Ofcom may look at Project Canvas

It was not long ago when the media regulator had a big hand in closing down ‘Project Kangaroo’, a collaboration between all of the terrestrial broadcasters.

Kangaroo has been succeeded by ‘Project Canvas’ which is a collaboration between the BBC, ITV and BT.

This project would have appeared to address the concerns of the competition commission by just including two terrestrial broadcasters.

However, the regulator has stated that this new IPTV project could still face and investigation by the office of fair trading.

The problem areas are:

technical standards – these must be met without reducing competition;
the project must be available on TV services other than Freeview or Freesat;
navigation must be easy without creating a ‘competitive bottleneck’ for third parties who wish to utilise canvas to reach audiences;
quality standards for programmes on Canvas must be “justifiable, non-discriminatory, transparent and proportionate”.