The iPlayer was probably a very worthy winner of the Marketing Moment of the Year at this week's Marketing Society Awards for Excellence, so hats off to Tim Davie.
And yet, and yet...I find it hard to give to much praise to a device that, while it has transformed the viewing experience and allowed people without the wit to use a PVR to watch programmes they have missed, gives the BBC another unfair advantage over its commercial rivals.
Predictably enough Five is hopelessly behind the game, but on itv.com ITV has launched a similar service that is equally good and in some ways better as it has a better catch-up service. Unfortunately it lacks the aesthetics of the iPlayer as the site is necessarily plastered with commercial messages but ITV deserve full credit for investing £20m on the service.
Quite how much money the BBC chucked at the iPlayer is unclear but you can bet that it was a lot more than that because the organisation is disgustingly profligate with licence fee payers' money.
The successful launch of the iPlayer was undoubtedly a key moment of the year, but I'm not sure people who care about the health of commercial television should be celebrating.
