The companies behind Project Canvas - the BBC, BT, Channel 4, Five, ITV and Talk Talk - today welcomed the BBC Trust’s positive provisional conclusions on Project Canvas.
Since February 2009, the BBC Trust have been assessing whether the BBC should participate in a new joint venture, set up by the partners to run the TV platform and licence the user experience and brand to participating manufacturers.
The BBC Trust today gave a conditional approval to the proposals, subject to the BBC and its partners meeting a number of conditions and a further period of consultation.
In publishing its provisional conclusions, the BBC Trust has clearly given full consideration to a very wide range of issues in a rigorous assessment of the proposals.
While the partners note the conditions, we are pleased that the BBC Trust has provisionally agreed to the BBC’s involvement in the project. The partners note that concerns from the industry, raised during the process, have been addressed in these interim conclusions. We expect to address the BBC Trust’s conditions as part our response to the Consultation.
Project Canvas director Richard Halton said:
“As a partnership comprising of both public service and profit-making businesses, we believe project canvas can be a significant enabling force for the UK’s creative digital economy and we welcome today’s announcement.
“By creating an open environment for internet-connected TV we open the door for a wide range of important online public services to reach TV audiences, and support a competitive open marketplace for commercial digital services.
“By creating an open platform based on the free-to-air principles that enabled Freeview and Freesat to take the benefits of digital TV to a wider audience, we now have an opportunity to offer consumers real choice over how they access and enjoy digital content in the future.”