bbc

The BBC announced Friday the line-up of content that will be available through its red-button interactive TV service for the next few weeks. Here are some highlights:

The BBC has announced plans for broadband video and red-button interactive TV coverage of Scotland's annual "T in the Park" music festival (at which around 85,000 attendees will see performances from such bands as Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and Pet Shop Boys).

The BBC has announced its plans for interactive TV, broadband and mobile coverage of the upcoming 2009 Wimbledon Tennis Championships (note: this year, for the first time, the corporation's entire coverage of the championships will be available in high definition on the BBC HD channel):

The BBC has redesigned the red-button interactive TV service that allows viewers on the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, FreeviewY, to access the corporation's flagship international radio service, the BBC World Service. Until recently, the Freeview implementation of the service presented viewers with a blue screen that was both static and inconsistent with the BBC's branding color scheme (i.e. blue, as opposed to red, gray and black).

According to a report Thursday in the UK broadcast-industry trade publication, Broadcast, "Autumnwatch," a spinoff of the popular BBC Two nature series, "Springwatch" (note: the latter is a mostly live-on-location show, broadcast four nights a week in late May and early June, that follows wildlife during the arrival of spring in the UK and that involves a crew of around 100 and around 50 cameras), will have an eight-week run of one 60-minute episode per week (instead of being broadcast over two weeks), due to the strong level of multiplatform engagement the two shows are enjoying.

The BBC announced Friday the line-up of content that will be available through its red-button interactive TV service for the next few weeks. Here are some highlights:

The BBC said Wednesday that this year's "Radio 1's Big Weekend" event, an annual free music festival produced by the corporation's flagship rock and pop station, was "the most interactive to date," with record numbers accessing the corporation's coverage of the event via the Internet, mobile phones and the red button.

UK newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, citing "sources close to the negotiations," reports that BBC director general, Mark Thompson, is in talks with Google chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt, about launching an international version of the BBC's online VOD catch-up service, the BBC iPlayer (allows viewers to watch BBC shows for up to a week after their linear-TV broadcast), that would be "supported in some way" by YouTube and that could be accessed internationally (note: the BBC iPlayer is currently geo-restricted to users in the UK) free-of-charge. However, the newspaper says that "the process has been mired" by the need for international rights clearance for the BBC's programs, many of which are produced by third parties.

Last Friday, [itvt] reported on the line-up of content that will be available through the BBC's red-button interactive TV service over the coming weeks. The BBC has since announced a few other upcoming red-button offerings:

The Competition Commission--an independent public body which investigates mergers, markets and regulated industries at the UK government's behest, and which in February nixed Project Kangaroo, a joint video-on-demand venture between the BBC's BBC Worldwide arm, ITV and Channel 4, on the grounds that it would result in a "substantial lessening of competition in the supply of UK TV VOD content at the wholesale and retail levels"--published Friday drafts of "undertakings" that each of the Kangaroo partners must commit to in order to ensure that they do not engage (at least anytime soon) in joint activities that could restrict competition in the UK VOD market.

The BBC announced Thursday the line-up of content that will be available through its red-button interactive TV service over the next few weeks. Here are some highlights:

The BBC announced Thursday that BBC Switch, a BBC brand devoted to multiplatform content for teenagers (its offerings include programming blocks on BBC Two and Radio One, as well as an online portal), has started production of a new multiplatform interactive TV soap opera called "The Cut." The show, which is slated to launch later this year, will offer five-minute episodes on bbc.co.uk/switch, as well as a weekly omnibus edition on BBC Two.

[itvt] recently reported (see article posted on itvt.com, April 27th) that Project Canvas--a joint initiative between the BBC, UK commercial broadcaster ITV, and UK incumbent telco BT, which seeks to develop a common standard and interface for the delivery of online catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer and the ITV player, as well as other Internet-based VOD services, to broadband-connected set-top boxes (specifically, set-top boxes designed for reception of the UK's free-to-air multichannel TV services, Freeview and Freesat)--may face the same kind of regulatory scrutiny from Ofcom and the Off

The BBC has for the first time published a complete list of page numbers for its red-button interactive TV service, in order to make the service easier to use for viewers who prefer to access the content they are looking for by punching in a number on the remote control, rather than navigating through menus. In a posting on Press Red, a BBC blog that provides updates on the work of the corporation's TV Platforms group (i.e. the group responsible for the BBC's red-button service and for implementing the BBC iPlayer service on TV), the BBC's Andrew Bowden explained the move: "Back in 2003 my first project when I joined the team was to work on the launch of page numbers on what was then called BBCi.

In a posting last week on Press Red, a BBC blog that provides updates on the work of the corporation's TV Platforms group (i.e.