FT.com / Home UK / UK - Project Kangaroo fights its corner in online TV battle

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Project Kangaroo fights its corner in online TV battle

Kangaroo is the joint venture by BBC Worldwide, Ch4 and ITV to put their video archives online. It'll be run by Ashley Highfield (who used to run BBC Online). They expect to have 10,000 hours of content, 75% which will be free (with advertising).

VirginMedia, BSkyB have complained to the Competition Commission that they will have an unfair advantage in the UK IPTV space. Time Warner and Disney have also voiced concerns. BT have also now joined in the backlash.

Kangaroo would have a huge competitive advantage as they would control a huge amount of content (especially with Auntie on board), but they would also be able to offer compelling content.

The UK infrastructure just needs to be able to keep up to support IPTV services - and that's probably one of the big issues, Sky/O2/Orange and other broadband network all must be considering high speed broadband services into the home (maybe via fibre) and the only way to justify investment is to kaunch their own IPTV services. Kangaroo has the ability for the services to flop before they even launch unless they can get access to Kangaroo's content.