Sketchy Canvas

The BBC Trust's conditional approval of Project Canvas is light on financial detail. This is the final par of the press release.


"The budget for Project Canvas is estimated at £115.6m over four years from launch. Of this there is expected to be cost recovery of £17.5m from anticipated income from listings or the integration of services and licensing of the Canvas brand. This means that the cost to each of the six partners (including the BBC) is estimated at £16.4m over four years from launch".


So not quite the whole story. How much has been spent pre-launch ? Perhaps this explains an additional stricture from the Trust.


"An independent audit must be carried out of relevant BBC research and development spending in order to verify that pre-launch Canvas-related BBC expenditure costs have been or will be shared equally between the partners."

And here's an odd one - the BBC lending others money ?


"Where the BBC has already or proposes to frontload project spending by making initial commercial loans to the other Canvas partners, loans should also be available to the other or any new partners of the same creditworthiness on commercial terms."