> BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.

BCC iPlayer doesn't work in any country other than the UK, so there isn't any question of it working in India. BTDigg is blocked in India, along with most piracy oriented websites, since long before the BBC documentary thing I think.

But for the content they make, they own the rights. Including this doc, right? So what's the problem?

They make money selling the rights to stuff they produce in other parts of the world. Maybe not for this particular show, but in general.

They presumably treat everything on the service exactly the same, because it would cost them money to do otherwise, and also because they probably don't want to pay for the bandwidth for foreign users. I suspect you probably have to have a UK TV license to watch it, too, which means they're charging for it in the UK. It'd actually be surprising if they had a way to treat different content differently, as opposed to the whole service being all or nothing.

They probably also have foreign stuff on there that they've bought only the UK rights for.

At some point BBC needs to make a streaming service for everyone. Anyone with a 100 video content library is making their own, BBC is leaving money on the table I think. Unless licensing their content makes them way more money, the only other blockers I can think of are competence related and things being slow because of BBC's semi government organization.

This would be the smart thing to do. Still baffled that they don't do it. Maybe no visionaries work there.

They already tried it and it didn't go well. I remember it because I had a meeting with the man who was running the trial service. Granted this was a few years ago now, but you also have to remember that "the BBC" isn't allowed to do this, only it's commercial entity "BBC Worldwide" can, due to the way the BBC is funded.

Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.

Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.

Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.

It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.

Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.

TIL. Thank you very much for this interesting background information.

Counterpoint: Nobody wants to subscribe to 100 services. If you're not in say somebody's top 3, that person is probably not going to buy your service. Therefore, if you don't believe that you will be in the top 3 for some fairly large number of people, you should not try to start your own consumer-facing service.

The BBC might correctly determine that, although it's a respected content producer, it doesn't have enough of that kind of power to make it work... except in the UK, where it already has a captive audience of "subscribers".

That applies at least until there is a universally adopted micropayment system, and maybe after that, too.

On edit, as a by-the-way: While it's true that everybody with a library is trying to do that, that only proves that it's trendy. Where are the numbers that say it's actually profitable?

The thing is, this is sort of the reality we are living in. People are subscribing to a 100 different services. Niche streaming services are very popular, but I do agree you have to be the best at your niche to be viable. The whole profitability point you made is completely valid. There are indeed no numbers that I am aware of that say these are profitable.

Really? I subscribe to maybe 10 services in my place. Energy, Internet, Mobile, VPS, and a couple of websites and patreons. No TV or streaming. And spotify I do on and off (when they have an offer for 3 months for 10 bucks).

As soon as a paid service goes subscription-only I drop it generally unless I really really need it.

I know not everyone is as anti-subscription as I am, but really, 100? Anything that pays "automatically" and auto-renews is something I have less control and visibility over so I'll do anything to avoid it.

I thought it was understood that 100 was an exaggeration. But yes in my circle almost everyone has 5-6 media subscriptions. Some niche some not.