This morning's FT asks that question as the BBC's project cnavas has now got approval from the BBC Trust to go ahead.
According to Futuresource Consulting
one in five flat-panel TVs shipped in Europe next year will be ready to connect to the internet straight out of the box.and
With iPlayer already available on several set-top boxes and games consoles, soon millions more households will be watching VoD on the screen for which it was originally intended - but delivered over the internet, not an aerial.
Yet according to Michael Cormish, chief executive of Blinkbox, an independent VoD service.
"Broadcasters have never had to manage distribution [themselves] before," he says. "VoD is an attempt by the broadcasters to selfdistribute and that is the reason why they will find it tough. It is not a skillset they have required . . . Most will end up spending a multiple of their initial budgets to try to compete, or simply exit."
Whether broadcasters will have to start charging for the service will become a moot point but it may be the only way to effectively subsidise the content
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