I wanted to explore how others imagined the internet before the 'big boom' occurred. I think this is a really good example of how the BBC visualised (and wasn't named then) their iPlayer, and how they feel the internet could expand their channel.
Within five years, more people will receive BBC programming via the internet than through television or radio, according to Bob Eggington. That forecast, from the BBC executive spearheading the broadcaster's headlong expansion into online news services, is one of the most striking indications of just how far and how fast the BBC believes its audience will embrace the cyber world.
Eggington is the project director of BBC News Online. His task is to develop the online news operation into a machine capable of delivering rolling bulletins in text, graphics, audio and video over the internet for delivery to a host of devices, including mobile phones, laptops and palmtops, PCs, and conventional television sets, once they can be used on the net.
Eggington and his team of 100 journalists are based at Television Centre, alongside - but separate from - television news. On the other side of the A40, in BBC Worldwide's offices, sits Drew Kaza, managing director of internet and interactive operations. He is about to unleash a huge shake-up at the corporation's commercial internet operation, Beeb.com.
Kaza is planning a much clearer separation between the commercial web site, which carries advertising and acts as a vehicle for e-commerce, and the BBC's public service web sites, which are funded by licence payers. He is set upon an aggressive pursuit of e-commerce business around the world, leveraging the BBC's brand name to reassure customers that they can buy safely through its web sites.
Kaza and Eggington represent the two extremes of the BBC's internet approach; a news service untainted by commerce on one side and the aggressive merchandiser utilising of the broadcaster's huge number of valuable brands on the other.
News Online has ambitious plans for expansion, including the imminent launch of a video-on-demand operation offering viewers the ability to call down up to date news reports as required. Eggington insists that the BBC's service offers more than rivals which, he says, re-version wire copy and add little else. The BBC is aiming to make its internet operation a synthesis of different media, and therefore the first choice of users.
He says that broadcasters have a natural advantage over newspaper internet operations because a rolling service is embedded in their culture. Newspapers, he suggests, are still wedded to batch production. In reality it cuts both ways: Eggington's staff have had to learn how to produce graphics fast and in far larger quantities than normal in television news, where high production values and short bulletin times mean they are used sparingly. If anything, the news operation has most in common with a wire service. News Online aims to have coverage of a significant event on its site within two minutes of the BBC being alerted to its existence. Later takes on the story add graphics, context, audio and video. In total, the staff handle about 300 stories a day.
Behind the journalism sits technology devised to make the stories compatible not just with the internet, but also the Ceefax text service for television, mobile phones, interactive television and portable wireless devices. The technology is supposed to be as versatile in the newsroom, allowing journalists to pull together different types on material - text, video, pictures - into seamless coverage.
But video on demand is where the future lies. Eggington calculates that video makes up just 5% of the online market now, but demand is doubling every four months. As new technology makes video transmission to homes faster and clearer, so video news will become increasingly important.
For Eggington, carrying advertisements on his service is unthinkable - would be tantamount to an admission that BBC news was no longer independent. Culturally, he and his staff live at the opposite end of the BBC spectrum to Kaza, whose strategy is to do what BBC executives in the UK would consider unthinkable - exploit the BBC brand to develop e-commerce revenues around the world.
To ensure there is a clear distinction between the public service web sites and their commercial counterparts, he is shifting content associated with programmes - Top Gear, Top of the Pops, Gardener's World - off Beeb.com and on to the public service sites. The licence fee is, after all, funding this content. A link will take the user across the divide into the commercial arena, but only with clear indications that an e-commerce site is coming.
Kaza wants to exploit these programmes and the BBC's huge magazine stable by selling associated goods. There will be car, music and gardening sites, for example, as well as an auction operation. "Best of Britain" is the phrase on his lips. He will dis tance the BBC slightly from the merchants at first, by not taking any share of the transaction charges. That will help maintain the BBC's claim to impartiality, he says. He will also police the site, and promises to respond quickly to complaints. But his plans involve e-commerce operations around the world, and the BBC may find this a considerable burden.
The aim is to replicate in the commercial world the role the BBC has been seeking for some time in entertainment and news, to be the trusted hand guiding the user through the net. The difference is, of course, that Beeb.com is introducing the viewer/user to people keen to take his or her money
