These are interesting times for Kanagroo – the BBC Worldwide/ITV/C4 joint venture that, simply put, is supposed to do for commercial (and commercially sold) TV, what the iPlayer does for the BBC.
Last week Ashley Highfield quite the consortium after four months, having moved across from the BBC mothership to take charge. And a long piece in today’s MediaGuardian suggests that the project has been ridden with internal politics.
It’s also true that the venture has been knocked off its timetable by a Competition Commission investigation which attempts to identify whether the consortium would be monopolistic.
The problem with all of this is that it feels a little like the record companies all over again. I suppose the organisations are at least talking, and know that they have to do something and make some money. But exactly how and what seems to be the question.
In the meantime, iTunes steals a march on video as it has done with music. With its technology being locked to a single, fantastically popular, device line for music, it now has a say so over everything the music industry tries to do. They have to accept Apple’s pricing or not be on the platform. They’ve lost control. Other players have attempted to use Microsoft’s format which works with a wide range of non-Apple devices, but they have small market share and are clunky in their usability (see James’ piece on his attempts to load some video on a WMV player recently).
The various MP3 offerings might be able to take this on, but they tend to be hampered by not having full offerings – the majors are missing from eMusic, Play.com’s MP3 service offers only a subset of what’s available on CDs without all the majors on board, and Amazon’s MP3 service simply hasn’t turned up so far this year despite promises to the contrary.
So iTunes has the whip hand.
And now the same is happening with TV. If you want to go out and download a film or TV show, you really only have one choice – iTunes. Certainly all the broadcasters offer their own services to a lesser or greater extent. But they’re messy – usually streamed – and the user experience is not nice. Only the iPlayer can really compete – and it was actually a latecomer to the market with most of the other broadcasters long having since put their offerings live. The iPlayer has been well marketed – with catch-up reminders accompanying every trail on-air as well as bespoke trails for the service.
There’s nowhere else to go. It’s not even as though iTunes is actually that good for film and TV. The TV is largely US fare with a limited amount of British TV. That’s one of the reasons the Competition Commission got involved of course – one gets the impression that ITV and C4 are holding their programming back to a certain extent. And films are slow to arrive on the platform, often only being available to buy in the first instance, with less profitable rentals coming later (This is unlike Blockbuster, who needs to recoup the cost of each DVD – so multiple rentals on release make sense, as well as offering the copies for sale. Apple on the other hand, does not need to “recoup” a download’s cost, so it prefers to “sell” at a higher price rather than “rent” a digital download).
For a strong and healthy marketplace, we need more than one major operator, which is why it’s important that Kangaroo gets off the ground. Of course, ir’s important that programming is not limited to one supplier – I want to able to choose buy the new Indy film (or not) in HMV, Zavvi, Sainsburys or ASDA. But delays in getting the project off the ground just makes Apple stronger. As it did for music, it has already positioned itself in a good place for portable video with DRM attached (and that, sadly, is going to be necessary in the short-term). That’s not to say that other deals can’t be done – the Sony PSP is an obvious route to market as well as Windows Media video devices. Deals with mobile phone operators would be good, although the manufacturers and networks tend to want you to use their own offerings rather than those of third-parites. But don’t mess around – and get cracking!
We do now hear that a trial will launch in January following an alpha next month. This is ahead of possible approval from the Competition Commission in late January next year or early February. The sooner the better…