New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery

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

The Kindle – only a threat to books, not newspapers?

Amazon's Kindle reader

That certainly seems to be the view of BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. Trying out Amazon’s new Kindle ‘moving global, but still only available from the USA’, he found it very easy to use: “Plug it in, charge it, download your first book and you’re away. Then subscribe to a digital edition of a newspaper and it is wired to you in the morning, via the Kindle’s “whispernet” 3g connection.”

He believes that its strong point is its integration with the Amazon store and suggests they are looking to Apple’s iTunes as an example of what can be done using download technology.

He was impressed with the experience of it all: “When I started reading, it felt pretty close to the paper experience. There’s no glare on the Kindle’s screen, so you get simple black text on a cream background, with just enough added bells and whistles. You can make digital notes, search the text, and, if you fall asleep with the book on your face as is my wont, it will remember which page you were on when you turn it on again.”

Having said this, he doesn’t believe that newspapers should feel under threat, the way way book sellers eventually might. This is because reading a book is an ‘analogue’ experience (he probably meant ‘linear’), starting at page one and continuing till the finish. “A newspaper, on the other hand, is more random, more interactive. I scan the sections and leap from one article to another, much as I do on the web. That’s what is already available to me – for free – on newspaper websites, so why would I pay for a less satisfactory digital newspaper?”