Advanced Television

BBC and ITV try to stop Tvguide.co.uk

March 31, 2008

The BBC and ITV have sought legal advice to determine whether the deep-linking that online TV listings site TVguide.co.uk does to their online video streaming is legal or not.

TVguide.co.uk, which has some 1 million unique visitors a month doing some 8 million page impressions, offers its users direct access to unbranded content from the two broadcasters, along with others. Broadcasters are concerned that listing aggregators will cut into their ad revenues around streaming, though Channel 4 and Sky said they were not worried about TVguide.co.uk's moves.

This month TVguide.co.uk began streaming content from Channel 4, BBC News 24, ITV1, 2,3 and 4, as well as Sky News with plans to aggregate content from web TV broadcasters Babelgum and Joost. In February, broadcasters were able to successfully shut down online video recording site TV Catchup which they claimed was stealing their content.

Categories: Articles, OTT, OTT, Regulation