcasts over the air.

I would agree that it's not logical. It should be the content that is licensed, not the method of delivery. But I assume that it is the definitive answer.

[Mike L]

Ah, it looks like StuStaff is right. I just found this on the BBC Internet blog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern..._a_tv_1.html):

At the moment, the legal position is that you don't need a licence to watch TV purely on-demand, but you do if you are watching TV live (through any receiving device in the home)

and this in the iPlayer help (http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.u...er/tvlicence):

You do not need a television licence to catch-up on television programmes in BBC iPlayer, only when you watch or record at the same time (or virtually the same time) as it is being broadcast or otherwise distributed to the public. In BBC iPlayer, this is through the Watch Live simulcast option.

But none of this affects my main point, which was that the BBC is not tax-funded and is therefore not influenced by government policies.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Mike L

But none of this affects my main point, which was that the BBC is not tax-funded and is therefore not influenced by government policies.

As I understand it, the government holds the purse strings; it decides what the licence fee should be, and also how much of it the BBC should get.
Licence fee money goes to the government not the BBC.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

As I understand it, the government holds the purse strings; it decides what the licence fee should be, and also how much of it the BBC should get.
Licence fee money goes to the government not the BBC.

That's correct, but I think the point Mike was making is that the Beeb is "apolitical" - in fact, under the terms of the Royal Charter under which it operates, it has to be. The government decides how much money the Beeb gets, but it can't dictate what it does with it.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's correct, but I think the point Mike was making is that the Beeb is "apolitical" - in fact, under the terms of the Royal Charter under which it operates, it has to be. The government decides how much money the Beeb gets, but it can't dictate what it does with it.

I thought the government decides what constitutes Public Service Broadcasting - and the BBC's output then reflects this political decision making.

[HarryT]

The government certainly influences the terms of the BBC's charter (I'm not sure how much, though), which is renewed every ten years. The current charter, for example, which runs from 2007 until 2016, requires that the BBC must do the following:

• Sustain citizenship and civil society;
• Promote education and learning;
• Stimulate creativity and cultural excellence;
• Represent the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
• Bring the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
• Help to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services, and take a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

[Logseman]

At any rate, the BBC model works much better than most public service televisions, particularly better than the Spanish Danaidean Well we call RTVE (RadioTelevisión Española)

[RedHeadPeter]

The BBC model works really well. I now only watch programmes from the commercial channels once I have recorded them (well - except for the IPL!) because having the comparison of programmes without ad breaks (BBC) against those with breaks - even under the time restrictions that operate here - well, why would you sit through all that garbage in real time.
But the knives are out for the BBC. 6 Music looks to be doomed because the commercial broadcasters say it competes, for free, with stuff they are doing, for profit - ie with ads. Except they don't - do the same as 6 Music. Now the Beeb is back-pedalling on its web service because the newspapers don't like them giving stuff away for free (though it is now one of the things I expect in return foir my licence fee - so it isn't free).
AS you might expect this charge is being led by the Murdoch family. The same ones responsible for that paragon of fair reporting, in the USA, Fox News.

[pagansoul]

There is a BBC app on iTunes for both the iPhone and iPad.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by pagansoul

There is a BBC app on iTunes for both the iPhone and iPad.

I don't think that was released by the BBC. I think it's an independent project.

[Argel]

I’m a strong supporter of a well-funded BBC as a guarantor of the presence of a bedrock of quality programming. At the same time, even people within the corporation have begun to acknowledge that in certain areas it has over-reached itself, paradoxically to the detriment of the civil society it seeks to enhance.

Recently the BBC Trust, which oversees the Corporation, nixed plans for a vast network of local news sites. The reason? They accepted the argument that it would simply kill large numbers of local newspapers, who would be faced with competition from a $100 million initiative which not only did not have to turn a profit, it didn’t even have to generate any income at all.

The problem is that the Corporation had expanded into areas where competition operates in very different ways to the original arenas of radio and television.

Though they complain, commercial broadcasters have, by and large, been able to compete with the corporation. Much of that is because the audience do not, by and large, object to advertisement slots (at least not at the frequency currently allowed in the UK). If a programme is good, people will watch it whether it is publicly funded through the license fee or commercially through advertisements.

When it comes to news and magazine content on the web, however, there’s little doubt that the enormous resources the BBC brings to bear in providing free content makes it somewhere between difficult and impossible for others to make a living. You may be able to finance a blog with on-screen advertising but you can’t pay for a network of high-quality correspondents. In effect the Corporation are in danger of stifling the whole eco-system by offering for free what others can only offer through some kind of subscription system. Just because the Murdoch empire is evil, it doesn’t always mean that they’re wrong.

There is precedent for clipping the Corporation’s wings to make space for others. Over recent decades there has been a massive move to outsourcing of programme production. The result has been the growth of a healthy market-place for independently-made programmes which would once have all been generated internally by BBC employees. It has been a win-win situation for the viewing public and the UK economy.