In my BBC TV Goes Broadband post (Auricle 18 July 2005), I suggested that the BBC should be a champion of open standards media distribution. At the moment the corporation ends up indirectly promoting the uptake of the proprietary RealMedia format. I also proposed that MP4 downloads would be a good thing to see as part of their new media distribution portfolio. So what do you know? … the US PBS has grasped the opportunity ahead of the Beeb. PBS will launch the NerdTV series on 6 September. NerdTV will be hosted by Robert X. Cringely as downloadable MP4 video files. OK it's a geek's programme, but what we should be interested in here is the principle, not the genre. After all, MP3 started very much as a geek thing, but is now a ubiquitous solution found in a multitude of devices.
So come on BBC, where's that pioneering spirit gone? … across the Atlantic it seems.
But yet, lest you think me too harsh, let's now spare a thought for the minefield of vested interests the BBC has to navigate. For example, BBC Radio 3's recent Beethoven Experience made available the complete Beethoven symphonies as MP3 downloads. As expected, this proved very popular with classical music buffs, with over a million downloads during the month long initiative. But, as reported in Downloading Trouble at the BBC (The Independent, 10 July 2005) the classical record companies were less impressed, e.g.
“You are also leading the public to think that it is fine to download and own these files for nothing.”
It's obviously going to take a while for these vested interests to wake up to the fact that such initiatives, far from losing sales, are more likely to stimulate them. Why? Because it exposes people to works which they otherwise would just not have considered buying anyway. Such exposure helps create the enthusiasts of tomorrow who will attend the concerts or even be prepared to pay for the high fidelity recording on whatever format is current.
But, as I suggested in my original BBC TV Goes Broadband post, the BBC really needs to get the rights question sorted, i.e. producers and artists who take money from the public purse to create their works should expect to give the outputs back to the public; not attempt to hold them to ransom ad infinitum. If we don't get this sorted then wonderful initiatives like the Creative Archive will simply become mired in expensive bureaucracy and unattractive, and ultimately unworkable, restrictions on use.
