Anything the BBC releases has to pass a market distortion test to make sure that it doesn't affect the competition - even commercial projects built by the commercial arm of the BBC (which doesn't receive any license fee funding)
BBC Jam for example was a project back in 2006 offering multi-media educational resources free across the UK. This was 2 years before Khan Academy.
In 2008, UK broadcasters (BBC, ITV and Channel 4), seeing how Netflix was going, and bearing this in mind, built a fully commercial video on demand platform. That too was shut down by the government because "it might become too powerful".
The BBC's self funded commercial arm recently expanded in Austrailia, attracting complaints from the Guardian who had done the same thing.
Back to license fee funding, earlier this year the BBC, no longer able to use its resources to create the types of broadcasts due to covid (no coverage of sport for example when there's no sport), used its resources to help UK parents who were suddenly tasked with home-schooling 9 million children overnight.
Everyone was happy you'd think, but oh no - "The BBC is under pressure to axe access to its home-learning lessons – used by millions of children during the coronavirus crisis – over fears they will squeeze commercial curriculum providers out of the market"
That seems quite a contrast to the early 80s, when they sponsored/commissioned their own branded home computer, promoted it on half the TV channels in the country and got it into every school in the country.
Although in ~40 years' retrospect, especially in discussions on Hacker News and elsewhere of modern IT education where you'll find people reminiscing on how they learned computing when they were young, it turns out to have been very much in line with a goal of promoting and supporting learning. I don't know what the Charter said about that goal back in the 1980s. It would be interesting to read what the BBC's Royal Charter said over time.
Conversely, another ~40 years into the past takes us back to the time when there was a BBC Empire Service. So there's more than one contrast to be had as one looks through history.
The government today is ideologically and politically opposed to the existence of the BBC, go figure. I don't think Thatcher was exactly a fan back in the 80s but equally they had more pressing matters to attend to
BBC Jam for example was a project back in 2006 offering multi-media educational resources free across the UK. This was 2 years before Khan Academy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4655292.stm
Commercial companies complained, and the project was shut down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6449619.stm
In 2008, UK broadcasters (BBC, ITV and Channel 4), seeing how Netflix was going, and bearing this in mind, built a fully commercial video on demand platform. That too was shut down by the government because "it might become too powerful".
The BBC's self funded commercial arm recently expanded in Austrailia, attracting complaints from the Guardian who had done the same thing.
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-boss-bbc-distorting-...
Back to license fee funding, earlier this year the BBC, no longer able to use its resources to create the types of broadcasts due to covid (no coverage of sport for example when there's no sport), used its resources to help UK parents who were suddenly tasked with home-schooling 9 million children overnight.
Everyone was happy you'd think, but oh no - "The BBC is under pressure to axe access to its home-learning lessons – used by millions of children during the coronavirus crisis – over fears they will squeeze commercial curriculum providers out of the market"
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/calls-to-end-bbcs-lockdown-lessons...