BBC Outlines Partnership Proposals

LONDON, December 11: The BBC has proposed a range of partnerships with other public service broadcasters that could deliver more than £120 million per year by 2014, including sharing the iPlayer.

The partnership plans, made as part of the BBC’s final submission to Ofcom’s public service broadcasting (PSB) review, cover the production, distribution and exploitation of content.

Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, presented the plans as securing the future of public service broadcasting: "We are proposing that the BBC shares some of the benefits of its scale and security with the rest of the industry to strengthen it for the long term," he said. "Through partnerships I believe broadcasters can help secure the future of public service broadcasting in this country."

The BBC has proposed the possibility that its iPlayer could become a coalition of on-demand services. Users would have access via a single broadcaster-neutral central site or through separate sections of each participating public service broadcaster website, where programs would be viewed. Each participant would then exploit its own rights, while still making use of the shared technology.

One partnership already in place is the BBC, ITV and BT, which are teaming up to develop a common industry approach to delivering on-demand and Internet services to the television. Other proposals include helping to support regional news outside the corporation; BBC Worldwide working with other broadcasters to develop new revenue; and the BBC sharing technology and research and development to create a digital production standard.

Discussions are also under way to explore a series of commercial areas of cooperation between BBC Worldwide and Channel Four.

Five’s director of strategy, Charles Constable, released a statement in support of the proposed partnerships: "Five welcomes the proposals the BBC have announced today on PSB Partnerships. We believe the ideas they have outlined could make a significant difference to sustaining the Public Service Broadcasting system, in particular sharing the iPlayer and developing IPTV. We look forward to discussing them further with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4."

—By Kristin Brzoznowski