When Terms and Conditions are hard to find

When the BBC's and SeeTickets' Terms and Conditions collide...

This is a bit of personalised post and a grumble based upon buying online tickets for a musical event.

BBC 6 Music are hosting some live music event in Newcastle close to where I live. Lots of my friends were interested in going. The number of tickets on sale was strictly limited to around 3,500 people. See Tickets were the ticket selling intermediaries.  Consequently, somebody was bound to be disappointed.

Believe me, I'm used to ticket sales disappointment as much as the next person. I've been attending the Glastonbury festival most of my adult life and buying tickets can be a soul destroying experience if you don't get them (which I didn't for the last 2). That in itself isn't unusual. Lots of people want the tickets and they're strictly limited, hence they sell out in 26 minutes.

I'm not entitled to these tickets. I accept this. It's a lottery.

However, there are steps you can take to improve your chances. I should know - it's been a regular thing for my and my friends to go in a crowd of around 50-80 people. We even have our own field (Shields Field!).

When you have that many people going, you get used to planning ahead. In the past we've organised ourselves with military precision. We've all shared our registration details amongst the collective; we've had enough money in banks accounts to pay for £1000+ tickets (per groups of 4); we've stayed in touch via Skype/MSN/Facebook to ensure we can make purchase after purchase to guarantee everyone goes.

We've even gone as far as securing a T1 industrial LAN connection owned by an IT company for the fastest internet connection possible, while also using their phone/call centre facilities.

But I digress... Back to the 6 Music event.

I'm used to disappointment when it comes to ticket sales, but I've never been quite this disappointed.

On the 31st of January tickets went on sale for the event at 10am. By 10.04am all the tickets had been sold. Fortunately, I'd been able to buy 4 for me and a group of friends. Unbelievably, my wife had also been able to buy tickets using her See Tickets account and her own card (different to mine). We live at the same address (obviously, but this is important for the narrative below).

Several of my friends were less lucky than us, but it didn't matter. We'd picked up 8 between us and we told our friends on Facebook and nearly everyone who wanted one was after one. Result.

Or at least that's what we thought. Here's the email I received on the 31st of January:

Dear MR ROB JEWITT, Thank you for your order Order Details - Reference xxxxxxxxx BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC FESTIVAL BY NIGHT -SATURDAY 21ST Sage, Gateshead SATURDAY, 21/02/2015 at 17.00 - Doors open: 17.00 4 GENERAL ADMISSION £38.68  Including booking fee  £3.68 per ticket  4 REFUND PROTECTION FACILITY £2.00  Transaction Fee  £2.31  Total  £165.03  You have been charged a total of £165.03 via PayPal. You will receive a seperate email from PayPal with further details Tickets will be despatched as soon as possible, but may not be received until the week of the event. If you have not received your tickets in the post, please contact us no later than two working days before the show date. This event has the following age restriction: 16+ only. 16's - 17's must be accompanied by an adult To check the status of your order, change your delivery address and contact us, please visit our customer service area. Or alternatively you can contact us on 0115 912 9105. This order is subject to our terms and conditions. Thanks for your booking, SEE Tickets

So far, so good.

However, on the 2nd of February I received this email:

Dear MR ROB JEWITT

Unfortunately we have had to cancel your order of
4 GENERAL ADMISSION ticket(s) for the BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC FESTIVAL BY NIGHT -SATUR
at Sage, Gateshead on 21/02/2015 reference number
xxxxxxxxx as you have ordered over the show limit. 

As mentioned in our terms and conditions, we reserve the right to cancel 
any orders that exceed the show limit which applies per credit card/  
household/person. These limits are set by the organiser of the event.  

The refund has been credited to the card the tickets were bought with.
The refund will clear in the next 3-5 working days. 

If you have any queries please feel free to contact us at
http://www.seetickets.com/CustomerService.

Kind regards,

See Tickets Customer Services

See is a trademark of See Group Ltd. Registered Office: Norfolk House, 47 Upper Parliament St, Nottingham, NG1 2AB Used under license by the Way Ahead Group Limited. Registered in England, No. 03554468

This was pretty confusing. I'd checked the terms and conditions on the BBC website before buying the tickets. This is what it said (see the screen grab also):

BOOK TICKETS HERE

Tickets will be available to purchase online or via the SeeTickets box office on 08444122954. Calls cost 6p per minute plus standard network charges.

Tickets costs £35 + booking fees. Please note that a maximum of 4 tickets per person, with a limit of 2 transactions per card applies for all 6Music Festival by Night events.

Please note there is no readmission to the venue once the event has started.

There's a cached version of the page here


My confusion stems from the reason given by See Tickets in the refund email:

As mentioned in our terms and conditions, we reserve the right to cancel any orders that exceed the show limit which applies per credit card/ household/person. These limits are set by the organiser of the event.

There is no mention on the BBC page of a limit based on household. There's a limit based on card transactions and also on the amount a person can buy. Nothing about households. The reason I'm labouring this point is because of the next claim in the refund email: 'These limits are set by the organiser of the event"

I'd like to think that if that was genuinely the case, then it should have been mentioned in the terms and conditions. It isn't.

In fact the only place that the household restriction is mentioned is in the See Tickets terms and conditions. This was something I found only after I had the tickets refunded.

It seems to be a standard clause on their website regarding sales. It doesn't seem to be a BBC specific clause, therefore I find it disingenuous (at best) for See Tickets to refund these tickets while alluding to the claim that the BBC set the limit, especially when there is no mention of this specific restriction on the BBC sites.

I realise that I'm probably on a hiding to nowhere with this but it's a grievance I've taken up with See Tickets.  You can find a copy of the email correspondence below (names changed to protect the identities of the employees etc). If anything, I hope it serves as a warning to anyone else who may make the same mistake of attempting to buy tickets for friends.

I get that this is See Tickets's attempt to ensure that hawkers can't buy up all the tickets and tout them around. But it's harmed genuine music fans. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to pay triple the cover price from some unscrupulous auction site scalper in order to attend. Clearly, the scalpers already know how to work the system while the rest of us suffer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: 02 February 2015 18:11
 To: See Tickets Customer Care
 Subject: 2015-02-21 -- xxxxxxxx -- General enquiry

 Enquiry Type: General enquiry
 Reference Number: xxxxxxxx (xxxxxxxxx)

 Customer Email: robjewitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Customer Name: MR ROB JEWITT

Message:

 I'd like further clarification as to the cancellation. I thought the terms and conditions stated you were allowed 2 transactions per person but only 4 tickets per transaction? There were two transactions at my address (one by me, one by wife, using different cards) so that we could buy for a group of friends. We've often grouped together to buy tickets after losing out on events in the past - it's always a matter of luck as to who gets through to make a purchase, hence we spread the risk. To find out that we've been able to get tickets for friends, and then have to tell them "sorry, but you don't have them anymore" is a kick in the teeth. Additionally, the amount refunded appears to be ?8 less than I paid (according to my PayPal account). How is that?

 Best wishes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From:	See Tickets Customer Care (customercare@seetickets.com)
Sent:	03 February 2015 13:45:38

Hello,

 Unfortunately the order was cancelled as the show limit was exceeded, for whom and why the tickets were purchased is not taken into consideration I'm afraid, we have simply left you with the maximum allowed per household.

 We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

 Kind regards
  
XXXXxxx
 Customer Services
 SeeT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent:	03 February 2015 21:45:21
To:	See Tickets Customer Care (customercare@seetickets.com)

Hello

Well, that's very disappointing. I have to say I don't recall seeing any mention of household limits in the terms and conditions. Unfortunately, the initial website with the link to purchase is no longer active.

Fortunately, there is a cached version of the page and that doesn't mention households:

BOOK TICKETS HERE

Tickets will be available to purchase online or via the SeeTickets box office on 08444122954. Calls cost 6p per minute plus standard network charges.

Tickets costs £35 + booking fees. Please note that a maximum of 4 tickets per person, with a limit of 2 transactions per card applies for all 6Music Festival by Night events.

Please note there is no readmission to the venue once the event has started.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3APg0J8Sn1g4oJ%3Awww.bbc.co.uk%2Fprogrammes%2Farticles%2F4tSgkbt172qLfJlRM7Gsq4B%2F6-music-festival-by-night+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari

I'd appreciate it if someone could point me to where these terms and conditions might be found.

As you might imagine, we're quite disappointed, especially when there's clearly an organised bunch of ticket scalpers selling them for inflated prices on various auction websites. 

Best wishes

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent:	04 February 2015 08:46:07

Hello,

The ticket limit was reflected in the drop down menu. Purchasers were unable to place a booking for more than four tickets.

Kind regards

Xxxxxxxx

Customer Services

See™

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent:06 February 2015 18:56:23

To:See Tickets Customer Care (customercare@seetickets.com)

Hello

Well, you see, that's the main complaint here. The tickets were purchased after consulting the terms and conditions which made no mention of the household limit. It explicitly referred to the amount of purchases that were permitted per person per transaction (as captured in the previous email).

It was only after the purchase was refunded that the household limit was mentioned in the email dated 2/2/15 (see below). This was the only purchase I made. It was the only time that specific card and See Tickets account was used - which appears to be in accord with the terms and conditions as they were published.

Consequently, it appears that the tickets have been cancelled on the grounds of terms and conditions not made explicit at the point of sale. 

I'd like to be pointed to a copy of the original terms and conditions which state there was a household limit before the tickets went on sale

Best wishes 

Rob Jewitt

[original email dated 2/2/15]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE 9th Feb

From:	See Tickets Customer Care (customercare@seetickets.com)
Sent:	09 February 2015 09:04:10

Hello

You can view our terms and conditions here;

http://www.seetickets.com/content/terms-and-conditions

Please refer to the fourth paragraph. 

regards

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent:	09 February 2015 14:39:33
To:	See Tickets Customer Care (customercare@seetickets.com)

Hello

Oh, so those are your terms and conditions? I was under the impression that the tickets were being sold subject to the BBC's terms and conditions. That's what the SeeTickets email suggested (copied below). 

It would help if these additional terms and limits were front and centre on an event's webpage before transactions are initiated, especially when the cancellation email infers that SeeTicket's terms and conditions are specified by the organiser (i.e. the BBC).

It's one thing to follow the guidance set by the organiser (BBC) only to have the intermediary (SeeTickets) work to a different set of rules

Best wishes

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dramatising natural history documentaries

'Natural history can be pretty dramatic' (Steve Hewlett, 8/1/2014)

I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Media Show, this morning in which an interesting discussion took place between the host Steve Hewlett and Wendy Darke, the head of the BBC's Natural History Unit. The discussion revolved around the extent to which the new BBC prime-time natural history series, Hidden Kingdoms, was built upon artifice.

The series starts on January 16th 2014 on BBC1 - check out the trailer below:

This is a show that has been two years in the making and focusses on the lives of very small creatures, who are very difficult to record in their natural environment. Consequently, in order for the production team to reveal the lives of these diminutive animals they have had to resort to using controlled situations and have filmed captive animals, sometimes in studios, shot against blue-screens so that the 'drama' of their lives can be revealed.

Hardly natural?

The BBC has come under fire from certain quarters of the news media in recent years, especially when it comes to deceiving the public in it's natural history output. Much was made in the press about the 'fake' polar bear birth sequence in the Frozen Planet (2011) series. In that series, a polar bear family was followed in the natural environment, but the scenes of the animal giving birth were actually of a different bear who was housed in a Dutch animal park, in a purpose built enclosure that allowed for unprecedented camera access. Even the snow was fake. However, the viewing public would not have been able to easily distinguish between the natural and artificial sequences, leading to questions of duplicity and declining viewer trust.

At the time the BBC revealed that such staging of footage was common-place amongst natural history output. In an interview on the UK TV show This Morning, Sir David Attenborough responded to the criticism and suggested these sequences were not designed to mislead the public - rather, they were used to enhance the audience's understanding of the animal's lives.

The question is, during the middle of this scene when you are trying to paint what it is like in the middle of winter at the pole, to say, 'Oh, by the way, this was filmed in a zoo.'
It ruins the atmosphere, and destroys the pleasure of the viewers and destroys the atmosphere you are trying to create. It's not a falsehood and we don't keep it secret either. But to say actually in the middle of that sequence, I mean how far do you take this?
Do you say this is a penguin, but actually it was a different penguin colony than this one and this one is a different one? Come on, we were making movies.

At the end of the first episode of Hidden Kingdoms there is a 10 minute sequence that explains the various types of filmmaking techniques that have been employed to create the documentary footage contained within the main show. This is something the BBC have been doing for quite some time in relation to their natural history output, going at least as far back as Planet Earth (2006). Indeed, it's arguable that these short featurettes have become a staple part of the BBC natural history output, and speak to the twin-pronged audience desire to know about the natural world as well as the challenges of capturing the exotic footage presented.

Upfront honesty?

In the Media Show interview, Darke responded to Hewlett's criticisms that the show does not reveal the levels of artifice for dramatic purporses to the audiences in advance by suggesting that production is very honest with the viewers via the 'making of' featurette, as well as via information contained within the show's website. Indeed, viewers are warned in advance that special filming techniques have been employed - providing they visit the BBC's media pack for the show.

However, the level of detail revealed in the media pack is underwhelming. Here's an extract from the website that details the extent to which the material presented in artificial:

What is it like to be a dung beetle caught in an earth-shaking wildebeest stampede? Or a mouse facing a tsunami-like flash flood, which to us would be nothing more than a gentle trickle? Combining their skills as wildlife filmmakers with blue-screen filming allowed the team to recreate real-life events as experienced by the animal stars, giving viewers a unique new perspective on these dramatic worlds within worlds.

When listening to the interview between Hewlett and Darke, it becomes clear that animal runs were built and captive creatures were forced into contexts that didn't occur naturally.  Nevertheless, the BBC are clearly anxious to not fall foul of the same criticisms levelled at it circa Frozen Planet. This level of transparency is clearly an attempt to address earlier failings. However,  this hasn't always worked, as Mark Lawson has pointed out:

I think that there is a problem with the methods used and that it has only been increased by the openness about what has been done. Watching the show is like living with a liar: you start to question everything.

Lawson goes on to discuss the privileged position that viewer of natural history programmes finds themselves in - namely, that they want and expect to be stunned with footage that seems almost unbelievable. Given the extent to which Hollywood-driven CGI has become a staple part of our filmic culture, it may not be surprising to see such techniques being employed in nature documentaries. Indeed, it may be exactly what is required in order to keep this type of flagship programming at the heart of the television schedules.

All documentary is constructed 

What seemed to be absent from the debates around these shows and their varying levels of authenticity or artifice is an acknowledgement that all factual forms are constructed and can never give direct access to the real. While I understand that natural history programming fits within traditions of public service broadcasting and realist aesthetics, it doesn't negate the fact that the editing together of images from multiple cameras, overlaid with some kind of explanatory narration, fosters an environment in which audience interpretations of events are being carefully cultivated - often in a highly narrativised and in an anthropomorphic manner.

Whenever debates around documentary and artifice take place I can't help but think back to Bill Nichols's work on the varying modes of address within the genre (especially chapter 6) and their implications for audience understanding. Nichols identified 6 different modes of address or 'inflections'.

Whenever I see the BBC evoke the making of featurettes at the end of their programmes, I am reminded of Nichols's 'Reflexive Mode' which calls attention to the assumptions and conventions that govern documentary filmmaking. Typically, this mode increases audience awareness that what they are watching is a constructed re-presentation of reality rather than unfiltered access to the real.

The easiest way to explain this idea is by means of a comparison. I frequently use a cropped version of Rene Magritte's painting 'The Treachery of Images' in classes where I remove the text 'Ceci nest pas use pipe' and ask my students what they are looking at.

If the students haven't seen this example before, they usually say that what they can see is a pipe, before I tell them that they are wrong. They are looking at a painting of a pipe.

If they have seen the example before and say it's a painting of a pipe then I usually tell them they are wrong again. They are looking at a version of the painting that has been captured as a digital file before being recompiled and projected onto a screen so that it resembles a painting of a pipe. Never did Walter Benjamin's essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' from 1936 seem more prescient.

It's not a huge leap from Magritte to Jean Baudrillard's examples of Disneyland as hyperreal America (in Simulation and Simulacra, 1981) and the claim that first Gulf War did not happen (in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1991) - despite the documentary evidence to the latter that an event called the Gulf War did take place in Kuwait in 1991. However, Baudrillard's point was about the way in which the images of that war were mediated to construct a version of events many times removed from the actuality of the incident (watching laser-guided Maverick missiles explode over featureless targets via cockpit videos).

The point that I am making is that the interview that opened this post seems to assume that there is a way to accurately represent the reality of the natural world that is somehow free from the problems of representation and narrative construction. Access to an objective reality becomes increasingly problematic and untenable once we acknowledge that all media forms are subject to certain types of artifice - whether deliberately acknowledged or not.

Still, the debate in The Media Show will be a helpful teaching aid for anyone wanting to quickly cut to the issues of documentary. We all love a little bit of 4K/HD 'nature porn' while we are sat in front of our big screen flat-panel televisions made of rare earth materials that may have been mined in conflict zones around the world, from unsustainable sources.

At least we get to watch the lovely, pretty pictures.

The Future of Higher Education?

In a few hours I'm about to be in the audience for a BBC Radio 3 recording taking place at the National Glass Centre during which the future of Higher Education will be discussed.  This is part of the BBC's Free Thinking series presented in association with the University of Sunderland.   The event is being billed as bringing together "an outspoken panel to tackle one the most pressing issues for future generations" - namely how cash strapped universities are to cope with impending cuts in public funding.

This comes on the back of the recent publication of the Browne Review which calls for the present cap of £3290 to be lifted in the face of removing the current regime in which the public pays a proportion of the true cost of a university degree.  A video featuring Lord Browne's proposals can be found below, as can the full report.

The Browne Report - Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education

There have been numerous criticisms of the report, some of which suggest that middle income families would be hit hardest by the newly proposed funding ventures, whilst others have claimed that the huge increase in fees would out off potential students from the poorest backgrounds.

 I'm sure that this Radio 3 debate might get a little heated.  Hopefully I'll be able to tweet from the audience after 7pm GMT.

Top slicing the BBC - the result

Earlier in the week I blogged about the threat facing the BBC posed by the proposed top-slicing. I encouraged readers of this blog and follower over on my Twitter feed to get involved and contact their MP to voice their concerns about the implications of such a move. The civic action group 38 Degrees was crucial to mobilising protest against this movement with it's email template and MP finding resource. I wrote to my MP and I encouraged my colleagues in the University of Sunderland Media department to do this same (a big thank you to all those who got involved - it's appreciated!).

I thought several of you may be interested in the verdict...

I received a mail from 38 Degrees over on Facebook which poitned to the success of the campaign. You can read the message below:

Dear friend,

This week thousands of us worked together to persuade the government not to top-slice the licence fee. The government had been expected to confirm their top-slicing plans in the Queen's speech on Wednesday. This would have threatened the BBC's funding and independence, by handing a chunk of the licence fee to rival broadcasters. After thousands of us signed the petition and wrote to our MPs, the government announced that they aren't pushing ahead with top-slicing, and that the matter will now be reviewed by the next government in 2012.

We've had a big success, which shows that it works when we stand up for the BBC together. But politicians and media millionaires continue to attack the BBC and there could still be a big cut in the licence fee in the future. The more of us there are involved in the campaign, the stronger we'll be when it's time to stand up for the BBC against future threats.

Ask your friends to get involved in the campaign by forwarding this email and asking them to click this link: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/standup4thebbc

We've always known that top-slicing is not the only threat facing the organisation. Many powerful interests will continue attacking the BBC - from rival media companies who resent the competition, to politicians who think that it should tow their line. We know the BBC isn't perfect and has made mistakes which make it more vulnerable to criticism, but it's definitely worth protecting.

The Conservative Party are talking up their plans to cut the licence fee, and potentially close down whole parts of the BBC. Just yesterday, David Cameron said "the BBC has got very overextended and the licence fee is high". [1] [2]

The media multi-millionaire Rupert Murdoch is increasingly vocal in his attacks, calling the licence fee a "scandal". [3] His son, James Murdoch, the chief executive and chairman of News Corporation, says the licence fee should become "much, much smaller".

Together we've seen off the threat of top-slicing, which shows that people power works. The more of us there are, the more effective we'll be in standing up for the BBC against future attacks. Can you ask your friends to join in? Please forward this email and ask them to join the campaign by clicking this link: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/standup4thebbc


Thanks for getting involved,

David, Hannah, Johnny, Nina and the 38 Degrees team


[1] http://www.mumsnet.com/onlinechats/david-cameron-nov-09#BBC_licence_fee

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6574186/BBC-licence-fee-could-be-cut-Tories-say.html

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/6533512/Rupert-Murdoch-could-sue-BBC-and-block-Google.html

Good news in the short term! However, the commercial sector will always look to the BBC as a threat and seek to lobby government to curb it's reach. The medium term future of the BBC looks rocky, especially if the Conservative party get into power by next summer. It needs the support of the licence fee paying public, so, stand up for the BBC.

Top-slicing the BBC

This week the government will be discussing the future funding of the BBC, as will be announced in the forthcoming Queen's Speech on Wednesday. This was also something suggested in the final draft of the Digital Britain report. You can read the BBC's response to these proposed changes here (.pdf 57kb). I'm not keen on the idea of government top-slicing the current BBC licence fee as it sends mixed messages to the public about where responsibility lies when audience members feel aggrieved on the back of specific programmes. It also undermines the role of public service broadcasting more generally.

In an email discussion with colleagues at the University of Sunderland about this subject Professor Andrew Crisell, the esteemed broadcast historian and author of several books in the area, had this to say:

The purpose of a public service broadcaster like the BBC is to overcome the limitations of the commercial system of competition and serve everybody, including those groups who are too small to interest advertisers. So if the government introduces competition into public service provision, this means that it either doesn't understand what public service broadcasting is or doesn't give a damn about it anyway. Competitive public service broadcasting is a contradiction in terms and will result in the same kind of audience chasing that already characterises the commercial sector.

There are a number of campaign groups mobilising in support of the BBC like the Citizen's Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting, which has the backing of several high profile media scholars. You can follow them on Twitter or join the Facebook group. You can also express your dissatisfaction with the new proposals by contacting your MP. The campaign group 38 Degrees has a handy template and email form on their site which enables people to have their say and petition their local MP. I've already contact David Miliband on this matter - the text of the letter can be found below:

Dear MP,

I hear that the government is considering including plans to topslice the BBC in the Queen's Speech. I'm concerned that this is a threat to the BBC's long-term future, and will undermine its independence. One advantage of the current licensing of the BBC is that the public can clearly identify the correct avenue of complaint when confronted with an emotive issue. A mixed method of funding in which commercial bodies receive licence fee money complicates this relationship.

The example of the funding support given over to the Digital Switchover Help Scheme and the subsequent underspend should not function to act as a precedent that undermines the licence fee paying public's relationship with the BBC. This example is frequently used to support the top-slicing argument, but lacks adequate weight. This was an extraordinary use of the public's money to drive technical innovation, new platforms for public and commercial content creation and improve audience choice. This benefited all involved when commercial sector had failed to provide a viable platform.

Given the global prominence of the BBC brand in an field where very few other British success stories exist, it seems counterproductive to siphon funding away. If the proposed top-slicing goes ahead the danger is such that future governments will be able to leverage commercial and political pressure against the BBC in a perpetual 'casus belli' which may undermine one of the democratic functions served by the Corporation. There is no guarantee that the percentage of top slicing proposed today will not increase over time - this has happened in other countries which have adopted similar models.

Many other suggestions have been made for ways of funding public service content made outside of the BBC, without top-slicing. Please contact Gordon Brown and Ben Bradshaw urgently and ask them to take a fresh look at these alternatives, rather than push ahead with top-slicing the BBC. Please also sign EDM 1891 to put on the record that you oppose top-slicing.

Please let me know when you've done all this, or if not please let me know why not.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Jewitt

Get involved.

Edit: I've had a response back from my MP. It was pretty quick - less than 30 minutes after I sent the email it had arrived. The reason for that is my MP is a member of the cabinet so does not sign Early Day Motions:

Strict Parliamentary rules state that members of the cabinet do not sign EDM's. However, I have passed a copy of your email on to Ben Bradshaw's department so they are aware of your concerns

Ben Bradshaw is not my favourite MP - he has already levelled criticism at the way in which the BBC is funded so I suspect my argument will fall on deaf ears. This is why your voice counts even more.

Get involved

Radio 2 to celebrate the anniversary of the second summer of love

What's that I hear you say? Radio 2 is going to engage with rave? Indeed it is... A press release on the BBC site lists a number of different shows lined up (see the list at end of this post for full details).

The series kicks off with Zoe Ball on the 21st of June, tracing the history and evolution of dance music from Northern Soul to the present in a three-part show. It will go by the rather catchy title of The Definitive History of UK Dance Music.

There will also be a show comprising of oral histories from clubbers entitled Don't Start Me Talking About ... Dance Music. I shall have to catch that one via iPlayer due to Glastonbury commitments, unless Speechification features it on their site.

The Beeb also seem to have a show which seeks to untie old rave and nu-rave, fronted by Chris Coco going under the banner of Acid House - The Next Generation.

I think they'll all be quite valuable resources for the Dance Music lecture I give on the Popular Music module (MAC351) at work. I'm also taking the liberty to post these show on here as a reminder to myself that I want to get hold of these. I don't really have an effective media capture/reminder service for things like this.

Radio 2's Dance Music Season:

The Definitive History Of UK Dance Music (Unique Productions) – begins Saturday 21 June at 7.00pm

Acid House – The Next Generation – Tuesday 24 June at 10.30pm

Don't Start Me Talking About... Dance Music – Friday 27 June at 7.00pm

The Greatest Dance Records Of All Time (Unique Productions) – begins Tuesday 1 July at 11.30pm

Behind The Velvet Rope: Studio 54 Uncovered (revised repeat) – Saturday 12 July at 7.00pm

Saturday Night Chill (repeat) – Saturday 19 July at 7.00pm 6.6.08.

The BBC is losing some friends...

...but could it be gaining others?

Another day, another report of how the BBC is upsetting the apple cart in ISP land. The Register is carrying this report of how the ISP Tiscali is up in arms about the high bandwidth consumption being driven by the iPlayer (as I mentioned recently).

It seems that Ashley Highfield's comments regarding ISPs have incurred more wrath as Simon Gunter, strategy chief at Tiscali, claiming it's

"bit rich that a publicly-funded organisation is telling a commercial body how to run its business".

The issue here seems to be that the BBC have delivered a simple service that people are wanting and are willing to use, yet this is having an adverse effect on ISPs working on slim margins.

The suggestion that the BBC be charged with a bandwidth tax for driving web content is a bit rich given that other sites like YouTube seem to be excluded from this rhetoric. Who knows where this will end up?

Meanwhile, just to add further flames to the fire, Anthony Rose announced that the BBC were bringing its popular iPlayer to the world's favourite console, the Nintendo Wii. IGN are reporting that the Wii is outselling the PS3 in Japan by a ratio of about 3.5-1 through March. The homepage of nexgenwars keeps a rough estimate of consoles sold to date (note that the Xbox 360 is 2 million sales behind the Wii despite being on the market a year longer).

The BBC announcement is a little misleading - it's not as if Wii owners are going to get a dedicated iPlayer channel on their Wii-desktop just yet. They will need to use the Opera-based Internet Channel that came free with the console at launch (but later at a cost of 500 Wii points, or approximately £3.50) and bookmark the iPlayer URL.

The major problem the BBC is facing here is the Wii's native use of an inferior quality video codec for playback as Rose spells out:

"Nintendo Wii supports only Flash 7, which uses the Sorenson Spark codec rather than the ON2 VP6 codec introduced with Flash 8. Unfortunately the Sorenson compression isn’t nearly as good as ON2 VP6 compression, which is why most video sites gave up encoding their content in Flash 7 compatible format."

This means that the BBC are having to transcode their programmes to fit the console. However, they figure that instead of people watching iPlayer content on laptop or desktop monitors, there are plenty of Wii's connected to flat panel televisions in the front rooms of the UK (approximatively 2.5 million) - ideal for those people who don't have Virgin Media's 'catch up on demand', Sky+ or another PVR option like Tivo.

The iPlayer normally streams at 500 Kbps and delivers excellent quality video (way better than YouTube which is most likely why they are not being dragged into the furore), but in order to make this work on the Wii, Rose points out that the BBC:

"had to increase the bitrate to 820Kbps because the Sorenson codec used by Wii simply needs more bits to achieve the same picture quality. So, for a smooth playback experience on Wii you’ll need an internet connection that can give you 1Mbps or better."

So what does this mean for the ISPs? You guessed it - more data being streamed adding to their woes. It shouldn't be too long before this kind of service gets integrated into Xbox Media Centre or the Playstation Network, further compounding the bandwidth situation. That is if Sony and Microsoft agree to open up their services. Is the BBC purposefully sticking its head above the parapet and deliberately antagonising ISPs? Is it hoping that if it gets enough people using its service it can justify itself and its license fee?

The BBC vs ISPs

It looks like the current bête noir of the web, at least in the UK, is not the pirates but the BBC. Charles Arthur over at The Guardian is running a piece on the extra traffic that the BBC's iPlayer is generating.

Recently, we have had rumour and denial regarding Virgin Media's decision to implement the three-strikes-and-your-out policy on customers using peer-to-peer software on their networks. Earlier this week, Charles Dunstone, head of the Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk openly rejected demands from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) that the ISP should police it's networks on their behalf. It seems that the ISPs have bigger concerns than a minority of users sharing music and film -

Now, it might seem strange to hear that the BBC has a two part iPlayer: one which streams data much like the kind of streams we see on video sites like YouTube; the other which works like the current BitTorrent protocol via the BBC iPlayer Download Manager - data from files is distributed across users computers and shared in a decentralized way, thus making distribution more even and efficient. The video quality of the second option is far superior than the first option.

One can guess that the streaming bug is a no-brainer for web users accustomed to clicking the play button and expecting their good quality BBC footage streamed on demand. The peer-to-peer option is a little more complicated (but the BBC have done a good job of making it fairly simple). Indeed, a BBC press release from January points out that users stream video at a ratio of 8-1 over the more efficient peer-to-peer route.

YouTube itself is already testing higher quality streamed video as reported by Lifehacker. This looks set to add further misery upon the already strained ISPs as the data load increases.

But let's get back to the iPlayer traffic. Arthur is reporting that all the extra streaming people are doing is adding to the costs of ISPs who tend to pay BT per gigabyte of data used due to the relaince on the latter's IPStream technology. The cost of streaming has almost trebled for some ISPs in the first month alone. These IPStream pipes ted to come in at 155-megabits. Arthur estimates that this means when 300 people are streaming BBC content at 500 kilobits per second, the pipe is choked.

ISPs have suggested the BBC contributes to the situation, perhaps by installing hardware within the UK Broadband network (The Telegraph leaked this last year, dubbed Project Cheetah), although the BBC's head of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield, used a BBC blog to claim that ISPs need to get their house in order and actually deliver on what they advertises to customers. Unlimited broadband should mean just that.

The BBC may be setting itself up for a fall if it is not careful. With the future of television looking increasingly to the internet they do not want to upset those companies best placed to provide the content - it's not as if the BBC own the pipes that connect the houses of the UK. Yet.

ISPs may want to exert some pressure back on the BBC and close down the iPlayer streaming service if it costs them too much. After all, it is carried on port 1935 and we have seen ports blocked before. China does it very well. It would not be too surprising if the BBC was forced to curtail the streaming service in favour of the peer-to-peer model...

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