The World Cup is particularly important for commercial broadcasters as it is a golden opportunity to earn bumper revenues from commercials after a period when the recession has hit advertising budgets hard. Online services are increasingly eating into the market with 7 per cent of British viewers planning to watch England online, a figure that increases to 14 per cent in the London area.
The World Cup is particularly important for commercial broadcasters as it is a golden opportunity to earn bumper revenues from commercials after a period when the recession has hit advertising budgets hard. Online services are increasingly eating into the market with 7 per cent of British viewers planning to watch England online, a figure that increases to 14 per cent in the London area.
It is therefore no great surprise that ITV, Channel 4 and Five have issued a writ against TVCatchup which claims to be the most popular live video streaming service in the UK. As well as computer access, it allows viewing on increasingly popular mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Moreover, this content can be delivered over both 3G and WiFi networks, capabilities that many broadcasters are still in the process of developing.
TV Catchup has insisted that it would be ‘business as usual’ during the World Cup, but the commercial broadcasters claim that it has no content distribution agreement in place and that their copyright is being infringed by unlicensed, illegal use. The problem for TVCatchup is that the very existence of a legal action, which will inevitably take a long time to resolve (unless there is an early out-of-court settlement) could disrupt their programming.
For its part the BBC has confined itself to correspondence with TVCatchup. It does not have an issue about advertising revenue, but is concerned that TVCatchip shows adverts before its programmes.
As new media develop and new providers appear one can expect more disputes of this kind.