Library news

If DCMS Secretary Jeremy Wright has any purpose, he should take a look at the relationship between the BBC and Ofcom, which is simply not working fast enough. Maybe he's taking too many phone calls from Philip Davies.

The BBC wants to put more box sets on the iPlayer, and leave them there for longer than the current 30 days. The Board wrote to Ofcom on June 8, saying whilst it thought it would lead to an increase in iPlayer viewing (we are not told the details of the BBC's estimate), it would not have a material impact on competitors.

It has taken 22 weeks for Ofcom to come to the conclusion that the upper figures in the BBC estimates might have a competitive impact. Arthritic bureaucracy, rather than agile competition management. So Ofcom wants a Public Interest Test conducted by the BBC, and suggests the BBC lumps into it any plans for subsequent years.

There are constraints on what the BBC puts on iPlayer - deals with co-producers, deals for secondary rights, artists contracts, the simple scale of servers all limit what's made available. But, in principle, it's an archive already paid for by licence-fee holders, and I'm not sure why Ofcom thinks this library shouldn't have as many shelves as can be built, and serve the interests of users.