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Media Businesses

BBC and YouTube Deal in the Works? 152

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the deciding-to-play-ball dept.
Algis writes to tell us the BBC is in the process of striking a deal with YouTube to allow BBC content to be posted on YouTube. Previously the BBC has demanded quite a few video be removed from the Google-owned video sharing site. "The deal between YouTube and the BBC however, is more interesting still, since YouTube is a global service that is completely free to all users. Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube. Instead, they're watched online on the YouTube website, or the YouTube player is embedded in other websites for no cost to the user. This is the nature of content sharing that has seen YouTube grow from a company making no money, to a company worth almost $2billion to Google, in less than two years. Quite what the BBC-YouTube deal will entail is anyone's guess. It is highly, highly unlikely to include full-length current BBC shows. What could be possible is the addition to YouTube of much older shows, such as classics like 'The Young Ones' or 'Faulty Towers', in an effort to boost the shows' exposure and increase DVD sales of these shows."
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BBC and YouTube Deal in the Works? More

BBC and YouTube Deal in the Works?

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  • Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Uhh, yes they can...

    http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/ [arrakis.es]

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      SHH! You'll ruin it for the rest of us!

      I mean, uh, mod parent down. That troll doesn't know what he is talking about.

    • Re:Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube? (Score:5, Funny)

      by antoinjapan ( 450229 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:54PM (#18098324)
      The first rule of YouTube-dl is that you do not talk about youtube-dl, G*ddamnit.

      • Re:Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @01:18PM (#18098736) Journal
        Mod it funny but consider it insightful. A lot of non-technical people believe that one can actually prevent a user from dowloading a file while allowing him to view it. We all know this is a shallow dream but this issue is fairly important for IP holders, they think they have a real control about how and when you can view the content.
        • You must have not heard the latest invention from Vista. Everything will finally be fixed.
        • Kind of like how I discovered how noscript happens to fix information gathering pages for downloads. Case in point VMWare's player download page required you to enter all sorts of details about yourself. Your clicking on submit triggers a javascript to validate the fields prior to allowing the submit function to go through. With noscript active you can submit a blank page. No doubt this was to reduce server load for validation of the fields.
          Ironically though I had to enable JS to actually initiate the d
        • I wouldn't assume for one moment that YouTube's commercial content channel will be just like today's "funniest home videos" ad-sponsored channel.

          Which is a shame, since youtube is about the only video source that consistently works for me on Linux. But we all know Hollywood will never distribute movies that way.

  • soon we will see ABC, NBC, CBS, and the rest waiting in the back of the line, looking at the door to YouTube and trying to bribe their way in like someone who doesn't know the bouncer at a good night club.

    I think I did the analogies just right on that one...

    • Re:I completely hope this means that (Score:5, Funny)

      by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @01:27PM (#18098844)
      Expen$ive talkshow host
            views=1,050

      Random girl licking jello
            views=1,003,420,535,232

      • No matter how funny I find what you said, if people are watching YouTube on their pc's and not 'must see tv' then the only ads that will be worth paying for are the ones that manufacturers pay YouTube for. If the networks are not knocking on YouTube's door soon, they will lose out worse than the *AA's are losing out now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zecg ( 521666 )
        Link to the jello licking girl, plz?
        • I don't know about jello licking girl, but i highly recommend searching for "funny girl". Although she speaks japanese, it's still obvious what she's talking about for those of you who don't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by freakmn ( 712872 )

      soon we will see ABC, NBC, CBS, and the rest waiting in the back of the line, looking at the door to YouTube and trying to bribe their way in like someone who doesn't know the bouncer at a good night club.
      I can't say much for the rest, but it appears that CBS [youtube.com] is already in.

  • Can't download? (Score:4, Informative)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:50PM (#18098250)
    http://keepvid.com/ [keepvid.com]

    That, plus a set of video converters/transcoders will give you a poor-mans (well, with a computer) Tivo for BBC content with this new agreement.

    Ryan Fenton

    • It's certainly true that there are a number of tools that allow YouTube content to be downloaded, but I suspect that most "ordinary" users aren't likely to be using these any time soon. Why? Because in most cases, what would be the point of doing the extra work required. Most computer users just want to keep it simple.

      • It's certainly true that there are a number of tools that allow YouTube content to be downloaded, but I suspect that most "ordinary" users aren't likely to be using these any time soon. Why? Because in most cases, what would be the point of doing the extra work required. Most computer users just want to keep it simple.

        Not to mention, videos from YouTube are always .flv's... I either use VLC to play them or convert them with a quick and easy drag-n-drop batch file using ffmpeg (usually to an iPod-friendl

    • Why spend money on something to do that?

      I found the FLV file in my /tmp directory under a cryptic name. Just renamed it to .flv and it plays on VLC no problem.

  • Fawlty towers.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:50PM (#18098252)
    Not Faulty Towers, Basil will not be happy!!

  • "Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube" (Score:3, Informative)

    by shawnmchorse ( 442605 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:51PM (#18098262) Homepage
    I use the VideoDownloader [mozilla.org] plugin for Firefox to download them, and then any of the various free FLV players to view them locally.
  • Hey Beeb-tube, Give us back Danger Mouse, that show was awesome!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Danger Mouse wasn't shown on the BBC in Britain. It was on the ITV network (15-or-so geographically-based stations from Anglia to Yorkshire).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by morgdx ( 688154 )
      And on ITV.
    • I recently came across a number of danger mouse episodes online at all you see (not going to actually link to it here). The BBC also put it out on dvd, so yeah, having it officially sanctioned on the youtube could bolster the dvd sales, as the article summary postulated, or we could just get our fixes online. Either way works for me, really. However, I'm holding out for Black Books, Spaced, and the IT Crowd, 3 phenomenal comedies from the BBC that they have YET to release on dvd outside of region 2 (my aunt

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      The BBC should bring back "Screen-Test", a show aired back in the mid-70's/early 80's. It was a school quiz-show based on the film and animation industries. It also had segments where people could send in their own home-made movies, how the video sequences of a movie were linked together to convey a plot line, and how anyone could build model spaceships out of odd bits of household plastic plastic and airfix kits that would be normally be thrown out - the airfix frames for all the parts became spaceship pip

      • If they brought it up to date, they could have students from the animation colleges, and viewers sending it their own animation work.
        Or they could just post it on YouTube.

        Let's not get too nostalgic here. The early 80s was before digital, before cheap PCs, let alone those with multimedia capability. Doing stuff with film and the like would have been *expensive*, and then you were relying on getting your short film shown briefly on TV.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mikael ( 484 )
          Let's not get too nostalgic here. The early 80s was before digital, before cheap PCs, let alone those with multimedia capability. Doing stuff with film and the like would have been *expensive*, and then you were relying on getting your short film shown briefly on TV.

          True, but it helped Jan Pinkava get a job at Pixar [bbc.co.uk].

          • True, but it helped Jan Pinkava get a job at Pixar.

            Of course, I wasn't criticising the programme itself; on the contrary, in the context of its time it would have been an excellent window for talent in a society with far fewer multimedia outlets than exist today. Getting on TV was a big deal at that time. (Yes, I'm old enough- just- to consciously remember what it was like with only three TV channels and no breakfast television. Let alone the Internet...).

            But even traditional stop-frame animation on a budget can be done *far* more cheaply than would have

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrCopilot ( 871878 )
      Cooor Chief! ,

      http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-367154178 4982515877&q=danger+mouse+-youtube [google.com]

      As pointed out elsewhere not a BBC Show. DM was one of my favorite shows as a kid, thanks for bringing it up again so I can show my daughter.

  • Says who? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Larry Lightbulb ( 781175 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:53PM (#18098310)
    It's a comment on a blog, with nothing about the source of the story.

  • The article's keyboard-fu is weak (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Faulty Towers"? Ahem.
  • You know what I'm sick of? Media companies that think they know what I'm going to like, or what's going to encourage me to buy stuff from them. Videos on YouTube, huh? Wow, way to stay on the edge there, BBC. I think the draw to YouTube is mostly from user-generated content. That's what makes it special. Granted, a good deal of that content is "clip from $SHOW that I thought was hilarious" -- good! Don't saturate me with all your comittee-selected video clips and ads at the beginning and end. Let the users

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by daeg ( 828071 )
      Dear Skadet:

      You will like what we tell you that you will like. You will watch videos where we tell you to watch videos. You will do so and you will like it.

      Signed,

      Mass-Market Media Companies

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      You assume that the article writer has ANY clue what they are talking about. It says 'allow content' and they suddenly assume that means the BBS will be uploading the content. Uh, no. It'll be merely an arrangement where the BBC gets money to not say 'take down our copyrighted works.' Mark my words.
    • Ads on the BBC? What world do you live in?

      BBC show trailers (usually 1-2 for upcomming programs) after each program and then go right onto the next, no breaks in programs or anything. BBC IS advertisement free or as close as you can get.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jamiethehutt ( 572315 )
      Don't saturate me with all your comittee-selected video clips and ads at the beginning and end. Let the users decide.

      The BBC don't do ads. They've never done ads. They never will do ads. The BBC is the best media company on the face of the planet, the fact that it's almost impossible to paint them evil (if you live in the UK) really says something. You really could do with reading up on them.

      The reason they pull videos from YouTube is they can't tell if you've paid for your TV license, and thats required to

      • it's almost impossible to paint them evil

        Unless you think the MS DRM they are going to implement on their website is evil.

      • The BBC don't do ads. They've never done ads. They never will do ads.
        The BBC *do* show ads on their stations outside the UK (which is fair enough, as they're not funded by the license fee), and at one stage they had an advertising-funded website, beeb.com (not to be confused with the bbc.co.uk website which it was later folded back into).
      • They never will do ads

        Never say never - there's no good reason why they can't eventually become advertiser supported, just like Channel 4.

        impossible to paint them evil (if you live in the UK)

        Well, having a paramiltary wing (in the form of the TV Licencing people) with a database of every house in the country and a fleet of TV Detector vans snooping around people's home looking for unlicenced TVs is fairly evil in my opinion.

        The reason they pull videos from YouTube is they can't tell if you've paid for your

        • The amount of commercial time on commercial broadcasters is heavily regulated by Ofcom

          Just to compare this to the Australian experience. Here, the government regulates commercial broadcasters fairly loosely - much of the detail is left to "codes of practice" devised by a commercial entity comprised of a coalition of the commercial broadcasters.

          With regards to commercial time, Government regulation limits advertising to a maximum of 16 minutes per hour. However, under the codes of practice, program sponsor

      • The BBC don't do ads. They've never done ads. They never will do ads.

        They advertise themselves all the time. They spend around ten minutes an hour showing vomit-enducing ads telling us how great and brilliant they are, and threatening to lock us up if we don't pay their tax.

        The BBC is the best media company on the face of the planet

        If you like derivative soaps, disastrously bad sitcoms, mind-numbing 'reality' TV, and all the crap sport that none of the commercial channels wanted. Horse-jumping anyone?

        It's s

  • Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Larry Lightbulb ( 781175 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:56PM (#18098350)
    It's only a comment on a blog, there's no quotes or anything about the source of the story, so it's speculation rather than a news story.
  • On Linux use youtube-dl (python script)

    But the BBC shouldn't worry. What gets posted to youtube is in a crappy
    highly compressed format that looks like garbage compared to a DVD. After
    seeing something I like on youtube, I'd rather buy the DVD than keep the
    piss-poor a/v file from youtube.

    • On Linux use youtube-dl (python script)

      You know there is a python intepreter for Windows too. Hense, this script also works in Windows if you have python installed.

  • Full shows are already there (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pnattress ( 1002576 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:57PM (#18098372)
    And what's more, the BBC don't seem to mind too much. I know that BBC presenter Charlie Brooker [wikipedia.org] is well aware that his show is available on YouTube, and even has it embedded in his MySpace page and featured it in a segment on the show. YouTube contains lots of BBC shows which are never likely to get on DVDs and therefore never make them a profit, so why not let people watch them? They don't even have to pay for the bandwidth.

    I like the BBC. They seem to be one of the few big media organisations who actually 'get' the internet. Their whole online service is second to none, and their new iPlayer looks set to to revolutionise the way TV is watched. See what happens when you don't have advertisers and shareholders to answer to?

    • Adam Buxton (Score:3, Informative)

      by Don_dumb ( 927108 )
      And here is a sometime beeb personality with his own Youtube presence, some of his clips are taken from BBC shows he was in (like Time Trumpet) http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AdamBuxton [youtube.com]

      See what happens when you don't have advertisers and shareholders to answer to?

      The BBC do have 'shareholders' kind of, the BBC Trust http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ [bbc.co.uk] and to a certain extent the government, who are in charge of the charter renewal (and how much money the beeb gets). Also don't forget that the Daily Mail

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fotbr ( 855184 )
      They don't mind too much.

      Except for Top Gear, which gets yanked quite often due to copyright issues.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Oxygen99 ( 634999 )
      I think the reason the BBC 'gets it' is mostly due to the fact it's a government (Well, licence fee paying) funded organisation. The bottom line for the BBC is that everyone in the world could download their shows and they'd *still* have enough funding to make the same programs year after year after year.

      And if you like Charlie Brooker, make sure to check out what he has to say about Macs [guardian.co.uk]!

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TobascoKid ( 82629 )
        The bottom line for the BBC is that everyone in the world could download their shows and they'd *still* have enough funding to make the same programs year after year after year.

        They'd still have to proove that it's mostly UK Licence fee payers who are getting the benefit. That was one of the major points of the podcast/iPlayer consultation documents, and all the work coming out of BBC Backstage - the Licence Fee payer has to come first.
    • Charlie Brooker's show is made by Zeppotron (part of Endemol), though, so the BBC probably aren't losing any "DVD Sales" (not that it's likely to be an issue in this case) as a result.
      • Endemol don't handle DVD sales directly, IIRC, and in Brooker's case the DVDs would be sold by the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

        Although it's moot in this instance; Brooker's show (Screenwipe...excellent show btw) has so many clips of things that just getting the rights for any putative DVD of the show would be completely impossible. UKNova is your friend :)

  • Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube

    Hahahaha... Something is streamed to your computer (an flv file, which vlc supports these days), you can easily grab the location of the flv, and therefor you can easily download low quality crappy youtube uploads if you really want to. Google "download youtube" before making such bold and incorrect statements.

    I mean... wow... That's the first thing I did when I discovered youtube: find out how to download the content.

  • TV Licencing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by celardore ( 844933 ) * on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @12:58PM (#18098400)
    Nice how the BBC gives its content freely to those that cannot be charged the TV licence, while they persecute those that HAVE to pay it by UK law. That said, I had my first good experience with them the other day when I got a visit from the TV licence inspector, I answered the door and it went something like this:

    Inspector: I'm here to discuss your TV licence.
    Me: I don't have one.
    I: I know.
    M: Come in and look, there's my TV, there's the aerial point with nothing plugged in to it. I can't get a signal at all in here.
    I: What do you use the TV for?
    M: Computer and DVDs.
    I: Plan to watch any television in the future?
    M: Like I said the signal is poor, so the answer is no.

    He then put a mark on his clipboard and I haven't heard from the TV licencing dogs since. Goes to show how much they want that £140 a year though, if he did believe I was watching TV then I could go to court and face prison.

    • He then put a mark on his clipboard and I haven't heard from the TV licencing dogs since.

      We used to have those here. The tax was abolished because of all the people scamming their way through a loophole. Now the tax has been replaced by two related taxes that don't require an inspector.

    • The idea of TV licensing has always troubled me, and radio licenses doubly so. There's a saying here in the US that derives from an early Supreme Court case, and it says "the power to tax is the power to destroy". Now, think about that for a moment. Are you comfortable giving the government power to destroy television and/or radio communications? After seeing a few Holocaust-type films [imdb.com] where people secretly listen to the BBC broadcasts on shortwave while their nation is occupied by the Axis during World War
      • The idea of TV licensing has always troubled me, and radio licenses doubly so. There's a saying here in the US that derives from an early Supreme Court case, and it says "the power to tax is the power to destroy". Now, think about that for a moment. Are you comfortable giving the government power to destroy television and/or radio communications? After seeing a few Holocaust-type films [imdb.com] where people secretly listen to the BBC broadcasts on shortwave while their nation is occupied by the Axis durin
        • the way I see it from cross the pond, they pay money for their programing rather than media being paid for by commercials.

          It's PBS with a police force, who have a database of every home in the country and everybody who has a TV has to "donate" and everybody has to donate the same amount. They use the database of every home in the country to make sure that pretty much every home has a TV license - if you don't have a licence (and even if you do have one but something went wrong in the bureaucracy) they send

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mgblst ( 80109 )
      Not quite sure what your point was? Yes, it sucks having to pay a TV license, but the other option is to do what they do in Australia for the ABC, where everyone pays for the Government sponsored National Broadcaster. You have just shown why TV license is the better option, since those who don't watch TV, don't have to pay.

      Would it make you feel better if they just added £140 onto your taxes? Because then you wouldn't notice it so much?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zoxed ( 676559 )
      > if he did believe I was watching TV then I could go to court and face prison.

      IANAL, but: looks like you got lucky, but, as often clarified here on /. the UK TV license is *not* a license to watch TV: it is a license to own the TV *equipment*. In law it does not matter whether you watch broadcast signals on it, or just hook it up to you computer.

      (I guess the original reason was to make prosecution easier: they do not have to catch/prove you actaully watching the TV)
  • YouTubes first step in actually making money?
  • Such as Doctor Who Confidential or Tardisodes, which are not the shows per se, may be distributed this way -- thus freeing up time slots on the beeb for more shows!

  • Awesome BBC (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @01:10PM (#18098590) Homepage
    I think It's awesome that the BBC is going to have YouTube foot the bill for their bandwidth instead of making the UK citizens do it.

    Rock on BBC!

  • Spelling.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cbiltcliffe ( 186293 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @01:14PM (#18098658) Homepage Journal

    such as classics like 'The Young Ones' or 'Faulty Towers',
    That's Fawlty Towers, you insensitive clod from Soviet Russia!

    Yeah, I know...it's a quote from the story....
    What's journalism coming to?
  • Why does "progress" in media seem to always involve taking high quality video or music, and making it a lot worse?

    YouTube videos are a nightmare - the BBC should be embracing bit torrent and as little compression as possible.
  • YouTube deals fall apart, the center cannot hold [arstechnica.com]

    Big content producers are going to want to retain control over their own content, obviously. And it's so easy to do so with the internet. You don't need youtube if you can develop your own video site with flash player and all in six months.

    What youtube should do is offer to license its software or host the content, and charge for licensing and/or hosting. It can slap ads on those videos that aren't paying for either service, but not for their paying customer
  • Maybe it's to placate the criticism over the Microsoft only iPlayer. If they made the content on iPlayer also available on YouTube (probably with geo locking so that only people in the UK* can watch it) then Mac and Linux people could watch the content as well.

    *yeah, I know, proxy servers make such things pointless, but I would still expect them to try.
  • I've been using Democracy to download and watch video podcasts, and the BBC's EULA has always been really weird. The closest thing we get to the news is a weekly update from Newsnight, and even then the EULA says we're authorized to subscribe for 7 days.

    On another note, Democracy says that you can view Google/YouTube and Yahoo! videos, but while the searches work great, clicking the download link results in "Not Found" 100% of the time. Has anyone else experienced this and found a fix? I'd really like to ha

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