BBC Store set for early summer
December 16, 2014
By Colin Mann
BBC Store, the Corporation’s planned download-to-own service that will effectively supersede the planned global iPlayer, is set to be launched in early summer 2015.
Speaking at a Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar on growth in the creative industries, Tim Davie, Chief Executive of BBC Worldwide, the Corporation’s commercial arm, noted that rights concerns often hampered the ability fully to maximise the value of content.
“That’s why we’re introducing BBC Store. It will do for digital ownership what BBC iPlayer did for catch-up,” he claimed. “It’s launching early summer. We have high hopes for it,” he told delegates.
Marcus Arthur, President of UK and ANZ, BBC Worldwide, had earlier revealed at an event on September 30th a “second quarter of 2015 launch”.
Arthur, participating in a panel discussion on ‘Keep buying – Reinventing entertainment retail in the digital age’ at the PEVE Entertainment Business Futures 2014 Conference in London, told delegates the service would allow the BBC to monetise content that had not previously been available. “Only six per cent of BBC product has ever been available to buy,” he advised. He predicted it would be “a great fillip” for the market. “We have a huge challenge in educating users about the availability of content on the iPlayer,” he admitted.