iPlayer repeat fees threaten BBC earthquake

Why not....

If you have a TV license, you get access to the content, if you dont, you pay per episode. Then, people who dont watch much (and dont have a TV), pay for what they want, people who do, get everything.

The BBC can charge me for iPlayer the day they stop forcing me to pay a licence fee just to own a TV.

I think the only thing I've ever watched on iPlayer is Irish Road Racing and I only watch that because it's only broadcasted on BBC Northern Ireland. The few programmes that I actually watch they repeat constantly anyway.

F1 and Top Gear on the BBC

I'm all for it! Please do this.

Being in the US, I would definitely be willing to pay-per-view (if you will) for both online F1 coverage and Top Gear UK, and occasionally news coverage. Maybe with this model change they could even carry the entire season, again, next year. I don't see Sky doing this - and I really dread having to watch racing interrupted by long commercial breaks (on a cable service you have to PAY for) - with commentators who generally have no clue about what is going on. More than likely I will just wait for a torrent instead of having to put myself through that pain.

As it is now, although I would send something to the BBC so I can legally watch both of these live on the iPlayer - but there is no way to do so. Now when I pay for this, I will expect a good quality feed - as glitch free as possible.

Thinking about this...

...I find myself in the depressing position of some agreement with Andrew. Two things worry me about the pay-as-you-go model, and they are strongly coupled:

1) Pursuing popular (and thus revenue) replaces quality. Just because something is popular does not make it any good (for example, Budweiser is popular). This would be the end of various public service and minor language. broadcasts

2) Continued dumbing-down. Horizon (which one other commentard mentions) is now so lacklustre is barely takes any effort to watch. Would pay-as-you-go lead to an improvement? Hardly. Just look at the likes of National Geographic, this once hard-hitting and thought provoking organisation is now reduced to showing clap-trap about ghosts and other fictions just to bring in the eyeballs.

So how does one get a fair pay model and yet keep the public service requirement. Preferably without having to watch bloody adverts! Hmm...maybe that's the reason I appear to have around 300 DVDs....

It seems that we weren't actually meant to use iPlayer

Having read this post and also the one where the politician moots licencing PC's (that could only come from a politician) it actually sounds to me like iPlayer wasn't created to actually be used. Now that it is being used, and used to some length by the sound of it, it seems to have become a problem.

Let's get a playing field level first of all, Virgin is a supplier of media services, it isn't a broadcaster in the sense that the BBC is, for that matter, neither is Sky, although Virgin once held a holding in a company called Crown Castle IIRC and they were responsible for the UK channels, (Gold, Living etc) Sky does have it's own channels and it finances some of its own material but essentially is a media provider. So, I think compairing the BBC, to Sky and VM is not really apples with apples.

So, I have to ask the question, was iPlayer actually meant to be used?, as it seems to have become such a success it is now considered that it's worth monetizing something that has already been paid for by those who would be expected to monetize it again and again.

USA here

I live in a small town, and our cable company doesn't get BBC America. I'd gladly pay for IPlayer access, instead of being a scurvy pirate like I am now. I quit pirating most stuff because I can get it streaming on Netflix now. Netflix has a pretty decent back catalog of BBC content, but nothing recent. If I want to get my Sherlock, Dr Who, Topgear, QI, I have to go extra legal. By the way, my mother in law gets BBC America, and they chop the shows to fit in ads.

Absolute bullet in the foot if done via iPlayer

I think that the comments about pay-per-view weakening the case for the license fee are extremely valid. I'm sympathetic to the BBC's desire to get an additional revenue stream from pay-per-view, but really do wonder how they can achieve that via iPlayer.

What's the problem? Well, as I understand it (and I could be very wrong - this is just going from my recollections of previous media discussions about BBC commercial activities), the BBC is legally required to do all of its commercialisation via a separate commercial arm - BBC Worldwide Ltd. That ensures that the commercial marketplace for products is not skewed in the BBC's favour, and ensures that it does not use license fee money (which it presumably spends an awful lot of on iPlayer) to disadvantage competitors (e.g. subscription services). If the BBC starts charging for TV programs via iPlayer then you can guarantee that Sky, Virgin etc. will complain that license fee money (spent on the iPlayer platform) is being used to compete with them for online services such as viewing old shows etc.

It might be that the forthcoming YouView platform will allow the BBC (or maybe BBC Worldwide) to provide pay-per-view as e.g. "BBC pay-per-view", *totally* separate from the main BBC iPlayer service and so not breach its legal obligations.

However, the main thing seems to be that the BBC needs to be able to license content so that it can be distributed online very shortly after broadcast, instead of e.g. having to wait for DVD box sets to be released etc. That sounds like more of a commercial issue with rights holders than a fundamental issue with whether or not the BBC (in whatever guise) can offer pay-per-view.

Have a look on LoveFilm and NetFlix - the TV show content is somewhat limited, and they would presumably love to get their hands on more recent shows, subject to the price being right.

Simplest and safest thing for the BBC is to sort out licensing so that programs can be licensed at reasonable rates for online distribution very shortly after broadcast, and for the BBC *not* to offer those online commercial services themselves as doing so would just threaten the license fee.

Last thing - who on earth is going to pay £1.89 for a show?! 10p maybe, but at that kind of price it's a total no-go. To work, it has to be commercially attractive to punters.

The net has exploded the myth that we'll pay for something even if we don't use it

It's also exploded the myth that people would have paid for something if they couldn't get it for free (a myth that is still perpetuated by the ridiculous "Piracy costs the industry £x million a year" propaganda).

I think people being asked to pay again to watch something they've already paid for will resort in a lot of people turning to torrents.

Or just...

....download the show from any one of lots of other places. For free.

I do worry that they might go under if people do this - obviously the license fee only goes so far. Ahem.

Or just don't watch it. Let's be honest, about the ONLY thing that's even vaguely decent on the BBC are the natural world docs. There are no proper investigative journo docs any more.

Crap that I for one am not willing to pay any extra for. Not when I already pay a license fee. For God knows what reason.

Doubly screwed

If the BBC wanted to do this with a view of reducing the license tax with these extra proceeds, I would support it. My fear is that the license tax will remain and go up and while you have to pay to watch programs you already contributed to the making of through the tax.

As someone who would not miss the loss of access to 'BBC' services I would be happy to pay for just the BBC services I wanted to watch / listen to. Not a fan of 'Sherlock', 'Dr Who' or any other of the amazing programs the BBC make. My problem is I do consume commercial services that are also mean having to pay the BBC tax.

To me you either have one method of funding or the other (tax or pay as you or), not both. Both just means that they get to charge multiple times for the same thing and the first time you had not choice in the matter. You get doubly screwed....

Does not make sense

"For much of its history, the BBC attracted the best talent, groomed it, and focussed it. Sherlock is a rare example of the BBC making TV that's popular and stunning - it concentrates some CERN-like talent on a show. "

If the BBC "attracted the best talent, groomed it, and focussed it.", then examples "of the BBC making TV that's popular and stunning" would not be "rare", but common surely?

The point of one sentence gets contradicted by point of the following one.....

delivery charge

Dont market it as paying for a program, market it as paying for content delivery, servers, archive upkeep, forward investment.

Want to view it straight away (live)? Covered in license fee. Perhaps even make 'live' within 2 weeks of first showing.

Want to view it a month later? 10p to have it accessible as much as you like. No license fee required.

Amazing ignorance

The punditry from people who can't be bothered to look up facts on here is staggering.

The BBC licence fee is the world's cheapest legal access to broadcast content.

The BBC is the unchallenged doyen of public service broadcasters, despite having only political enemies (no allies), senior management with suicidal tendencies in negotiations and a workforce that is drastically underpaid. (Median pay has fallen 8% behind inflation in the last five years.) A combination of BBC management and political enemies ensures, for example, that broadcasting on non-BBC media is PAID FOR BY THE BBC (the exact opposite of any rational model of programme rights purchase), while being forced to purchase content from bloated production companies that have guaranteed access to BBC broadcast media.

Anyone who proposes that we need some kind of US model of broadcasting is like, er, someone proposing that the way to cure unemployment and boost the balance of payments is to cut payments to people dependent on social security in the belief that it will encourage them to find work, while increasing tax breaks for those that stash their spare savings offshore. Oh, wait a moment,.....

So..

1,8*3*7*4=151. that is the amount they think woukd be "fair" for a normal user (not me) to pay for reruns.

I guess their idea of "fair" is not so... fair?

Bugger it

To be fair, im not paying for a license, I stopped it the day F1 stopped being on the Beeb, it was more or less the only thing I watched on it and as for anything else? well I can honestly say my life would not be worse off missing them

So Bugger it, I couldn't care less what they do to the iplayer, and I have no right to use it or moan about it anyway (although I do believe that the license is for broadcasted media only, not recordings which technically means I can watch it if I so wish to do so, I think!)! but anyway.

Yes, having a TV plugged in to a receiving service means I should have a license, and yes the Beeb does actually give some of the money to the other channels, so its kind of hard to say you only watch non beeb programs, which is exactly why my life doesn't revolve around TV and they are not going to get a single penny out of my pocket..... and yup, this is all down the F1 shafting, I know that's silly, I know its childish, but im standing up for my views and whilst doing so realized I couldn't give a Scooby about any of it :)

The simple answer is... ...it depends.

This is a issue about rights, not some abstract debate of what's "free" and what's not.

There are three types of rights. The question is about Distribution rights and who holds them for each programme. That will have to be known before any programme can be priced and sold for downloadable delivery.

1. CONTRIBUTOR rights - these are the royalties to the performers, paid through the various rights agencies. They are a continuing cost to the DISTRIBUTOR (as opposed to other production costs,which tend to be one-off costs during production).

2. DISTRIBUTION rights give the right to sell the finished programme across channels, territories etc, (according to what they agreed when they set the payment rate with their contributors - tricky part - for many older programmes, the idea of "online" or even "VHS video" wasn't foreseen at the time).

3. BROADCAST rights are permissions purchased by broadcasters from the distributors to show that programme X number of times on their channels. Nowadays "broadcast" rights need to cover lots of alternatives, online downloads, DVDs, or whatever. These are revenue to the distributor and on a good day are more than the costs.

Whoever wants to collect the £1.89s from the audience is acting like a broadcaster and will need to buy the online download rights off the distributor (who in turn, will need to shell out the contributors' cut).

The BBC often acts as some or all of these three rights holders, which is where the fun and games begin and helps explain the unique way in which the BBC is organised and managed - let alone funded.

What needs to happen is that ...

...for programmes where the BBC holds ALL the distribution rights (and we kind of guess they'd agree to sell broadcast rights to themselves, it would be perverse not to) then the programme is probably fully paid for and could be sold online, but with a 100% discount to those who show they've got a valid TV licence number.

... for programmes where the BBC doesn't hold and current broadcast rights, then it's up to the DISTRIBUTOR to licence the programmes for online download and the likelihood is the audience will have to pay the £1.89 because the BBC didn't buy all the broadcast rights in perpetuity that cover Online delivery.

... for programmes where BBC Worldwide has entered syndication agreements with others, then who knows??? All bets are off and many more lengthy meetings (with no biscuits) is the most probable outcome.

There's one tiny snag here.

It does rather depend upon being able to reach a definitive answer of who owns what across rights management in the BBC and that's not quite straightforward.

So the very old stuff, like Spike Milligan's "Q" series, is going to be hard. New productions will already have thought about internet delivery, but then it's just about how much the distributor should expect to receive for allowing someone else the right to charge the end-user £1.89.

If I were the government . . .

I'd be saying "Splendid idea, BBC. I can see you're not happy with the licence revenue. Go ahead and charge for everything instead. Set your own prices. We'll split off and keep the taxpayer funded web site, and you can go your own way."

It's the things in the BBC Archives that they've never released on CD or DVD that I'd be interested in paying for. I'm talking both TV and radio. Well, assuming they haven't wiped it, which they did with a lot of the radio prior to 1990. I'd happily pay them to download a better copy of "Telford's Change" than the one I have, or their radio version of "Merchant of Venice" with David Suchet & Hannah Gordon, as examples of programming on my long list of their shows I'd like to see or hear.