Media Week

The BBC today made its seventeenth apology to the public today, this time over the beta launch of iPlayer.

A spokesman said “we are sorry that we misled licence fee payers into thinking it was a useful service that actually worked”.

The player, which has been in development for twenty-seven years, beta launched on Friday, to a collective sigh from UK users (and Americans using proxy servers).

The service uses a revolutionary “throw a six to start” installation mechanism that is only ever one more username and password away from being able to actually download the BBC Three DanceX extra show.

“We believed that adding in extra barriers like limiting which browser you can use, throwing in random ActiveX controls and making you close down and re-open the application and your browser, multiple times, would actually increase the excitement about using the iPlayer” added one of the 796 people working on the project.

Radio 1’s Newsbeat Editor, Rod Mackenzie blogs about the backlash to the BBC’s announcement that they’re introducing a 60 to 90sec bulletin at 8pm. I think it’s an interesting move by the Corporation, especially as it’s very much an additional piece of output for the network for an audience they don’t currently reach with news.

It’s also a piece of 'content' that suits the on-demand world. A short bulletin of this type strongly suits web-based viewing and video podcasting. It will build a nice '‘brand' on linear television, something that will become a bit more front of mind when viewers are on the web.

Also, from a channel-flow angle it will make the BBC stick out from the other commercial networks. It will act as a bridge for Eastenders and other 7.30pm fodder to the shows at 8pm. Its point of difference and its regularity might, in fact, help the BBC keep audiences watching for longer periods of time, especially at junctions whilst other commercial channels are airing ads.

Will we see some junction juggling by the commercial channels, once again? 

Interesting to see that GCap have reduced the distribution of some of their brands today by taking five off radio stations off the digital television platforms.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Core and Life - the stations that the firm declared they were 'ceasing investment' in earlier this year have disappeared as has Classic Gold (the station they're in the process of merging with Capital Gold) and Capital Disney (which was shut down last month).

What is a little surprising though is that agency favourite Chill has been removed from the TV platforms. It will be interesting to see how it affects RAJAR for the station, which has seen its audience nearly double in the past 12 months. The listeners are not happy on their MySpace page, that's for sure.

For any media owner, balancing the spending on platforms is difficult, especially when your product is still in a growth phase and platform attribution is to hard to get a handle on. The danger, however, is removing the places where your audience wants to receive you. Users are getting used to being able to consume the media they want on any platform they want. If barriers are suddenly erected to stop users getting to this content, they’ll probably just look elsewhere, but will they remember come back?

Surely, in the digital world media operators should be removing barriers to content not creating new ones?