Kangaroo Blocked

[Stuart Cosgrove]

The Competition Commission have decided to block Kangaroo, the joint on demand venture with Channel 4 BBC Worldwide and ITV. Their report claims that it would be a threat to the open market and not fully in the public interest.

The Commission argue that consumers will have a better service if the main broadcasters are competing with each other rather than working together. Channel 4 have argued that Kangaroo would have benefited consumers who would have had access to a robust and innovative on demand service offering free programmes and content on a non-exclusive basis.

For a withering critique of the decison which feels as if it was cast in the analogue era try Emily Bell's blog here: where she claims: "Killing the Kangaroo project is a perversely stupid move which begs the question whether anyone on the Competition Commission has ever actually used the internet."

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Sorry Dave missed your post above in the fake friction. Kangaroo had been rejected by the competitions commision and in the menatime had progressed its activity offline whilst looking to find various mechanisms and solutions to answer the central charge of unfair competition.

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Hi Mark, I have sent the Talisker there was no 2o year so you got lucky its 21 years. Can I just point out that upgrading the dram was not a 'powerplay' ....

You won it fair and square for getting the quiz right it was indeed The Cheeky Girls.

I think you could now be decent and admit that you played a tiny little role in provoking this exchange Mark.

[Stuart Cosgrove]

The bottle is on its way Mark. It was indeed The Cheeky Girls

I am 100% behind your project but not your opinion in this specific case. I was highlighting an irrefutable fact - the money C4 has principally dervived from advertising is funding C4's investment in 4iP. So it pays my wages, Ewan's wages and will we all unambiguoulsy hope that it will catalyse your start up. We can be as 'pure' as we like in argument but that irrefutable 'ad-funded' fact will not go away. At C4 we have been riddled with that reality for 25 years. My point is that advertising sales revenue are crucial to C4's delivery of its public purpose, and funds 4iP. I was was suprised it was so being so casually dismissed by someone who is a creative beneficiary. Surprised but not in any real sense bothered.

On a more light-hearted note, here's another irony. To protect us all from these vile 'ad-things', we pay a modest sum of money to Ning to remove the google ads from 38Minutes right side display bar. Ewan claims that back on his monthly expenses and is paid by C4 from revenues - which are principally derived from ads. So ads fund removing ads. And through that little poice of hidden activity this forum can be more 'free' and 'open' and users can proceed with democarcy uncontaminated by ads. So even the indulgence of this debate is funded by ads. Its a smart area of Ning's business model.

On the other points: I had no idea that you would wish to keep your entirely laudable role as CEO separate from your personal ID. Apols.

For those that have just joined this thread and so that there is no ambiguity: "AudioBoo is an iPhone / iPod Touch application, website and API which will allow users to record and share audio from their mobile phones. Conceived & developed by Best Before Media, AudioBoo will use geo-location data to provide individuals, local groups, institutions and commercial services with a set of tools to easily record audio – be it conversations, walking tours or local services – and upload it to the internet. "

And for the avoidance of doubt the iphone platform is indeed riddled with ads some of which help serve a broader public purpose.

Finally and I will now move on - The Cheeky Girls are truly awful, I'd rather watch ads.

[Mark Rock]

Cheers Ewan.

I think what I was saying was that Mr Cosgrove was using a dialogue I'd attempted to start here, about Kangaroo in response to his post, as a powerplay move, just because the company he works for had (finally) given us some cash.

I still think he was mixing metaphors and getting it wrong.

DM me on Twitter with your email since I agree this has moved off message here now and I'll download my extensive thoughts on this. Simple stuff. Easily solved.

But Stuart still needs to send the bottle to me lads...

Off to watch Newsnight!

[Ewan McIntosh]

I think we are who we are online, in this space and on others. I gave up a long time ago trying (or wanting) to separate my professional and personal lives. There's more to be gained from just being our online selves. This space is one where we can call people on what they get wrong and congratulate them on what they get right - you've done so and others will do the same, no doubt.

What I'm really interested in knowing is what the perceived 'mess' of 4iP that you mention might be. We've not got it all right, but we are largely reliant on what comes to us and how we shape that to make it as successful as possible - and how we keep our hands off things when they need some space. We've also not been open for business very long - until Christmas there was only Dan and myself commissioning, a month before that just me. I would like to know what people's expectations are when the relationship of supplier-commissioner-partner funder is so interdependent. Those working in TV land have expectations of something much slower moving, while those working in tech startups feel it's about right. Your views, as always, much appreciated, though you may want to start a fresh blog or email, rather than continuing somewhat off-topic on this blog post. Cheers, Mark. (And Talisker do a wonderful 20yr - you find the London pub selling it and I'll buy the dram ;-)

[Mark Rock]

Thanks Ewan, for the peacemaker role.

But Stuart has utterly overstepped the mark:

"Thus far this genuinely smart innovation is predicated on iphone api's"

That doesn't seem to me to be suggesting anything approaching smart. He's not only got his detail wrong (Stuart?) but has made a pretty fundamental mistake in linking me, as a 38minutes personal contributor, with my role as the CEO of Best Before Media, who have received 4IP funding.

The two are surely very separate?

[Ewan McIntosh]

Amazing what can happen in a day, isn't it? I think wrong ends of sticks abound.

Audioboo is really smart, and I don't see Stuart bringing that into question at all. However, the extremes of "no ads at all" and the other of "riddling ads" are not helpful. There is a mutual dependency if ideas are to be sustainable. Audioboo takes advantage of this, as will other 4iP projects, not just to get to market in the first place but to find sustainability.

Audioboo's API is the key - it's not a finished product but a building block (a really strong, granite-like one) whose original perceived uses will be surpassed by what others make of it.

4iP's over the moon with the deal with Best Before - no worries there - and we feel we've helped bring a piece of kit to the surface to wide acclaim.

As for the Kangaroo versus BBC offerings of partnership on the iPlayer, I think it seems like horses for courses for most people. The fact is, Channel 4, ITV (and Five) are public service broadcasters who rely on advertising to make their public service content, while the BBC doesn't. Thereforethe "already paid-for" VOD platform is not really "already paid for", since there is no sustainability for those broadcasters not receiving £3.5b in licence fees.

Jings, I've gone way out of my comfort zone. Telly. Eurgh. However, the lessons on public service sustainability are worth thinking about - free as in speech can exist but free as in beer needs someone to pick up the tab in the end...

[Mark Rock]

Stuart - Cheeky Girls. A Talisker please. Do they do a 20 year old?

And oops - Sorry. I thought this was a platform for discussion about the future direction of digital media in the UK and beyond, not somewhere where Mr Cosgrove goes to get upset when people try to engage in a dialogue with him.

Stuart - we're a really small startup. Please support us. We can do great things for 4IP, which looks from my Twitter/fad feed at the moment like a big mess waiting to happen (unless you have some aces up your sleeve in the coming months).

Secondly, as I hope I, Dan, Tom and TechCrunch have made plain, the API is all about recognizing our own limitations. We do OSX and Rails development. We don't do Windows or Nokia or whatever. We can't, frankly, on on the sum of money we're got off you guys. The whole point of the API when we did the deal with Dan was to allow other better brilliant people to build great apps on those platforms that can use Audioboo very easily.

I really, really think you've missed the point here. Big time. You've taken comments from me as an individual and made public your obvious dissatisfaction with the deal between 4IP and Best Before.

I'd also like to understand why Audioboo is not genuinely smart.

It is. Very. Actually smarter than you'll probably ever need to realise.

Which is why you guys invested in it in the first place.

Anyway, Pls send whiskey to Jon, Thom & Steve at 109 Maltings (appropiate) Place, 169 Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 3LJ. Happy for you to pop over and share and continue discussion...

M

[Dave Brown | cross-platform director/producer]

If it's not too 'cheeky' to ask Stuart ...any idea what [if anything] has been happening on Kangaroo since early December, when this was orginally knocked-back?

http://www.38minutes.co.uk/profiles/blogs/competition-commission

[Stuart Cosgrove]

...what an intricate web we weave....

One of the dastardly UK terrestrial broadcasters involved in Kangaroo, is Channel 4 which derives most of its income from riddling ads.... Channel 4 has chosen to invest £20m of the money it derives from these vile commercial interstitials in digital media innovations under the brand name 4iP. One of the first investments is with audioboo an iPhone / iPod Touch application, website and API which will allow users to record and share audio from their mobile phones. It was conceived & developed by Best Before Media, whose CEO is Mark Rock, who advocates open platforms which are free from riddling ads.

Thus far this genuinely smart innovation is predicated on iphone api's, which as you can see sits on a not so open platform which is err, riddled with ads.

A bottle of malt whisky to the first person to name the ad-riddled pop group currently adorning the front page of Mark's web-site.