Goodbye BBC Television Centre, Hello MediaCityUK

Television Centre, home to the BBC since 1960, closes its doors for the last time on March 31. This week saw the BBC wrap-up its news broadcasting from Wood Lane and the One O'Clock News  on Monday 18 March marked the first domestic TV news programme to go out from the newly redeveloped £1 billion HQ and studios at New Broadcasting House, central London. All other departments from TV Centre, including BBC Breakfast, Children’s, Sport, Radio 5 Live, Learning, and Future Media and Technology are relocating to MediaCityUK, in Salford Quays.

It will be sad to see Television Centre go – the land is due for redevelopment into offices, flats, hotels, a cinema and private TV studios – but although it was state-of-the-art when it was built, it is now not serving its purpose.

MediaCityUK, on the other hand, is a brand new, high-tech development created specifically to attract companies from the media, digital and creative industries.  The area also boasts The Lowry arts centre (Greater Manchester’s most popular cultural tourist attraction), Manchester United’s Old Trafford, Lancashire Cricket Club and the Imperial War Museum North. To date, it has attracted not only the BBC, but ITV, Satellite Information Services (SIS) the University of Salford and over 50 creative companies from composer agencies to independent production houses.

But more important than the buzzing creative environment is the fact that it’s connected to one of the most advanced, high-capacity communications networks in the world and able to satisfy the needs of the media industry.

Today’s world of high definition digital TV was unimaginable back in 1960. Digital processes, new production workflows, delivery of interactive online sites, mobile television and OTT services such as BBC iPlayer are always hungry for more bandwidth. MediaCityUK, with its purpose-built infrastructure, creative village and 20 million plus metres of optical fibre for the high speed transmission of voice, data, high and standard definition video and wireless communications services is excellently set-up to be the home of the new BBC for the digital age.

A big “phew” from the people behind YouView

YouView is finally set to launch. Chairman Alan Sugar and Managing Director Richard Halton showcased the new television service backed by territorial broadcasters (BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV) and three communications companies (Arqiva, BT and TalkTalk) to the press for the first time this morning. While trials continue, YouView has committed to the first STB’s being available to buy at the end of the month, around two years later than originally planned.

YouView is some four years in the making having been known initially as project canvas in 2008, with a view to launch in 2010. It will allow viewers to access 100 digital TV and radio channels as well as a selection of on-demand content from BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD and Demand 5. Today’s launch focussed on its EPG that enables users to scroll backwards in time as well as forwards, so they can catch up on shows they may have missed in the last seven days. You can see some glimpses of the EPG here.  Subscription packages are yet to be announced and may hold the key to whether the service is able to offer anything that isn’t already available in the market today. Subscription free STBs will cost £299, meaning it’s very much a premium product. 

After some technical delays, the product is now ready to go to market. Crucially, it will miss the anticipated pre-Olympics surge in TV device sales. But it’s thought the new TV service will also provide film studios and TV production companies with the ability to set up their own channels, an interesting development for the UK market.

The growth of multi-screen iPlayer

As a new iPad owner, one of the biggest advantages I’ve found is the convenience it offers over a laptop – especially for casual use such as watching video online. With an almost 600% increase year-on-year in the number of requests made to iPlayer from tablets, a lot of other people seem to agree with me. For connected TVs, the numbers are even more impressive – a year-on-year increase of over 1000%.

While the majority of requests are still made from PCs, the growth in alternative ways of consuming content isn’t too surprising if you think about the TV-watching experience itself. Watching TV tends to be both casual and social; smart TVs and tablets both offer a more suitable form factor than a laptop for this kind of experience, albeit in different ways. Smart TVs and iPlayer-equipped games consoles enable on-demand viewing to be more social, while tablets offer a better multi-screen experience than laptops due to their weight and form factor.

By making iPlayer available on these devices, the BBC has been able to offer an experience that is closer to that of watching live TV, and they’re now seeing the benefits of this. It’s taken a lot of effort on the part of the BBC to make iPlayer available on so many platforms, but with other broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4 and Sky offering multi-screen catch-up services the benefits of this strategy are becoming more and more obvious.

Global growth for on-demand services

Global revenues from on demand video services are set to rise by as much as 24 per cent by the end of this year, despite the decline in TV subscriptions. This is according to new research from Informa Telecoms & Media this week.

On-demand services have enjoyed a phenomenal success in the UK this year, the BBC iPlayer received 139 million requests for TV and radio programmes last month. Not only this but viewers have been accessing the content across a wide range of platforms, including Virgin Media, Wii, PS3, computing and mobile platforms, confirming that viewers want to consume their content in more than just the traditional formats.

The majority of on-demand services still come from cable TV subscriptions (around 51%), which is expected to rise as more viewers make the switchover to digital services. However, there are likely to be changes in the platforms viewers can access on-demand content. At the recent Morgan Stanley TMT conference, ITV’s chief executive Adam Crozie, commented on its plans to create a new micropayments system, so it can sell its content across a wider range of platforms and reduce its dependence on advertising revenues.

But, to be successful in any of its target platforms, ITV will need to invest in creating popular new content. Something they are clearly keen to address, with the recent appointment of Denise O’Donoghue to lead commercial strategy at production arm ITV Studios.

First Ruling for On-Demand Advertising

There was an interesting ruling from the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) last month, when it was revealed that young children had been able to view an inappropriate advert when watching The X-Factor on ITV’s VOD service. The ruling stated that "adequate steps [were] not taken" to ensure that children did not see an advert which had been booked for post-9pm viewing.

This highlights the need for a different approach from broadcasters when distributing on-demand content. While a programme such as The X-Factor doesn’t require an on-screen warning when viewed on-demand, the adverts booked might.

ITV in Catch Up rebrand

Almost 12 months to the day that the BBC launched iPlayer, ITV is renaming its itv.com on demand offering. From today the ITV platform currently know as Catch Up will go by the moniker of ITV Player. The service allows punters to view a selection of the best ITV shows for 30 days.

ITV takes on advertising challenge with Graffiti Advertising

ITV has made a bold move in developing a new form of unavoidable advertisement, nicknamed “Graffiti Advertising,” that can be embedded in television programmes. But ITV isn’t the only broadcasting industry player to be concerned about declining advertising revenues. In the US, cable networks and DVR makers have also been testing "speed bumps" that show an advertisement during fast-forwarding and billboards that appear on paused screens. Many more service providers and broadcasters must address the challenge of generating advertising revenue in the rapidly changing world of TV.

ITV has identified the ongoing challenges in attracting traditional advertising revenues, citing the rise of personal video recording and the fast-forward button as a significant contributing factor. The broadcaster is now trialing new technology, known as “automatically placed overlay advertising”, which uses complex computer algorithms to find clear space, such as blue sky or blank walls, in video footage in which to display advertising logos or messages.