BBC not set to charge for online news

Murdoch to charge for news

As News Corporation gets set to charge for news on the internet, there was speculation that others would follow suit with the charges. One of those being pressurised to charge, was the BBC, yet it confirmed yesterday it had no plans to start charging for its content.

It's thought that this is unlikely to please Rupert Murdoch and his son James, the British paper The Guardian reports.

The BBC's Internet news operations came under fire in August at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival from James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, who accused the corporation of "throttling" the market and preventing its competitors from launching or expanding their own services online.

James Rupert Murdoch have both said that people have had free content for too long and that a new model needs to be constructed where users pay to access websites.

Sir Michael Lyons, the BBC Trust chairman, said that the BBC Trust "recognises external concerns over scale and growth of BBC online operations". But he added: "Equally, it's an immensely popular service with audiences and an important tool for the economy."

What do licence fee payers want?

Lyons said he wanted Thompson to ask what "licence fee payers really expect to get from their licence fee and what they might be surprised to see the BBC doing in the online world."

He indicated that some areas, such as the iPlayer and news online, are safe when he asked, "Beyond the core offer of news, sport, education, children's and the iPlayer, which parts of the online service are essential to the BBC's mission and which could be stopped?"

Lyons said the BBC Trust has asked Mark Thompson, director general, to look at how the corporation should "serve all audiences" with "fresh and new" programmes, not a "diet of the predictable and comfortable", while "nurturing home-grown talent... across the full range of genres."

Other questions include "does increased quality and distinctiveness come at a price?" and how can the BBC be "more open", both for "programme-makers and for audiences."

Another concern expressed by the trust is that "if it spreads itself too thinly the BBC may lose focus on the core mission to provide fresh, new, high-quality content."

The BBC is consulting its rivals about the strategic review, which was announced by Lyons in September, and Thompson is due to deliver his initial thoughts in the new year.

John McVay, the Pact chief executive, said, "Rather than making cuts in content, the BBC should look at its own fixed overheads and in-house capacity. Looking to make cuts online and on-air is not the compact the BBC has with the licence fee payer."

Murdoch

The beginning of the month saw Murdoch vowing to remove the newspapers from his empire from Google's search engines, after he accused Google of stealing his stories.

In further speculation, it has been said that Murdoch might enter into an agreement with Microsoft's search engine Bing, according to the Financial Times.

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