Radio becomes tv

The BBC Trust has approved Radio 1's plans to create a dedicated section of content within the iPlayer - but we are not privileged with how much it'll cost (or where the money is coming from) and how its success, or otherwise will be judged.

The network's content budget in 2013/4 was £40.2m. There's clearly extra for the iPlayer service, but it's a secret...

The Executive puts the incremental on-going cost of the proposal at [ - REDACTED - ] per year, which covers commissioning, rights, production, presenting talent and staffing [ - REDACTED -  ]. In addition, the proposal entails a one-off investment of [ - REDACTED - ] to upgrade the production facilities and to train staff for HD, which is a technical requirement of the iPlayer platform. The Executive would like to retain the option to increase the budget to [ - REDACTED -] a year if there is clear evidence of strong audience value.

And here's the content proposal, which they estimate will secure a measly 310,000 additional hours of viewing per month for the iPlayer...

This doesn't bode well for transparency on the proposal to move BBC3 content online, up next.