Downstream

With politicians now getting a handle on just how much the UK's creative industries generate for the economy, it's sad to muse on Project Kangaroo. In 2007, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 came together to propose the creation of a joint streaming platform, to exploit their back catalogue beyond catch-up. It was billed as the logical way forward from their collaboration on Freeview, and could have been an add-on to the Freeview boxes delivering Digital Terrestrial TV.

To this day, it's unclear who called the idea to the attention of the Office of Fair Trading, but they pushed it on to the Commission, and the Kangaroo got formally bounced in 2009, because it might hurt unnamed competition.  Arquiva took over some of the platform work and it briefly flew as SeeSaw in 2010, but closed in 2011.

Now we learn that the BBC, ITV and NBC are in talks to have another go at a joint streaming platform. In the interim, the Competition Commission got their wish - letting others have a go. And the others are Netflix, headquartered in Los Gatos, California, and Amazon Prime, of Terry Avenue, Seattle.