SeeSaw under the spotlight

SeeSaw has been a long time coming. It's what the BBC's Project Kangaroo became after it was forced by the Competition Commission to sell it off and Arqiva acquired it. Now in beta, it's due to go live to the public in the next few weeks.

The first impression is of something that has been thrown together very fast. The typeface is unpleasant and the layout is difficult to navigate. What is most obvious immediately is that there is very little content on the site. I can only expect that much more will become available before public launch and that it will continue to increase thereafter.

Programme discovery

The challenge for SeeSaw is going to be in programme discovery. The intention of Project Kangaroo had been to make available the entire archives of the Beeb, C4 and Five. If it becomes reality, it is a huge amount of content to sort and a very difficult task to display it to the viewer in a meaningful way.

At the top of the page is a 'carousel', a style of menu deployed by many of the Video On Demand (VOD) players, including Joost, Hulu, Livestation and the iPlayer. SeeSaw are using it to highlight a small amount of featured content. There is a challenge to keep this fresh and interesting for the individual viewer and there is currently no way for the individual to provide preferences.

Below the carousel is a box offering catchup TV. Although it does not specifically state it, this section has links to programmes that have recently aired. There are only seven shows on it, all from Channel 4 properties. This leaves big questions about the role of SeeSaw in catchup television - as opposed to archival - and where the content is going to come from: just Channel 4 or will it include Five and BBC material? Kangaroo was supposed to carry anything older than what is available on the iPlayer.

The box beside it "If you really love TV..." seems to me totally redundant. I cannot understand its purpose. There are three further boxes below: 'Classic comedy'; 'The best years of your life?'; and 'Critically-acclaimed modern drama'. These categories seem to be entirely arbirtrarily chosen and the content within them is unexpected. Girl Who Cries Blood is in 'The best years of your life?'. The category does have a '?', I admit.

Meanwhile the top navigation bar has: Categories, with a limited number of them; Channels, containing BBC, 4oD and Five, only the last of which is a channel; and a search box. In principle this makes sense but the sub-menus need to be extended.

Choosing what to watch

Clicking on a channel provides series names, showing by default 'Featured'. These appear to be a random assortment. It is not clear whether these will remain constant or how they will be updated. There is, once again, no option for individual filtering. You can select by A-Z.

I chose the first programme, The Line of Beauty. The programme page is quite nicely laid out but also the easiest part of the interface to get right. There is a video screen at the top and below are the programme details in a column next to an episode menu. There is some guidance both on the screen itself and at the bottom of the page referring to strong language and scenes of a sexual nature.

On clicking to play, a guidance note pops up, asking me to confirm my age. In small type there are links to setting up parental controls and 'find out more' presumably about parental controls. The parental controls, if they're going to be part of the service, should be much more evident. There are links to them in the footer but even if you scroll down, you might not see the reference in the tiny writing.

There are frequently two ads followed by a programme sponsor. This is frustrating but I doubt that SeeSaw will fill all of its inventory if the service takes off, meaning that double spots disappear. Clicking on an ad, hoping to pause, I was taken to the brand's page that should make sense commercially but these sorts of click-through deals are few and far between, largely unproven to generate revenue for publisher or advertiser.

Video streaming experience

You click to play and the lights go down. I like this. It's not a novel idea - Hulu has it, for example - but it's good. Moving your mouse brings the lights back up.

There are frequently two ads followed by a programme sponsor. This is frustrating but I doubt that SeeSaw will fill all of its inventory if the service takes off, meaning that double spots disappear. Clicking on an ad, hoping to pause, I was taken to the brand's page. 

Some sites have toyed with adaptive bitrates, which means that you get a quality of stream that adapts to your downstream bandwidth, as it varies. It is possible with SeeSaw to fix Low, Medium or High bandwidth by moving the mouse over the screen when the ads have finished and the programme begins. These should just be under the screen, as should the volume and 'full screen' controls.

The screen size is fixed, unless you opt for full screen. This is a weakness. I particularly like the way Zattoo manages screen size, so that you can set it to whatever you like, regardless of the bandwidth that you have chosen.

That said, the flash-based video is of good quality and consistency, even at low bandwidth.

Final words

I'm left disappointed by SeeSaw. Arqiva bought the assets of Project Kangaroo but it isn't entirely clear what they picked up with that bargain. The user interface is poor. The available content is minimal, although I expect that is temporary. There are no social aspects, even just for sharing what you're watching on Facebook, let alone a proper integration with it or Twitter. Project Kangaroo was expensive to develop.There are some very significant challenges for SeeSaw and it appears from the beta that there is still a lot of work to do.

Competition Commission shears Kangaroo

The fine print around the decision against Kangaroo is today made public by the Competition Commission. Unfortunately, much of it has been excised and the majority of the appendices are totally meaningless.

Market shares for the supply of VOD? Forget about it.

There is one section, however, tucked away at the end of appendix I: barriers to entry and expansion.

...we do not agree that the lack of success [in content production] is because other broadcasters have chosen not to bid for or create valuable content. It is also important to note that as PSBs the parties are in a privileged position relative to other broadcasters. As PSBs they benefit from funding and access to large audience. Finally, even if a broadcaster were to become successful in bidding for or creating valuable content, it would [be] difficult to replicate the parties’ catalogue of UK TV content.

I'm entirely in favour of the back catalogues of these three PSBs being made available through VOD. The problem with Kangaroo is that there is absolutely no need for the archives to be offered through one distribution point controlled by the three of them. Why don't the PSBs independently make it available through a number of "retailers" on fair, non-discriminatory terms instead?

When the BBC, ITV and C4 start working with third parties in content distribution, they will reduce their costs and increase both revenue and value to viewers.

Kangaroo is expensive exercise in reducing TV choice

Surprise, surprise, the Competition Commission has ruled against Project Kangaroo in its current conception.

...the [Competition Commission ("CC")] has concluded that the joint venture is likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition (SLC) in the supply of UK TV VOD content at the wholesale and retail levels. The CC does not, however, expect the joint venture to lead to an SLC in online advertising or content acquisition.

Analysts at Screen Digest are apparently confused by the decision. Their argument is that the device, not the content, is king. People buy a device then they buy content. What they fail to see is that the device is purchased for the content that is available on it. They have also ignored the fact that the majority of the content on Kangaroo is proposed to be free.

Fundamentally, Kangaroo ("UKVOD") would control the vast majority of content produced over the last decades for viewing in the UK and could become the only point of access for that content.

In this situation, UKVOD would have the ability and incentive to impose unfavourable terms when licensing domestic content to rival VOD providers. At the extreme, UKVOD might withhold content from its rivals altogether. Any reduction in access to content would be likely to impact unfavourably on viewers.

The CC is now looking at possible remedies, which include, at the extreme, blocking Kangaroo outright. Other possibilities include allowing other VOD retailers access to the content on a "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis."

Although the CC's investigation into Kangaroo is quite separate from the Public Service Broadcasting review by Ofcom, it does raise the question of the role of the BBC. Part of its mandate is to lead technological change in broadcasting. However, this duty has been taken to mean that it should maintain control and ownership of new distribution mechanisms.

Both the iPlayer and Project Kangaroo display such tendencies. The implications for the licence fee payer, who funds the BBC, is that the cost to him is much greater than if the development and ownership of new platforms were left to other, commercial entities. The fact is, that a number of commercial entities pre-exist the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been spent on new media development by the BBC.

A change of mindset would reduce the costs of the BBC - as well as those of ITV and Channel4. The irony is that the development of online TV, far from being a threat to the PSBs, is an opportunity to increase viewership while simultaneously reducing costs.