Stephen Fry has recently released a set of ‘podgrammes’ available from both his blog and iTunes. They have become very popular with the podcast audience and on release will typically reach a high spot within the ‘Top Podcasts’ chart on iTunes.

Thus far the subject matter of the podgrammes has revolved around Stephen’s travels around the United States, his hatred of all types of dancing and the suffering he experienced after breaking his arm whilst attempting to board a boat in the Amazon.

The fourth podgramme in the series, though still delivered with the same wit and humour, tackles an altogether more universal and profound subject matter and one that is linked with the work of the Spoken Word Project. This subject matter is the continual struggle that the BBC faces in justifying the amount of funding that they recieve.
The podgramme outlines a speech that Stephen Fry made to a collection of broadcasting officials and politicians at Millbank in London. The BBC asked Mr Fry to speak about whether or not the licence fee should be ‘top sliced’ and share some of its funding with other television channels such as channel 4 who are percieved to be in financial trouble due to lower viewing figures brought on by such things as an increase in the number of television channels available and decreased advertising revenue.

Stephen Fry is in oppostition to this top slicing of the BBC’s funding. He does want to ensure that channel four is in a stable condition but does not believe that this stability should be at the expense of the BBC. The podgramme contains an interesting discussion of the BBC’s practices and the political and social changes that have changed and transformed the corporation into the being that we are now served by today. The podgrame is clearly presented by someone for whom the BBC is ‘deeply stitched into their being’ but regardless of this it is still gets to the root of where the BBC has been and where it is going.

Over the past couple of weeks Susan and I have been tracking down the participants of various programmes held in our repository in order to gain adequate permission from these individuals to continue using their materials for educational use. We have been mostly using the Internet Movie Database to help us find contact details for anyone from Richard Dreyfuss to Robbie Williams. We have had numerous replies so far from key figures in the public eye including Stephen Fry and the first chef to bring three Michelin stars to London, Michel Roux. Not only is the Spoken Word ensuring that we are clearing rights legally but we are also in the process of collecting quite a selection of celebrity autographs!

Back in January, I wrote about Joost, which aims to offer free Internet TV geared to the masses. Now in Beta testing, National Geographic, Sci-Fi, Gamestar TV, Bridezillas, Warner Bros. Records, and World Poker Tour are all accessible on Joost, with more channels being added every day. There is also chat, IM, and searching capabilities. I bet that you could imagine my excitement when I received this e-mail:

The waiting’s over! Since we received your application to join the Joost beta test program, we’ve been very busy fine-tuning it for you. So here’s some good news: we’re now ready to expand our beta test program, and we’re delighted to invite you to join us.

Now imagine my dismay when I realised that my trusty old G5 is just too ancient to handle the technology, an Windows machine or an Intel Mac is required, though not necessarily in that order! Go to the Joost website and sign up for the Beta programme and join in on the action!

This link is straight from the pages of Ofcom. It highlights an assessment of the market impact of the BBC’s proposals for an on demand service.  Many of the BBC’s commercial rivals are weary of the corporation’s plans and are lobbying for Ofcom to take on the role of regulating BBC activity. The link can be found by clicking here.

The BBC trust has given initial approval to the BBC to proceed with it’s plans for an ‘on demand’ service that allows viewers to watch programmes online or download and keep them on their computer for up to thirty days after they were first broadcast. This story can be found on the BBC website by clicking here.

An interesting development delivered by a commercial company leveraging the JANET network to deliver TV directly to campus PCs. The bandwidth usage is limited by the fact that JANET supports IP multicasting - so only one external connection is made per stream. If a university doesn’t already have TV wiring in rooms, this sort of thing is probably a lot more economical than installing the wiring, since it leverages existing infrastructure.

If you are a student on the campuses in Leeds or Liverpool then you should be able to receive the new TV over broadband service from Freewire. The service delivers a variety of channels including the standard five channels, plus E4, CBeebies, Film4 and others. Currently the service only streams onto a PC and uses a 2.5Mbps MPEG4 mulit-cast stream

The student service uses the Janet network to distribute the multi-cast signal down to Ethernet sockets in student accomodation. The eventual aim of the service is to sign deals with other service providers, in particular unbundled providers. Once the BT 21CN roll-out is complete and an IP network available to exchanges around the UK, it may become more economic to provide a multi-cast video stream to large numbers of people in the UK.

Freewire also seems to have plans to roll-out its own broadband service, which if launched as detailed looks almost too good to be true, a rate adaptive up to 8Mbps ADSL service for £19.99 with unlimited usage.

(Via ADSLguide.org.uk)

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Broadcast | BBC lines up for instant repeats

In line with the BBC’s commitment to make its media available online, they have further strengthened that commitment with the announcement to broadcast 7 days of Television online for broadband users. This poses serious questions with regards to the BBC’s stance on TV Licencing if users are viewing their programming via their computers as opposed to a television.
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