Kangaroo has been under review and scrutiny by competitors and by the U.K.’s Office of Fair Trading. The concern is that when Kangaroo launches it will be “too powerful” and, according to paidcontent “that it will unfairly impact wholesale, consumer and advertising prices.” It is good criticism since the service will include content from BBC Worldwide, ITV.com and Channel 4’s 4oD. Combining those services and the back-log of content that they propose, Kangaroo could become the ‘great’ media player for video content.
Kangaroo is Ashley Highfield’s big project of the moment. On 14 April 2008 Highfield, who is Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, was announced as the CEO of Kangaroo. In a previous article from the MIPCOM articles he was quoted as saying that “1.3m archive of content on the BBC exists, only 2% gets exploited - the aim with kangaroo is to have a service that uncovers this long-tail of archived content that hasn’t been exploited yet. So having 10k of these hours at launch will help us bring this to life…. From recent to the golden oldies.” He is very excited about the project, calling it a “‘dream’ that [they] are trying to bring to reality.” Jemima Kiss wrote on the Guardian website that “the revenue model is there; users would pay for TV on-demand after the seven-day catch up window. We assume the terms for UK access to BBC content are the same as the iPlayer.”
The service is going to be powered by Kontiki. Bill Wishon, the marketing director of Kontiki, spoke about the service that they are providing and how they are going to be fueling Kangaroo.
Naturally, competitors are not happy with the prospect of the Kangaroo. The Office of Fair Trading has been enquiring into the service and how it will work in regards to other services available. There are concerns that the service will have unfair access to VOD rights, that it will drive VOD prices up for consumers, and that it will have unfair market share values. Kangaroo released a 73-page document confronting these concerns. It seems that Kangaroo is eager to put these issues to rest with the document (which can be accessed from paidcontent at the above link). Kangaroo is scheduled to go live in early 2009 after being pushed-back from a late 2008 launch. When it does go live the rumor is that its name will be ‘see-saw’.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
[...] The concern is that when Kangaroo launches it will be “too powerful” and, according to paidcontent “that it will unfairly impact wholesale, consumer and advertising prices .” It is good criticism since the service will include content … Read more [...]
November 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am
[...] The latest news about Project Kangaroo broke early today all over the web: Ashley Highfield, the CEO of Kangaroo, quit in a dramatic and surprising turn. Kangaroo has been under scrutiny in the last few weeks as it poses a great threat to competition. Concern over the size and power of a platform like Kangaroo (whose real name is rumored to be “see-saw”) has caused an in-depth investigation from the U.K.’s Office of Fair Trading. The concern is that when Kangaroo launches it will be “too powerful” and, according to paidcontent “that it will unfairly impact wholesale, consumer and advertising prices.” It is good criticism since the service will include content from BBC Worldwide, ITV.com and Channel 4’s 4oD. (For more on the Kangaroo investigation see our recent article). [...]
April 8th, 2009 at 11:23 am
[...] of the technology behind Project Kangaroo, the VOD venture from ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC that was nixed by British competition authorities. ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC reportedly invested £20 million in [...]