BBC begins trial program allowing legal TV and radio downloads

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

The BBC announced on Monday a trial of their new Interactive Media Player (iMP).

Five thousand participants from across the U.K. were selected for this trial. Participants in the trial will be able to download selected BBC television and radio programmes. Approximately 190 hours of TV shows, 310 hours of radio programmes, and some feature films and local programming are to be made available for download.

Ashley Highfield is the BBC's director of new media and technology. Highfield has said that this program "Could just be the iTunes for the broadcast industry, enabling our audience to access our TV and radio programmes on their terms - anytime, any place, any how."

The BBC is funded by a mandatory licence fee on all televisions in the U.K. The fee is £126.50 a year for colour TV and £42 a year for monochrome TV.

Sources

"BBC moves ahead with TV downloads" — BBC, May 16, 2005
"BBC to trial online TV service" — Stuff NZ, May 17, 2005
"BBC announces iMP content trial" — BBC Press Office, May 16, 2005

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.