"The end of broadcast media as we know it"

The BBC has released the results of its on-demand integrated media player (iMP) “trial”. As the Guardian commented earlier this week, new BBC guidelines mean that the corporation can’t simply launch new products to market without considering and consulting on the impact on the commercial sector…so now new launches are all “trials”, much as new Google products are all “beta”, in some cases quite possibly in perpetuity. The BBC’s Ashley Highfield - who listed his main professional ambition in an Independent interview earlier this year as being to oversee the end of broadcast media as we know it – commented that 6% of the trial users’ viewing of the BBC’s output took place over the iMP during the trial and, interestingly, that only half of the programmes downloaded were actually watched. The BBC, of course, has no advertisers to prove any particular watching figures to, but it will be interesting to see how this huge downloading-but-not-watching trend they have cheerfully disclosed impacts on the already-disputed value of PVR viewers for TV advertisers.