UPDATE: Confusion online about this aspect of the iPlayer rebrand. Some sources now claiming iPlayer will include “selected” archived radio/music content. More when the picture becomes clearer, so to speak.

UPDATE 2: James Cridland explains that the BBC plans involve making radio content more ‘interactive’ (whatever that means), along with moving radio content from iPlayer to a “new stand-alone product”. So it’s not the death of online radio, merely the fragmentation of the BBC’s online archival offering, which during a period of consolidation still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

New Media Age reports that the BBC’s iPlayer is to lose radio content. The article adds:

It will, however, continue to work with third parties to integrate further social functions into the iPlayer.

So you’ll be able to tweet some bollocks about whatever crap you’re watching on BBC3, but won’t be able to access any of the BBC’s radio and digital radio output on iPlayer. THAT MAKES SENSE.

Gosh, Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron and co. must be lathering themselves into a frenzy almost 24/7 on this news.

This is the first time there has been a single, unified strategy across the entire BBC Online proposition

said Erik Huggers, outgoing director of Future Media & Technology.

Just as well, given that the arseholes in government last time and this time have a single, unified strategy to fuck the BBC repeatedly up the arse, while Rupert Murdoch cheers from the sidelines and Middle England erupts into a party at the increasing likelihood within a decade of no longer having to pay £12 per month for the BBC, despite firing tons more than that at Sky for a few decent shows but an awful lot of utter shit

he didn’t go on to say.

So:

• The new Apple TV, slightly larger than a Club bar and only £99.
• The recent iOS 4.2 upgrade, with AirPlay, enabling you to send video from your iThing to your Apple TV, just by prodding an on-screen button.
• The spiffy Air Video, enabling streaming and live conversion from Mac or PC to your iThing.

In the world of non-idiots:

• User buys all of the above, and happily plays anything stored on their computer on their TV, wirelessly.
• User also buys and rents stuff from the iTunes Store with absurd ease.
• Buyer is now hugely happy.
• Apple makes buckets of cash.
• Everyone who likes TV loves Apple.

In the world of Apple:

• AirPlay video is blocked to developers, out of pure spite and stupidity.
• Apple TV considered a waste of time by loads of people.
• Buyers left with other equally problematic products.
• Apple makes buckets of cash, but fewer buckets have Apple TV written on them in marker pen.
• Everyone who likes TV hates Apple.

Maybe iOS 4.3 will change everything, but I think it’s more likely Steve Jobs will broadcast a live video of him smashing an iPhone to pieces and announce Apple is to become an Android-based company.

With BBC director general Mark Thompson taking the fight to Sky (Digital Spy), arguing against News Corp’s intended takeover of Sky, debates are again erupting about the nature of the BBC itself. Again, people who happily spend £70+ per month on Sky are bitching about the rip-off licence fee, so let’s, briefly, imagine an EXCITING PRESS RELEASE from NewTVCo.

NewTVCo has a stupid name, but it’s just announced an audacious attack on the UK TV market. It’s going to provide four mainstream TV stations that will be ad-free, and unlike Sky it’s going to spend a huge wodge of cash commissioning local shows, rather than dipping into a diminishing pool of decent (or even half-decent) US shows. It’s going to provide —by default—major sporting events, top-quality drama, children’s programming, reasonably impartial news, sci-fi, comedy, and more. In addition to this, it’ll roll out an inevitable rolling news channel and a couple of stations to glue wee kids to the screen.

But there’s more! In a pincer movement, NewTVCo also has radio ambitions, and is to provide over half-a-dozen ad-free stations. Some will be mainstream, one will concentrate on indie music, another will be more highbrow. Everyone will be catered for (ad-free, remember) and a bunch of local stations will also be set-up to provide local news coverage.

But there’s still more! Online’s important, and so NewTVCo is going to turn NewTVCo.co.uk into a first-rate website. Again, it’s going to be ad-free, and it’ll provide some of the best news coverage around, along with background and communities for popular shows.

Of course, this won’t all come for free, but it’s going to be staggeringly cheap: £145.50 per year, to be precise, or about 40p per day. (By comparison, News Corp’s Times website charges £2 per week to access thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk.)

Sounds good, right? You’d bite someone’s arm off for that kind of a deal, yeah? Well, then stop bloody well bitching about the BBC, because it’s already doing all of the above.

Reuters reports on NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker saying it won’t offer 99-cent TV-show rentals on iTunes, mirroring Warner.

Zucker:

We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. … We thought it would devalue our content.

Yes, I’m sure that’s your real concern, Zucker. It’s nothing to do with thinking that you’ll get the same amount of sales at the $1.99 price-point, which is frankly a bit of a rip-off, or that you’d ideally like to keep people buying overpriced DVDs rather than move to digital rentals. However, the likelihood is studios will gross more with low-priced rentals, and consumers will see such shows as good value for money, not ‘devalued’. (Again, see WoSBlog’s investigation into Pac-Man for iOS pricing for the reality of what happens when high-profile meets high-value in iTunes.)

I sincerely hope those who have signed up for 99-cent rentals—Fox, ABC, Disney Channel and BBC America—start making money hand over fist, at the expense of NBC and Warner. And, believe me, it pains me to say “I hope Fox makes even more money than it does now,” but something needs to give studios a reality check regarding TV rental pricing.

Macworld reports that Warner has declined Apple’s invitation to offer 99-cent rentals for Apple TV. It reasons that the low price would harm the sales of full seasons of hit shows, and said it didn’t want to “open up a rental business in television at a low price”. Instead, Warner wants to continue charging viewers three bucks per TV episode.

Warner doesn’t get it. TV—even good TV—is relatively throwaway, but people are willing to pay if the price is right. $2.99 for a TV show is terrible value. $0.99 is directly in impulse purchase territory. For that price, people would try out way more stuff, and would be likely to grab each new episode as it came in, or just buy a season pass if they’d ordered a couple of episodes of a show that they ended up liking. Also, when prices fall and availability is immediate, people can’t be bothered to deal with torrents. For 99 cents, someone will pay for the latest Doctor Who. For three bucks, they’ll instead fire up their favourite BitTorrent client.

But wait! The industry says that lower pricing results in studios becoming paupers, right? Not quite. Stuart Campbell has written about premium versus low-end pricing in the iOS games market. With well-known properties—which TV shows mostly are—lower pricing equates to higher revenues overall, as shown by Pac-Man leaping into the top-grossing chart when at 99 cents (59p) and then disappearing without a trace when Namco returns to its rather ambitious pricing for a conversion of a 30-year-old arcade game. With TV shows, there are a lot of Pac-Mans, but, sadly, a lot of Namcos that own them

Apple’s thinking with TV is in enabling viewers to free themselves from buying loads of crap they don’t need in return for grabbing what they do at a reasonable price; it’s about low-cost entry but long-term profits, for Apple and for studios. It’s a pity Warner doesn’t get it, but it almost certainly won’t be alone, and I suspect the future for Apple TV may well be bleak unless studios wrench themselves out of the 1990s and embrace the idea of more flexible delivery mechanisms and pricing for TV shows.