BBC To Emerge Unscathed From Online Review
The BBC appears to be on the brink of escaping unscathed from a wide-ranging Government investigation into the impact of the Corporation’s £111 million internet services on the commercial market
It is understood that a review currently being conducted by being former Trinity Mirror chief executive, Philip Graf, into the BBC’s operations will be published within days and will largely absolve the Corporation of distorting the market for internet services.
A number of publishers and media owners including Emap and News International joined forces last year to demand that the BBC’s online activities be investigated. The group claims that the Corporation’s guaranteed funding through its licence fee has a detrimental effect on the marketplace for commercial website operators.
The BBC spends well over £100 million per year on its high quality online news and information services. However, a report in the Independent suggests the Corporation’s competitors have been unable to provide evidence that BBC’s operations are putting commercial operators out of business.
Late last year ISBA called for the Government’s review to go further in assessing the implications of the BBC’s online services, calling for regulation in order to balance the effects of market distortion on commercial growth.
ISBA’s director of media and advertising, Bob Wootton, said: “The online market is young and still developing. Different business models are still being tested and evolving. However, commercial publishers’ ability to compete for audiences – and thereby achieve the revenue required to maintain and enhance their own services – is likely to continue to be greatly limited as long as the BBC is allowed to exist unchecked in this market.”
He added: “An environment in which one player is allowed to dominate, limits opportunities for others and may ultimately limit choice for the very licence-fee payers that the BBC is supposed to serve.”
The Government-launched review is the most comprehensive assessment of BBC Online since the service launched in 1998. It comes ahead of the wider debate surrounding the role, purpose, impact and funding of the BBC as a whole, which will take place in the run up to the Corporation’s Charter review.
BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk
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