Global BBC iPlayer to launch next year

The BBC has confirmed that a commercial version of its iPlayer video on-demand platform will launch next year on Apple’s iPad in international markets.
At the Edinburgh TV Festival in August, BBC director general Mark Thompson said that the corporation would make iPlayer available to overseas users within a year.

BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, has appointed Mark Smith to the newly created role of global iPlayer director to oversee the launch.
According to the Financial Times, Worldwide said today that it would make iPlayer available on iPad devices in selected overseas markets in the middle of 2011, starting with the US.
Luke Bradley-Jones, Worldwide’s managing director of BBC.com, said that the global iPlayer would be aimed at early adopters with a keen interest in BBC content.
Bradley-Jones said that the iPad version of the popular catch-up service would have “a handcrafted feel, very much being about the best of British”.
He confirmed that the BBC would charge a monthly subscription fee to access the on-demand application, partially to get audiences “used to the service”, but also to “generate additional value from the service in terms of the user data that it gives us”.

“We will also offer advertisers the chance to partner with us on the ‘free’ areas of the service,” said Bradley-Jones.
“We’re also planning for the global iPlayer to initially launch just on the iPad platform, as it provides such potential to develop a truly interactive video on-demand service, and also maps pretty nicely on to our core target audience for the service.”

Bradley-Jones said that the business model for global iPlayer would be tweaked in the future in response to changes in the video on-demand market.
He added: “There’s a general acknowledgement in the world of VOD that there needs to be a hybrid business model, a combination of subscriptions, download to own and pay-per-view. I can see the value of that view and I believe it’s the way that the global iPlayer will go in the medium term.”