Project Canvas—the proposed joint venture from BBC, ITV, BT and Five to build an open internet TV platform—has launched an official website to promote the initiative and improve on a perceived failure to communicate its goals to the public. The site will aggregate announcements from as well as news about Project Canvas, and will eventually also host technical information for consumer device manufacturers and SDKs for developers.

The “charm offensive,” as Digital TV calls it, may be too little, too late, as current conventional wisdom (and analyst opinion) suggests that, like Kangaroo before it, Project Canvas might be shot down, though this time it may be halted by the BBC Trust, which had initially indicated it would approve the initiative this past autumn, as StreamingMediaGlobal.com’s Adrian Pennington wrote last month.

It’s looking increasingly as if the BBC’s broadband-to-TV Project Canvas might never actually see the light of day. Analysts are speculating that the initiative is dead, and Freeview and Freesat both adding the BBC iPlayer, we wonder if Project Canvas might be moot. For more on this story, see Adrian Pennington’s article on StreamingMediaGlobal.com

Canadian-based Arqiva, which is the UK’s largest broadcast transmission provider, has purchased the technology assets behind Kangaroo, the BBC/ITV/Channel 4 initiative that was derailed by regulators. See this article on StreamingMediaGlobal.com for more information.

Everyone loves Hulu. Everyone who can actually watch it, that is, a demographic that has until now included only people in the U.S. (or savvy geospoofers). According to an article in the Telegraph, the service is set to launch in the UK in September, featuring about 3,000 hours of U.S. content in addition to shows from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. That is, if negotiations about who controls the advert sales around the ITV and Channel 4 content get ironed out. Hulu wants to run the show, while the networks are (unsurprisingly) not quite so eager to turn over that control. Chalk it up to cultural differences? And when, oh when, will the rest of the world get all that Hulu goodness? No official word on that yet, but surely the UK plans are a good sign.

The UK Competitions Commission effectively blocked the Kangaroo VOD service from launching with its final report, released today, in which chairman Peter Freeman said the service “would be too much of a threat to competition in this developing market and has to be stopped.” It’s a blow to BBC Worldwide, ITV, and Channel 4, and unsurprisingly, the partners are calling it a “missed opportunity in the development of British broadcasting.” As much as I’m in favor of unfettered competition, I have to say I think the commission blew this one. PaidContent:UK has some great analysis of the decision here.

Jake Ward has written a dynamite retrospective looking at the key developments across Europe in the last year; you can find it on the StreamingMediaGlobal.com site. In addition to talking about how the fortunes of the iPlayer in the U.K. offer a microcosm of the trends and challenges facing catch-up and IPTV across Europe, he also looks at the mobile landscape, particularly the troubles facing DVB-H.

The article also appears in the 2009 Streaming Media Industry Sourcebook, due out in February. For your free copy and a subscription to Streaming Media magazine, click here.

More from Streaming Media Europe Conference Development Director Katherine Allen on the FutureMedia 2008 conference held in London last week:

Social networking features, such as friends’ recommendations, will play a major part in the development of the BBC’s iPlayer, according to Anthony Rose, Controller of the BBC’s Vision and Online Media Group as he kicked off day 2 of the FutureMedia conference in London. “Last year the BBC chose what you watch; this year you decide what you watch; and next year your friends will choose what you watch” commented Rose, speaking just hours after iPlayer started simulcasting all the BBC’s channels and launched iPlayer Labs. As ever, though, iPlayer controversy wasn’t far away, as Telegraph TV’s Guy Ruddle argued forcefully that the publically-funded BBC should open up the iPlayer platform to content from other providers.

Patrick Walker, Google/You Tube’s director of video partnerships revealed that YouTube’s “click-to-buy” feature, which enables quick access to digital downloads or DVD purchase and launched in the US in October, will be rolled out in the UK in the “next few months”. The recently launched Monty Python channel has been one of the first beneficiaries, according to Walker, launching its click to buy link just last week and seeing Python DVD sales reach Amazon’s top 5.

A panel discussion on the impact of the credit crunch on digital media brought delegates back to earth, although there were seeds of hope even here. The consensus was that marketing spend would continue to migrate online. “If you’ve got to choose a media sector to be in, this is the best one, unequivocably” noted Simon Nicholls, MD of Ingenious Corporate Finance.

That was one of the messages from Claude London, director of digital media for the BBC Worldwide, in his opening keynote at Streaming Media Europe Thursday morning; and he showed statistics to support his claim that online delivery of television shows doesn’t decrease broadcast viewership. Streaming Media contributing editor Tim Siglin writes more about London’s talk as well as other sessions from the first day of the show here. 

We’ll have more reports later today — plus, we hope to bring you the closing session, “What the Future Holds for Online Video” live at 11 a.m. ET. Watch this space for a link.

We’re lucky to have Claude London, Digital Director, BBC Worldwide & Kangaroo JV, as our leadoff keynote speaker at Streaming Media Europe  on Thursday, 16 October. Eileen Broch was able to conduct this Q&A with Claude for the new European edition of Streaming Media magazine, and we reprint it here as a sneak preview of what Claude will be speaking on at the show.

Can you give our readers a brief description of the charter of BBC Worldwide and how it fits into the rest of the BBC? 

BBC Worldwide is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC.  Its role is to maximise the value of the BBC’s assets after the public service window, for the benefit of the licence payer – essentially we commercialise BBC content with all of our profits being returned into the public service business.

BBC Worldwide has seven core businesses – Global Channels, Global TV Sales, Magazines, Content & Production, Home Entertainment, Global Brands and Digital Media. We generated sales of over £900 million in 2007-2008.

As Digital Media we oversee a stable of commercial websites such as BBC.com (the BBC website outside of the UK), TopGear.com and GardenersWorld.com; we syndicate digital content via outlets such as YouTube and MySpace as well as mobile operators; and we’re also a founder of Kangaroo, a VOD JV with UK broadcasters ITV and Channel 4.

What’s your role and focus at the BBC Worldwide?

I’m Director for Kangaroo, BBC Worldwide’s joint venture with ITV and Channel 4 to launch an on-demand service for the UK. I’m leading Kangaroo for BBC Worldwide, which means I have responsibility for the commercial strategy, product development, and brand building of the venture, as well as ongoing business development – from a BBC Worldwide point of view.

What do you think is the most important goal for BBC Worldwide over the next 1-2 years? What do you think are the greatest challenges facing BBC Worldwide in this same time period?

One of the key targets for BBC Worldwide is to expand its digital revenues from 1% of total to 10% of total over a five year period.  This is a big ask but its one we’re answering with a range of revenue-focused digital projects.

The most obvious of these has been a very pro-active syndication programme – getting our content onto the web via some major partners in revenue generating deals.  We were the first major broadcaster to sign up for a channel on YouTube, we were the first global broadcaster to sign a deal with MySpace and we were also the first UK broadcaster to sell full length content on iTunes.

Under the partnership, the best BBC video content will be made available online globally via MySpaceTV, the social networking site’s popular new video platform.

As well as syndication, branded sites are an important part of our digital strategy.  We take brands based around BBC content and create connected commercial web presences.  Sites like TopGear.com and GardenersWorld.com are building on established magazine operations. 

We’re also looking overseas for revenues and one of our major activities here is BBC.com, the international expression of the BBC online.  With BBC.com we’re essentially looking to monetise the millions of non-license-fee-paying overseas users of BBC.co.uk.  BBC.com is ad-funded and acts as a global window to BBC Worldwide content on the web and therefore is an important cross marketing tool as well as a straightforward destination media site.

Obviously Kangaroo is a major business objective for us.  By coming together with two of the other major broadcasters in the UK to create a VOD platform we’re helping build the wider market for online video content in the UK.  Kangaroo is potentially a huge opportunity for us to generate revenues from our content archives whilst giving users access to a huge library of content that hasn’t been available online before.

In terms of challenges, we face that same as any other media owner online.  It’s a hugely competitive and fast moving market and its not simply a matter of translating what we’ve done on traditional channels into new media formats.  We, like all media owners, have had a steep learning curve in terms of what does and doesn’t work online or on mobile and we’re continuing to pick up new data and examples every day that help us optimise our digital activities.

How do you feel streaming media and online (or mobile) video fit into these areas of focus and emphasis?

Given our broadcasting background the video world is at the very core of what we’re about and so online video is a massively important part of our future.  Where it’s really important for us already today is in reaching brand-new audiences – part of our mission is to target audiences who might not see our content on traditional outlets and delivering video online or on mobile is the only way to reach these populations.

Clearly new forms of video delivery have been at the heart of our syndication efforts, whether short form content on YouTube or full-length programming on iTunes.  Similarly, online content is central to our international ambitions.  We have channels in territories across the world, but online, streaming content is still an important way of getting our content out there.

How involved is BBC Worldwide with mobile efforts?

We’ve been actively involved with mobile for some time now and have content deals in place with a number of operators in the UK and overseas – people like O2 and 3 to name a couple.  It’s definitely an area we see growing in the future but I think we all need to recognise that, in revenue terms, mobile video is still at a very early stage. There is undeniable potential however, with mobile internet specifically.

How does BBC Worldwide factor in revenue generation (monetisation) either for its partners or itself in these syndication deals? 

Revenue generation is what we’re about.  Our role is to generate profits that go back to the BBC, so if there’s no compelling commercial logic for a deal then it just won’t go ahead. 

We’re flexible on how monetisation occurs – for example pay per view has been dominant on mobile for a while now, but in online environments ad-funded viewing tends to work better for short form content.  It’s all about what gives the best consumer experience and, in the end, the best returns.

What does BBC Worldwide see as the future of monetising (or building a sustainable future for) online or mobile video?

In the longer term media outlets seem to tend towards an ad-funded model, with profitable pockets of pay customers, as we’ve all seen from the satellite television world.  However, at the moment we’re in a hybrid content economy with a general mix oscillating between pay per view and free to air ad funded content.  For the foreseeable future I would expect that mix to stay in place.

How do the BBC iPlayer and Kangaroo fit together?

iPlayer is the BBC’s seven day, free, on-demand catch up service whilst Kangaroo is a joint venture between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 to offer tens of thousands of hours of paid for or ad-funded programme content.  Whereas iPlayer is about displaying content within the public service ‘window’ – i.e. today seven days after broadcast – Kangaroo is about making huge swathes of great content available on demand, including BBC archive material.

The two platforms are different but are definitely complementary. Ashley Highfield, the new CEO of Kangaroo, summed it up well when he was at the BBC – if iPlayer is like BBC1 through BBC4, then Kangaroo is like the UKTV channels, part of BBC Worldwide’s joint venture with Virgin Media 

I’m quite a bit late in picking this up and taking notice of this, but in case you might have missed it too, comScore released a report last week that cites 27.4 million UK internet users viewed 3.5 billion videos online in the month of March 2008.  Of those totals, Google Sites (i.e., YouTube which accounts for 99% of Google’s video traffic) had 48% market share, with second place BBC sites far behind with only 1.2% market share.

What surprised me was that there was such a gap between YouTube and BBC sites (and of course any of the others) — This will be worth asking Claude London about at our event in October, as well as some of the other keynote speakers, including Dailymotion (oops, did I say that out loud?) which only grabbed 0.4% of the UK audience according to comScore figures.

Other notable findings in the report:

• 81.2% of the total UK internet audience viewed online video
• The combined UK online video viewing audience watched a total of 172 million hours of video content
• 20.5 million viewers watched nearly 1.7 billion videos on YouTube.com (47.3 videos per user)
• The average online video duration was 3 minutes

And of course with yesterday’s news that Kangaroo’s release could be delayed up to 6 months because of competitive review (coverage everywhere, but our media partner paidContent:UK has a nice summary here), this gives YouTube — or some of the even smaller players — even more time to grab more market share.

Tell us, from which sites and services do you consume your online (or mobile) video?