
The BBC’s attempt to build a Netflix-style service was snuffed by regulation - open-source-ux
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bbc-netflix-rival-failure
======
IanCal
The reason for these regulations is that the BBC can produce and offer things
free at the point of use (broadly) because of an essentially forced payment.
This _can_ have problems because it puts a greater barrier in the way for
competitors.

I'm not sure they got it right here but there is a valid reason for this kind
of regulation.

> The British TV industry wouldn’t see an on-demand service for nearly another
> decade.

I'm sorry, what? There was an on demand service before this, as talked about
in the article. And it absolutely didn't take until near 2019 to see others
appearing.

> Netflix would’ve never stood a chance of getting its current market
> penetration [in the UK],” says the BBC source. “All the big players would
> have had the market covered for streaming video-on-demand (SVOD)

That's kind of the point though, isn't it?

~~~
mikehall314
The wider context here is that ministers have been arguing that the BBC is
behind the times, because Netflix-style on-demand services are the way people
want to consume content now. Not only that, but an annual subscription to
Netflix is cheaper than the BBC licence fee.

The BBC have responded by pointing out that government regulators killed off
their attempt to work with competitors to produce such a service over a decade
ago (Project Kangaroo), and now they’re being criticised by government for not
being one.

~~~
jacquesm
> because Netflix-style on-demand services are the way people want to consume
> content now

Is it? I have been exposed a bit to Netflix and the content is a lot of filler
with the occasional interesting movie. But not nearly enough value for what it
costs in my opinion, and with the _very_ limited programming it would become
boring quickly.

~~~
whycombagator
> because Netflix-style on-demand services are the way people want to consume
> content now

> Is it? I have been exposed a bit to Netflix and the content is a lot of
> filler with the occasional interesting movie.

The comment you quote says "the way people want to consume", but your comment
is about the content itself.

I think most people want the on-demand style, but of course everyone also
wants there to be good content. Content being equal, do you think on-demand
content is not the way most people would want to consume it?

~~~
angry_octet
When several people are potentially watching it can take a long time to reach
consensus. Even by myself I've scrolled Netflix for 15 minutes and then turned
it off, because I can't agree what I want to watch...

In contrast, channels have content in sync with the rhythm of the day and the
hour. You only have to choose the channel. I wish I could flick through
channel streams at the speed I can flick through broadcast channels.

------
phire
British Telecom was trialing on-demand video deployments in the 80s.

No internet, instead it used fibre optic cable to create a switched video
network, which could be used to watch normal cable tv channels, or connect the
user to a dedicated remote laserdisc player.

While such systems never got wide-spread deployments, it's interesting to
consider how the media landscape would have changed if we had gone that route.

Source, A promotional/technical video from the time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1AiM1S8MGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1AiM1S8MGk)

~~~
sofaofthedamned
BBC research are amazing. They've been doing this for decades, most recently
with next gen codecs and latency issues on internet transmission. As a British
person I'm actually proud of them, even though many people complain their
politics are orthogonal to mine.

~~~
gerdesj
We have a few institutions that are close to being considered legendary across
the planet: NHS and BBC spring to mind. Neither of those two are perfect but
they are both ground breaking and a bit subversive.

I doubt anyone not from these shores (UK) would ever peg the UKoGB as a hot
bed of left wing leaning types. Our stereotype abroad is pretty fixed and
pretty obvious ( _) and also encouraged by us: tourism is a bloody good
earner.

We (people in the UK) now find ourselves as rabid defenders of a left wing
dream, despite our political leanings. You know why as well as I do, that we
love our NHS. If I want to, I can wander into a hospital ER and will be seen
to, without any discussion of money. When someone needs medical assistance,
metal discs or bits of paper should not be involved - they are merely pretty
things and not useful.

(_) I should point out here that the "British Scientists" meme in Russia (int
al) is one we are aware of, and also laugh at and with. There are loads more:
and we still laugh with you, because we love you.

~~~
etripe
Regarding the NHS: what do you base that global legendary status on? I don't
have any data, myself, but I would say its status probably applies to the
anglosphere (as legendary) and probably only as middling (as compared to other
European countries')

~~~
heavenlyblue
Have you never spoken to someone British about NHS? It’s basically a religion
in this country.

~~~
namdnay
Yeah it's really weird, anyone who has used the health system in France,
Switzerland, Belgium or many others would never praise the NHS. Don't get me
wrong, it's a decent healthcare system that runs on very little money, but
it's no way near the best

~~~
randomsearch
Probably in value for money it's the best. It's also an institution that has
yet to be destroyed by capitalism, in that many people working in the NHS do
so because it's a vocation and make large personal sacrifices to make it work.

~~~
rzmnzm
that sounds terrible

~~~
randomsearch
It’s a noble thing to follow a vocation without being driven entirely by self
interest.

In contrast, once market forces were unleashed in academia, good will built
over decades was lost and a lot of great people quit. Very hard to get that
good will and sense of vocation back.

Not everything in life has been to be run by markets driven by self interest.
Some things do better without them.

------
jameshart
Historically, one of the benefits of a licensepayer-funded national
broadcaster in the BBC was that it served as a nexus for investment in media
distribution infrastructure and standards. The BBC played a leading role in
the definition of TV transmission standards, including advances like color,
teletext, closed captioning, digital audio, and digital video; In the digital
era they have helped to develop video compression and codec technology, in
particular trying to ensure that there are unencumbered royalty-free options
for video processing.

In the light of that it would seem natural for the BBC to be involved in
developing a standard, equal access streaming platform for content
distribution in the internet era - in exactly the same way as their
transmission investments helped to bootstrap independent broadcasting, BBC
investment in streaming would have smoothed the road for independent content
producers to follow.

The particular tragedy is that, for its time, iPlayer was a phenomenally well
engineered product - the BBC had done the work to deliver a scalable, user
friendly streaming platform, before anybody else had really done so. Taking
that platform that had been built with licensepayer money and using it to
create a platform that let commercial players deliver content to UK consumers
would have created a very different media market and set an alternative shape
for how streaming services might work - and yes, it might have obviated the
need for Netflix in the UK, but it would have opened up the UK media market to
the likes of HBO, Disney, the NFL, and so on in ways that would have
profoundly changed the media landscape.

------
Jaruzel
Internally, the BBC have a private streaming platform, [that used to be]
called 'Redux' where 90%+ of their entire back catalogue is available for
staff and journos to watch and search, as it's all fully indexed with
thumbnails, and complete scripts. The UI is something out of the 90s but it
works and is used all the time.

~~~
Mindwipe
Redux is very good at it's job, but it's very much not built as a public
streaming platform and doesn't do a lot of real world things you'd need such a
platform to do.

------
lagadu
This article is weird: the tone it sets is that them being blocked was a bad
thing but then they say:

> Netflix would’ve never stood a chance of getting its current market
> penetration [in the UK],” says the BBC source. “All the big players would
> have had the market covered for streaming video-on-demand (SVOD)

That's exactly why they blocked it: to allow for multiple individual
competitors to enter the market. So... the regulators did a good job after
all: by blocking the huge merging of content from three of the biggest
providers in the UK.

~~~
TheNorthman
Don't confuse the article having an ideology for it being wrong. State-
operated streaming services have had success in other countries without
monopolistic problems.

Take, for example, Denmark where, in addition to hosting a streaming service,
multiple state TV-channels have gone online-only. On top of this, public
libraries themselves have their own free streaming services.

------
underwater
> Digital was considered the “weird sibling” of television and radio before
> the internet content boom, and commissioners in traditional broadcast were
> worried digital services would cannibalise their audiences.

I spent some time working for a similar organization. And even in 2020, the
same attitudes prevails. I've literally seen radio personalities and producers
admit the audience is declining, but ask why we can't just milk the boomer
audience until they all die off in 30 years time.

These organisations are filled with people who only understand one way to do
things, and are incredibly hostile to change. The people on the ground resist
any big strategic shifts from management, and use their union powers to fight
back.

~~~
flir
ITV's got it bad.

------
veeralpatel979
The article seems to imply that if BBC launched its own video streaming
service when Netflix was still sending DVDs, it would've become the next
Netflix.

I have to disagree. The execution is what really matters, not the idea.

\- Could BBC have hired the talent to build and scale a credible competitor?

\- Could BBC have popularized the model of on-demand, subscription based TV?

\- Could BBC have acquired and created content people want to watch?

If the answer to these questions is yes (and the regulations in question
aren't a problem), I would highly encourage BBC to launch a video streaming
service today!

~~~
peteretep
wat?

> Could BBC have hired the talent to build and scale a credible competitor?

Yes, iPlayer pre-dates digital Netflix by a significant margin

And BBC content is sold widely worldwide.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
The challenge isn't building a website that can stream video. The challenge is
streaming 15% (I think it used to be even higher) of total internet traffic,
which is what Netflix does. iPlayer shows the ability to do the former, not
the latter.

This isn't to say that BBC couldn't have pulled it off, just that iPlayer
isn't evidence that they would have.

~~~
PaulRobinson
iPlayer streams about 350 million shows a month. It accounts for a fair bit
more than 15% of UK internet traffic and is more popular than Netflix within
the UK. I know former staff who have disclosed privately some of the traffic
numbers to me - they have the capability to do this sort of traffic, yes.

Edit: you may be interested in the detail here:
[http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/iplayer/iplayer-
perfo...](http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/iplayer/iplayer-performance-
jan19.pdf) \- it should be clear the iPlayer is not just "a website"

------
dblooman
At one point, BBC iPlayer was building a MSN plugin so that you could talk to
your friends whilst you watched TV programs, this is 10 years ago though.

------
maxehmookau
Weird. Because soon, government regulation will probably _force_ the BBC to
build a Netflix-style service.

------
gpmcadam
Lift the regulations. Let them compete on the open market.

------
chrisseaton
Why does the BBC want to 'kill' Netflix? Why isn't it enough to provide their
own service? Why do they want to 'kill' off independent competitors?

~~~
throwGuardian
Because BBC (and by proxy the ones that control it) want to have the last word
on news and culture. What used to be a center left organization is now teeming
with many in the far left, blatantly allied with the labor party [1].

Turning state funded media into a partisan propaganda agency typically doesn't
end well in a democracy.

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC)

~~~
pjc50
I think you missed the last decade of conservative government, their
influence, and the persistent platforming of the extreme right by BBCQT.

~~~
throwGuardian
> persistent platforming of ..

First off, a journalist/news channel doesn't/shouldn't only hear from voices
that affirm biases, especially state funded ones - in this case, it's healthy
for the BBC to hear opposing views taken by their editorial staff.

Secondly, de-platforming shouldn't be there normal. Your phrasing is
indicative of a trend towards decimation of speech in western civilization.
Your labels of "extreme right" are unsubstantiated and expectations of default
deplatforming of anything right of "far left", dangerous to discourse.

For the unfamiliar, here [1] is a recent example of the alleged "platforming"
done by BBC QT as alleged by the op. These days, it's gotten all too common to
label opposing opinions with extremely inaccurate strawman-able distasteful
labels, just to censor them.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/re7K2SGMmHU](https://youtu.be/re7K2SGMmHU)

------
INTPenis
Worth noting here is that Swedish public broadcasting SVT have had an online
streaming service since 2006. Even though Sweden is also a pretty regulated
socialist democracy in most people's eyes.

Because every time I see one of these headlines on a site full of VC
entrepreneurs I take it as an attack on government regulation.

Government should regulate business, there's nothing bad about that. G20 is
about to discuss massive government regulation of business to get back lost
tax revenue.

It's just important to find a balance.

~~~
tomhoward
> _a site full of VC entrepreneurs_

If this ever was true (and I guess it was at the beginning if you counted YC
as a VC back then), it's certainly not anymore.

YC-funded company founders are a tiny minority of participants here these
days, and founders of other VC-backed companies barely register as a presence
at all.

------
hogFeast
It is amazing to watch this story get rewritten in the media by the BBC
lobbyists.

Kangaroo was never a standalone streaming service. All the parties had
streaming services already. BBC were the only ones who planned to offer
current content on the platform, and even then it was a link to their own
streaming service. The main purpose of this was to sell the back catalogue.

So, no wonder this didn't occur. This project was talked about for years, it
never really got started. And the BBC then realised that they could just sell
you the programs you paid to develop through Netflix. Revenue in content sales
is going through the roof, all that is going into the pockets of staff...why
bother creating something new? It is a total scam.

The stuff about the Competition Commission is quite correct though. They made
a series of bogus decisions around this time (Pure Gym/Gym Group being another
one) where they chose some odd definition of market size. As with most other
British institutions, including the BBC, it is run by the
academic/lobbyist/civil servant...lots of board seats, no experience of
business beyond lobbying for subsidies, quite remarkable.

------
seibelj
I can draw a flying car with lasers attached to it, doesn't mean it would
actually happen. And if someone built the flying laser car later, I can't take
credit for it just because I doodled it on a napkin years before it was
created.

It's cool that some people at the BBC tried to make a video streaming app.
Many companies tried, several successfully, yet Netflix beat all of them for a
whole variety of reasons. I seriously doubt BBC had the engineering talent to
defeat Netflix, even if there weren't millions of regulations preventing a
government-owned media company from innovating.

~~~
archgrove
I think you’re misunderstanding. This was built. The BBC iPlayer was streaming
video to the whole of the U.K. in 2007.

~~~
heavenlyblue
So who cares if it was the first? USSR won the space race at the time, and
where are they now?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The only country capable of sending scheduled passenger carrying trips to the
ISS?

