Well I'm not party to the negotiations so I've no idea how strong or how weak the BBC's bargaining position is. But don't forget that the BBC is a content vendor too.
________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scot McSweeney-Roberts Sent: 03 October 2009 14:43 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [backstage] The BBC is encrypting its HD signal by the back door On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 19:53, Nick Reynolds-FM&T <[email protected]> wrote: How would the cause of audiences be served if the BBC refused to deal with content vendors and as a result audiences could not access that content? As usual it's a difficult balancing act. But the content providers are trying to sell stuff to the BBC. You would think the BBC would be in much the same position as Tesco is allegedly in with regards to farmers and be able to exert some pressure on your suppliers. Are all the content providers suicidal enough to not sell content to the BBC if you refuse to use DRM on HD? Even with multichannel, there aren't that many buyers of content inthe UK and most of them aren't as big as the BBC, so I'm surprised that the BBC is in such a difficult bargaining position.
