"Last month the BBC Internet Blog said that if, in the future, 'some people stopped receiving live broadcasts at all, stopped paying their licence fee, but continued to consume television programmes, solely on-demand' then they would consider having the Government extend its TV licence fee to cover Internet access too."
This is basically what's behind the iPlayer, IMO. It's not wildly useful for TV (I use it for radio mostly) because the quality and speed are often flaky. But it does give the BBC the opportunity to say "people are receiving our shows without paying the licence fee, and that's not fair, etc". It just won't wash to say "people are using YouTube and we're not getting a cut" or "more people are using online video rental in preference to our output and refusing to get a licence" so this gives them the "in" they require.
I wouldn't mind if the BBC's output wasn't so poor. They have nothing of the quality of The Wire, The Sopranos, BSG, etc. Cheesy soap operas and reality shows seem to be the kind of "high quality original output" the BBC aspires to. I'd almost prefer to do without broadband than pay them for that crap.
This is basically what's behind the iPlayer, IMO. It's not wildly useful for TV (I use it for radio mostly) because the quality and speed are often flaky. But it does give the BBC the opportunity to say "people are receiving our shows without paying the licence fee, and that's not fair, etc". It just won't wash to say "people are using YouTube and we're not getting a cut" or "more people are using online video rental in preference to our output and refusing to get a licence" so this gives them the "in" they require.
I wouldn't mind if the BBC's output wasn't so poor. They have nothing of the quality of The Wire, The Sopranos, BSG, etc. Cheesy soap operas and reality shows seem to be the kind of "high quality original output" the BBC aspires to. I'd almost prefer to do without broadband than pay them for that crap.