Will the BBC iPlayer go the same way as BBC Jam?

(Photo courtesy of Gilgongo / Jonathan Baker-Bates on Flickr)

BBC Jam was meant to be the BBC’s exciting new online education service. The service went live in January 2006, with the BBC pledging to invest £150m over five years. Half of the budget has already been spent. It had 170,000 registered users when the BBC Trust decided to suspend the online education service, BBC Jam, with effect from 20 March 2007. This was as a result of allegations from some in the media and education supplier industries that Jam would damage their interests. John has posted already about this and the disgrace that this rich content, already developed, has been lost to teachers and pupils.

Now it appears that a similar move is being made on the BBC iPlayer service. This is the facility that allow you to watch BBC programmes again via broadband. Some of our teachers in Highland are starting to use some programmes streamed by the BBC via iPlayer as teaching resources. They offer great potential and I am sure more and more teachers will use this service. Lets hope that they can continue to do so. However it looks like iPlayer may be in for a sustained attack from other media sectors. James Murdoch from Sky has already opened an attack on the service. Lets hope the BBC Trust has more backbone this time.

James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, has attacked the BBC for squashing competition in the broadband TV market with its costly iPlayer service.

Murdoch, fielding questions after delivering the Marketing Society annual lecture in London last night, said that the iPlayer internet TV service was a “big step, a pre-emptive intervention in a marketplace otherwise hugely competitive and moving very fast”.

The former BSkyB chief executive added that he was not judging the iPlayer, for which the BBC has earmarked a budget of £131m over five years.

But Murdoch, who oversees News International and remains chairman of BSkyB, in which News Corp is the biggest shareholder, said the iPlayer is a “big intervention” in the broadband TV market that had “hoovered up” otherwise useful or productive resources and “squashed other competitors”.

[From James Murdoch attacks BBC for squashing broadband competition with iPlayer | Media | guardian.co.uk]