Yesterday I railed against new BBC7 “radio” show Doctor Who: The Commentaries, which abuses the digital channel by foisting upon it a severly edited half hour of content that works neither on its own, nor when run alongside the TV programme the full length version is designed to run alongside.
I have an apology to make. I got something wrong.
When I said:
There’s nothing publicly available that spells out such a rule, if one even exists at all.
I forgot about the BBC Trust’s service licences, which spell out the aims of each of the various arms of the Corporation. Today, the BBC Trust announced minor revisions to most of these. What it hasn’t reissued is the licence for the Corporation’s website, bbc.co.uk. This is because the whole operation is undergoing review at the moment, the results of which are due to be published next month.
That means that the website currently has to operate under the terms of the current service licence, and it’s here where a (sloppily worded, in my opinion) paragraph seems to be preventing the availability of commentary tracks for TV shows. It’s hard to tell, because the document seems to confuse the BBC iPlayer with all bbc.co.uk services, but the paragraph concerned reads (my emphasis):
It may also offer broadcast radio content for download for an unlimited period of time after broadcast, although this must not include unabridged readings of published works nor full track commercial music nor classical music (even if recorded by the BBC).
This is the closest I’ve found to anything prohibiting the distribution of audio tracks that have not been broadcast on radio. Even then, it’s requiring a very narrow view, one that implies that the only sort of audio content that will ever be available is material recorded for radio. That’s a very peculiar interpretation of the 21st century media marketplace, even for the BBC.
Excluding types of internet-originated content that complement original broadcast programmes seems to run counter to one of the commitments made by the BBC in response to the Graf Review in 2004, and which are repeated at the end of every service licence:
- Explore new ways of exploiting the unique characteristics of the internet medium to provide innovative and distinctive entertainment content and services, originated specifically for the internet and delivering cultural and creative value
And what better ‘cultural and creative value’ than encouraging people not only to watch a programme again, but also to find out more about how the programme was made in the first place? This sort of material, if the production team want to make it (as they cleraly do) and the licence-fee paying viewers want to consume it (ditto), it should be possible to make it available without filling BBC7’s airtime with unsuitable content.
Hopefully the position will be made clearer by next month’s service review.
Hi Scott,
Good stuff with all the digging. While the bizzarre situation of TV shows not being allowed to podcast seems to remain, BBC7 have taken comments on board and will soon be broadcasting the commentaries in full.
See here (from about halfway down):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbbbc7/F2574420?thread=4936398&skip=20&show=20
Brilliant news! Of course, it doesn't get round the fact that it's a singularly silly idea to have the commentary on BBC7 in the first place, but at least we can be assured of a valid podcast. I notice that during the week, the file available for download managed to shrink to the half-hour edited version, which just made a mockery of the whole exercise!