New media services and genres:
a survey
21. A range of new services and genres is now emerging,
taking up the opportunities offered by technological change. The
short survey which follows offers a snapshot of what was new to
the market in early 2007, when this report was prepared.
On demand and "time-shifting" services
22. Domestic television viewing practices are beginning
to move away from the standard format, in which viewers watch
linear services at the time of transmission. By March 2006, there
were over 1.4 million subscribers to BSkyB's Sky+ personal video
recorder (PVR) service, which uses a hard disk drive to store
digital TV programmes and replay them with no reduction in picture
quality. PVR facilties are also offered for broadcasts by BT,
Telewest (now Virgin Media) and the Freeview consortium.[51]
ITV cited forecasts that there could be 10 million homes in the
UK with PVRs by 2014.[52]
23. All the major UK broadcasters have launched or
are planning to launch on-demand services. Besides the BBC proposals
which are described below, Channel 4 has launched a videoondemand
product using cable technology (in late 2006) and via broadband
(in March 2007). The broadband service allows users to catch up
on content up to 28 days after transmission and to access archive
material from the past two decades. ITV plans to launch an ondemand
broadband service in spring 2007.
24. In December 2006, BT launched BT Vision, offering
a range of on-demand and interactive services via a BT broadband
line,[53] complemented
by access to Freeview channels received via a standard aerial.
BT stressed the interactive potential offered by the broadband
line, which permits flows of data both to and from the user. BT
suggested that TV-based interactivity could help bridge the "digital
divide", providing information services to people who do
not have a PC at home.[54]
It hinted that its network could have the capacity in future to
offer not just single services on-demand but streaming of a range
of channels.[55]
25. Digital files of music and film content are already
widely available on demand. The UK Film Council noted the convenience
for consumers of downloading a file rather than renting a DVD,
and it saw the potential for on-demand download transactions to
generate very substantial revenues for the film industry.[56]
The growth in the number of online music sales outlets has enabled
consumers to become more selective about the music they listen
to (and where they obtain it). The British Phonographic Industry
(BPI) acknowledged that there was a move towards a track-based
culture and a "sampleable" framework for music listening,
which gives buyers more opportunity to buy selected tracks from
a compilation rather than obliging them to buy a complete album.[57]
The Musicians' Union made the same point and warned that the music
industry would need to adapt to this extension of consumer choice.[58]
26. While PVRs have allowed consumers to "time-shift"
their viewing, other technologies have emerged which enable them
to "place-shift". For example, the Slingbox allows viewers
to redirect the television signal from their home to their desktop
or laptop, regardless of where the computer is located. This means,
for example, that viewers can access domestic services from their
home country while they are overseas, as long as they have a broadband
connection. There is already heated debate about the complex rights
issues which are raised, as it becomes possible for viewers to
gain access to content which is available in their home country
but which has not been released in the destination country.
Television on mobile handsets
27. Since October 2006, BT, in partnership with Virgin
Mobile, has offered a service "Movio"broadcasting
digital TV and radio to mobile phone handsets in the UK. The service
uses spectrum allocated to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) services[59]
and offers a range of content including BBC One, ITV1, Channel
4, E4, ITN News and DAB radio. BT trials ahead of the launch of
the Movio service found the TV and radio service to be either
"appealing" or "very appealing" and that consumers
watched on average 66 minutes of television on their mobiles each
week. The principal constraint was signal strength and reception
quality.[60] Evidence
from these trials needs to be placed against consumer surveys
which report that only 17% of the wider public are keen on taking
up mobile TV;[61] and
questions remain, as ITV pointed out, about the viability of television
services delivered by mobile telephony as a mass market model.[62]
28. BT is not the only provider of televisual content
to mobile handsets in the UK. Witnesses from the Mobile Broadband
Group outlined services offering streamed live content (as opposed
to video clips on demand) available to mobile handsets using 3G
technology based upon cellular networks. The nature of 3G technology
can place a strain on network capacity if there are large numbers
of simultaneous connections.[63]
We asked therefore whether the quality of the picture would degrade
when the number of users reached a certain level. The Mobile Broadband
Group assured us that technological enhancements using HSDPA technology[64]
were being developed which would provide the necessary capacity.[65]
29. Other technologies capable of transmitting television
services to mobiles are being developed. In Korea, we were shown
services using Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) technology;
Italy is pioneering the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting (Handheld))
standard which, it was suggested by BT, could be a future technology
for the UK if spectrum is made available.[66]
Arqiva and O2 have already conducted a trial of broadcast
mobile TV using DVBH technology in late 2005, which reported
positive results. Sky has also conducted a trial using MediaFlo
technology. It is not clear at this stage the extent to which
the market will support a number of competing technologies.
30. Mobile handsets, while not an obvious choice
for prolonged viewing of television content such as film[67]
or drama,[68] are nonetheless
suited to short clips from fulllength shows, comedy sketches
or sports highlights. Producers of television programming are
therefore responding with specially assembled packages"mobisodes"[69]on
which consumers can "snack"[70]
while on the move or in short leisure breaks. The Mobile Broadband
Group forecast that mobile content would become more sophisticated
once battery life for handsets had lengthened.[71]
BBC new media services
31. In Building Public Value, the BBC's policy
paper published in June 2004, the BBC set out its vision for expansion
of its digital services, recognising its key role in enabling
digital switchover and outlining a set of new digital services.
It stated that "over the next decade, the BBC will invest
in digital infrastructure, content, services and promotion to
help bring the benefits of the new digital technologies to everyone".[72]
As the Charter Review process proceeded, the BBC refined and trialled
its proposals, and Government confirmed its intention that the
BBC should have the scope, under the future Charter and Agreement,
to develop its role as a "trusted guide" to new technology
in broadcasting.[73]
32. In April 2006, the Director-General of the BBC
announced "a new editorial blueprint designed to deliver
more value to audiences over the next six years and turn the BBC's
public purposes laid out in the recent White Paper into quality
content for the on-demand world". Known as Creative Future,
the BBC's blueprint includes plans to relaunch the BBC website,
deliver a new teen brand via broadband, TV and radio services,
and "learn from the world of video games and experiment with
commissioning for new platforms".[74]
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, the settlement of a
licence fee at a level lower than that sought by the BBC will
have on its online plans.
33. Some of the BBC's proposed new services have
now undergone trials. The BBC has for some time offered podcasts
of its radio output, allowing consumers to download excerpts from
recent broadcasts. There were 4.8 million downloads of BBC radio
programmes in September 2006.[75]
Television content has also been made available on demand for
a seven-day window on a trial basis to 5,000 households. The two
proposals have now been rolled together to form a packagethe
BBC i-Playerwhich has recently undergone a Public Value
Test and has been approved by the BBC Trust, subject to modifications.
34. A proposal for a Creative Archive was announced
in 2003 by the then Director-General, Greg Dyke, in a speech at
the Edinburgh Television Festival. The aim of the Archive is "to
create a substantialbut selectednational archive
of audio-visual material in the public domain that is available
for users to download, manipulate and reuse for their own ends".[76]
A one-year pilot has been held in which members of the Creative
Archive Licence Group[77]
have made material available under a licence which sets out restrictions,
including requirements that anything created from Creative Archive
content must credit those who have contributed to it and that
downloaded material cannot be used for commercial purposes. The
pilot closed in September 2006 and the project is expected to
be submitted to the BBC Trust in order to undergo a Public Value
Test.
35. The BBC described the Archive as providing "creative
fuel for the nation",[78]
and it was praised by many. The British Screen Advisory Council
(a cross-sector body seeking to enhance the prosperity and effectiveness
of the screen industries in the UK) said that it very much welcomed
the Creative Archive as "a natural and logical way of the
BBC making its programme archive materials either more easily
available or, in many cases, available for the first time to the
public"; and it described the venture as "brave".[79]
Others described the Creative Archive as "a grand and generous
vision"[80] and
as "an innovative way of giving back the content which has
effectively been paid for by public funds".[81]
The National Consumer Council also commended the initiative, although
it regretted that the range of material available was limited
and "fragmented", as it depended upon rights holders'
exercise of their rights.[82]
However, others expressed serious reservations about the project,
because of the message it might convey on copyright and the potential
for harmful effects on commercial undertakings. We examine these
arguments at paragraphs 155 and 187 respectively.
36. The BBC has also trialled a local TV service,
which used satellite and broadband technologies to deliver local
news content to viewers in the West Midlands between December
2005 and August 2006. This too has attracted controversy, with
concerns being expressed by the newspaper industry. The Director-General
of the BBC recently acknowledged that the local TV trial had raised
some "quite big questions", adding that there was no
certainty that the trial would be carried forward in the light
of the "tight" licence fee settlement.[83]
37. The BBC possesses a vast archive which has until
now been difficult or impossible for the public to access. Mr
Ashley Highfield (Director of New Media and Technology at the
BBC) told us that 99.9% of all of the BBC's archive content was
"stuck on shelves gently vinegaring away" and that the
BBC was looking at how to make it available.[84]
Since then, the BBC has announced a "limited consumer trial",
expected to last for up to six months, in which 20,000 triallists
would have free access to 1,000 hours of archive content drawn
from a mix of genres. Ultimately, the BBC proposes to make large
parts of its television and radio archive available on demand
to licence fee payers.[85]
User-generated content
38. The genre in which recent growth has been especially
striking is user-generated content on the Internet. The last two
years have witnessed an explosion in the amount of audio, video
and written material posted on websites such as YouTube, MySpace,
and Flickr. Google told us that there are 65,000 videos uploaded
to YouTube every day and a blog is created every second.[86]
Tools of the trade are relatively inexpensive, typically a webcam
or a mobile phone; and content may be uploaded and downloaded
using either PCs and their equivalents or mobile phones. The nature
of the content varies widely from short home-produced films to
mobile phone video coverage of dramatic events.[87]
Channel 4 identified the emergence of a new generation of non-professional
creators, expressing themselves increasingly through their own
websites, blogs, podcasts, games and digital art; and it believed
that some of these creators would become "key players in
the UK's creative industries in the coming years".[88]
Channel 4's FourDocs project enables people to upload their own
documentaries for assessment by Channel 4 commissioning editors,
while also providing advice to documentary makers.[89]
39. The UK Film Council welcomed the development
of user-generated content as "an entirely welcome democratisation
of the media", important in its ability "to stimulate
the development of better informed citizens and a more media-literate
society".[90] For
Google (which had just announced an intention to purchase YouTube
at the time of giving oral evidence), the "huge revolution"
symbolised by the rapid emergence of user-generated content showed
that users were "finding a way to express themselves"
and were wanting to "participate in the creative process
of media".[91]
40. User-generated content commonly re-uses creative
material from other sources (typically music or visual art and
design). Such practices have led to disputes over rights, an issue
which we note in more detail at paragraph 170. The BBC's Creative
Archive pilot was designed to enable re-use of material to create
derivative works; but the extent to which it enhances creativity
is debatable. Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL) suggested that
the BBC was muddled about what the Creative Archive was trying
to achieve, confusing the value of releasing archive material
with enabling true creativity. The Creators' Rights Alliance went
further, stating that copying, cutting and pasting digital content
electronically was neither original nor creative and could not
be a substitute for self-expression.[92]
This sentiment was echoed by others, who spoke of the Creative
Archive as encouraging "regurgitation of others' work"[93]
and who questioned the value of a "cut and paste generation".[94]
A more positive view was taken by the Design and Artists Copyright
Society (DACS), which licenses works by creators in the visual
arts: DACS acknowledged that there could be strong elements of
creativity and even artistry in the re-use of existing works.[95]
Mr Ahlert, a supporter of the Creative Commons concept, [96]
said that copying was how one learnt and that "over time
your creativity and originality increases because you are assembling
the world and aggregating it".[97]
Other new services and genres
41. Five million homes across the world use data
protocols similar to those that support the Internet to watch
digital television via broadband (hence the term "Internet
protocol television" or IPTV). To receive IPTV services,
a television is connected to a telephone point via a decoder box.
Availability of the service in the UK has been restricted to London
and Stevenage, and take-up has been limited; but major growth
has been forecast for the future.[98]
42. Viewers in the UK have had access to High Definition
Television (HDTV) services from ntl:Telewest (now Virgin Media)
since March 2006 and from Sky since May 2006. HDTV offers higher
picture quality than standard definition television, and the UK
Film Council observed that HDTV was of particular benefit to film,
which has high production values.[99]
During the lifetime of this inquiry, public service broadcasters
have conducted a trial of HDTV services over digital terrestrial
television (DTT).[100]
A senior analyst at Screen Digest has suggested that there
will be more than 51 million "HD-ready" households in
Europe by 2010, 11 million of which would be in the UK.[101]
HDTV broadcasts require significantly more spectrum than do standard
definition television broadcasts, and the level of take-up in
the UK may depend on whether extra spectrum is made available
to allow it to be broadcast as part of the DTT offering.
43. Interactive computer and video games are not
new; but the adoption of broadband by ever more households (and
the increase in speeds) has expanded the market for downloading
games which are rich in graphics and features. In Korea, we watched
a demonstration of a "massively multi-player online roleplaying
game" (MMORPG), a form of interactive video game dependent
on fast broadband speeds. A player assumes the role of a particular
characterbased on fantasy or possibly drawing on mythologyand
pursues a quest, interacting with other players or competing against
them. MMORPGs have attracted an avid following in Korea, and Mr
Ian Livingstonethe Product Acquisition Director at Eidos
Interactive UK, with a lifetime of experience in the industry,
developing and marketing interactive gamesforecast that
they would also take root in the UK.[102]
Ofcom also predicted that the experience of video console games
could become more like that of films in a theatrical setting.[103]
DCMS told us that the Government was becoming increasingly aware
of the potential use of games technology in non-entertainment
applications, for instance in simulation training.[104]
44. Newspaper publishers have developed an online
presence, not just among national titles but also in the regional
press. Johnston Press, the second largest regional newspaper group
in the UK, announced plans in 2006 to convert 70 newsrooms to
allow journalists to file video reports for streaming on newspaper
websites.[105]
Future for "traditional" media
45. The advent of new technology and platforms for
delivering creative content does not necessarily mean that traditional
forms of delivery will cease. Mr Lilley, Chief Executive of Magic
Lantern Productions, warned against any assumption that any one
medium was "setting out to kill another one", saying
that "media do not die, they just get better at what they
were good at" and that "cinema becomes better at being
cinema".[106]
Neither DVD nor videocassettes destroyed the cinema, as was predicted
at the time: in fact it was suggested to us that DVDs had helped
people to rediscover the cinema.[107]
The British Screen Advisory Council suggested that cinema could
develop further, as an up-market theatre-style venue with a specialised
clientele.[108] Similarly,
the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) predicted
that newspapers, in their traditional format, would continue to
be read in the future. An IPA witness saw "no reason at all"
why a strong regional newspaper should not survive the development
of online news services, although he acknowledged that regional
titles' dependence on classified advertising had led them to suffer
from the growth of online advertising.[109]
The solution advocated by the IPA was to adapt and to operate
on a cross-platform basis.
46. It is more difficult to predict with confidence
the future for linear television (the broadcasting of television
programming according to a schedule). Alex Graham, a witness appearing
for PACT, suspected that "good old-fashioned linear television"
would remain for the foreseeable future.[110]
The Satellite and Cable Broadcasters' Group (SCBG) agreed and
forecast that the big players "will certainly be there for
some time to come", although it believed that television
channels would disappear "ultimately". The Group predicted
that 'niche' satellite and cable channels would start to be replaced
by video-on-demand or IPTV services, neither of which were dependent
on spectrum.[111] We
note with interest the Group's observation that satellite and
cable broadcasters, seen not so long ago as "new media",
now found themselves classed along with traditional media platforms.[112]
47. The days of hard carrier formats such as CDs
and DVDs may well also be numbered. Witnesses forecast their decline
or disappearance as broadband delivery took over.[113]
This does indeed seem likely, once high broadband speeds become
widely available and affordable and once the hardware needed to
access and play content meets the criteria of cost and user-friendliness
which allow it to gain universal (or near-universal) penetration.
4