Re:Opening up BBC Sounds to others’ podcasts and commercial ...
by timthorn on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:38AM
(#19645763)
The BBC certainly doesn’t refuse to innovate. It has a massive history of technical innovation – not least broadcasting TV over IP multicast in 1999 and launching the iPlayer in 2005. There’s no point in them offering full scale 4k streaming given their catalogue, and the 4 week programme availability is a regulatory restriction due to competition concerns – this is demonstrated by the fact that they’re showing series back-to-back in the early hours to allow box-sets of older shows to be on iPlayer.
The BBC license fee is about £12.90/month, which to provide all the BBC National and Local Radio in addition to the multiple TV channels and their online offering is fantastic value.
Their shows will be disappearing from Netflix as rights expire in order to bring the content back to BritBox which will launch in the UK soon.
Edit - corrected fee
And BBC's own shows, like Planet Earth 2 are already on Netflix, so why would you even still need a license fee at that point?
It made sense 20 years ago when there were only 5 or so channels, now there is so much content available so quickly (even if it's not "legal") that people are realizing it's a waste of money.
Which is true.