BBC's Internet Ambitions Raise Hackles of Rivals

BBC'S INTERNET AMBITIONS RAISE HACKLES OF RIVALS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Aaron O. Patrick aaron.patrick@wsj.com]
In a recent letter to the British government agency that oversees the British Broadcasting Corp, newspaper publishers Telegraph Group Ltd., News Corp.'s News International and Associated Newspapers Ltd. asked the government to force the BBC to stop funding its Web sites with public money and to limit further online expansion. The BBC, the world's oldest public-service broadcaster, has many times before faced rivals' charges that its public funding gives it an unfair advantage in entertainment and news programming. At government hearings examining how the BBC spends its money, the corporation also has been faulted for imitating the entertainment provided by other broadcasters, such as reality-TV shows, and has promised not to do so as much in the future. The BBC, through its profit-making arm BBC Worldwide, is working on a plan to sell advertising on its Web sites. About 5,000 volunteers in the U.S. and Canada have been given access to BBC pages with mocked-up travel and finance ads. If their feedback is positive, BBC Worldwide says it could be selling Internet ads by Christmas. U.S. readers would be the No.1 target, the BBC said. "Essentially [overseas visitors to the Web sites] are getting a service for free at the moment, while the UK visitors pay through their license fee," said David Moody, head of strategy for BBC Worldwide. "It seems appropriate to earn revenue from it."
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