Media Forum: Are Kangaroo plans sound?

Should advertisers be reassured by Kangaroo's model, Alasdair Reid asks.

In all the kerfuffle about the analogue TV switch-off and the migration to digital TV in the UK by 2012, it's often forgotten that digital television is itself a transition technology and that its heyday as a dominant distribution platform is likely to be very brief indeed.

In fact, by 2012, a significant chunk of viewing will be transacted on its successor, web TV. Non-linear, fully interactive, supposedly anarchic, web TV. If figures for the BBC iPlayer are anything to go by, web TV's growth is already astonishing. And, yes, in a couple of years' time, its share of viewing will probably be small - well under 10 per cent, say - but still hugely significant for all that.

Not as significant, however, as the fact that we'll be watching, by and large, not just on the BBC iPlayer and its commercial equivalents, but on Kangaroo, a joint venture bringing together ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC - but dominated by the latter.

This is effectively a recognition by ITV and Channel 4 that they must accept another generation of life as (at best) second-class citizens For other commercial broadcasters, they face a future ensconced back there in the third class compartment.

This issue is currently being explored, of course, by the Competition Commission - and last week Kangaroo attempted to forestall worries that it was setting up a commercial cartel by insisting that each of the participants would be responsible for their own ad inventory in and around their own content - though there will also be a tier of more generic inventory sold on a centralised basis.

There were also other revelations - for instance, that Kangaroo will aspire to a mixed funding model, with viewers able to watch on a pay-per-view basis or purchase them, as in the iTunes model.