New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery
February 23, 2010 by Douglas Chalmers
iPhone - good for News
A new twist to the battle between commercial newspaper publishers and the BBC has appeared in the call by the Newspaper Publishers Association to block the BBC from extending its iPhone news applications, which provide news free on a mobile phone.
Arguing that the launch of free news and sport applications by the BBC would damage the commercial market for news application, the NPA called on the BBC Trust to stop this development pending a ‘Public Value Test’ given the ‘unique and narrow commercial space’ provided by Apple’s iPhone Apps to commercial news providers.
Claiming that the BBC was preparing to muscle into a developing market and ‘trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers’, David Newell for the NPA echoed Rupert Murdoch and argued that the corporation’s on-line presence was a key obstacle to the development of paid-for models for online content provision.
Some time ago the NPA was successful in blocking an attempt by the BBC to launch a network of local news sites, claiming that this would impinge on their own plans in this area.
Critics of the NPA would point out that the only result of this has been to block improvements to local coverage that would undoubtedly have resulted from the BBC’s move into this area.
We are still waiting for the services to appear from local commercial providers. It seems however that it will be a very long wait.
BBC news is already provided free via several applications that can be downloaded at no cost from the iTunes store, and free news feeds are available from most BBC web sites
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