James Murdoch, chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia at News Corporation, said that the BBC is inhibiting competition in the British broadband market with its iPlayer service.
The Guardian reports that Murdoch made the comments during a Q&A session following a speech at the Marketing Society in London last week. Murdoch said that the BBC’s free on-demand catch-up service, launched last July, was a “big step, a pre-emptive intervention in a marketplace otherwise hugely competitive and moving very fast.’ He accused the service of having “hoovered up’ resources and “squashed other competitors’.
“I’m not saying it is a bad product, but I am saying it does crowd out competition and innovation…It is less about the iPlayer and more the process that leads to its birth.’
The Guardian quoted a BBC Trust spokeswoman as saying: “The BBC Trust subjected the BBC iPlayer to a rigorous public value test that included a market impact assessment carried out by Ofcom. The trust imposed a number of conditions on the iPlayer to take account of market impact issues, consultation responses from the industry, and responses from over 10,000 license fee payers before final approval was given.’
