Blogging the Beeb

It's the Product, stupid

Ever since Mark Thompson and Greg Dyke highlighted the role of personal video recorders in the year 2000, advertsiing publications have been full of fears about the end of spot advertising as viewers hurtle through the ad breaks - with the obvious conclusion that ad-funded TV is in decline and in future there will have to be more sponsored programming and product placement.

Wired points out that writers for US TV are now having to insert product references, and their unions are calling for a Code of Conduct.

Product Placement rules are to be revised in the new TV Without Frontiers Directive, and OFCOM is consulting on this.

Commercial TV programmes will be even more commercial - a good reason why we need the BBC to provide an alternative.

Various

Too busy to blog recently. As an update, the BBC plans to reduce finance jobs and move some to Cardiff, there's been a restructuring of the BBC senior board by Mark Thompson, and there are plans to split the BBC's Kingswood Warren research team and move part of it to Manchester.

David Elstein is interviewed about the BBC by Digital Spy. Via.

Interesting post on ReinventTV about the economics of TV in the Video on Demand age.

Keep Broadcasting Public

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has a conference on the BBC's future next March:

The conference ‘Keep Broadcasting Public: BBC Charter Renewal’ is a joint initiative of the TUC, Federation of Entertainment Unions and the CPBF. It will be hosted by the TUC at Congress House in London and opened by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

BBC Digital Developments

Digital Lifestyles (DL) has a number of articles about the BBC's digital plans.

First it questions whether Freesat will be anything more than a spoiler for BSkyB. Judging by my constituency, where most people cannot get Freeview, Freesat is a goer, but the BBC needs to get on with it. The hostility to the Corporation's recent licence fee bid was significant: there is a real sense of injustice that those who can't get Freeview are expected to pay the same as those who can.

DL also reviews the BBC's Interative Media Player:

My verdict - I give it a thumbs up as long as a large enough library of content can be made available.

There is also coverage of the BBC's online film showcase, and some commentary on Radio One's plans for broadcasting video content on digital TV:

This is the first time Radio 1 has delivered visual content on demand for TV and takes the BBC's plans to visualise radio up a gear.

No product placement

The BBC has cleared the makers of Spooks of product placement but says there were examples of too much 'product prominence.'

Doing too much?

Ex-BBC exec Janet Street-Porter suggests - a common complaint - that the BBC is doing too much (registration site).

Keeping Broadcasting Public

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has updated its BBC Charter Review document.

Lords Committee to reconvene

Over the summer, the House of Lords BBC Charter Review Committee announced that it would extend its enquiry into the BBC, looking into Sport, the Licence Fee, the Nations and Regions, the BBC as Commissioner. the World Service and Religion. The deadline for submissions is next Monday.

The Committee's first report will be published before the end of October, based on evidence so far.