Thursday, February 25, 2010

Online Video...A Quick Update

Online video continues to make waves. Be it Veoh shutting shop or that giant of a company, Walmart purchasing Vudu. User interest in consuming online video also shows no signs of abating. Indeed, stats released from the BBC iPlayer confirm the same, with video streams more than doubling year-on-year. The reports reveal some interesting new trends, while validating a few existing ones. Consumption is increasing, albeit slowly, on platforms beyond the desktop, and streaming is increasingly the choice mode of viewing. That viewing patterns replicate broadcast TV in terms of time-of-day should drive broadcasters to understand that linear TV in its present form is rapidly getting out of fashion. Consumers are open to the idea of viewing TV content on other platforms, while it might be low in absolute terms, however, the larger trends are clearly making themselves obvious.

The BBC sure appears to have hit the right chords when it comes to new media delivery. They have also recently unveiled a plan to launch a series of mobile applications for smartphones that will enable them to offer content from their stable. However, as is typical of a public sector undertaking, even this initiative has met with  resistance from newspaper organizations who take issue with BBC's pricing of the apps. They are priced zero pounds. The BBC is not new to this kind of protests. The iPlayer has been a constant target of ISPs who contend that the service chokes bandwidth without monetizing them.

Anyway, take a look at the iPlayer report embedded below. Some neat tidbits.

BBC iPlayer Statistics - January 2010
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