BBC iPlayer — Episode 2: On your iPhone

In last Friday's Episode 1 we welcomed this wonderful new tool.

Today I report, via Aaron O. Patrick's March 28, 2008 Wall Street Journal article, that the BBC has partnered with Apple to take its new service into the future, well ahead of the clueless U.S. TV networks which still haven't the faintest idea about what's going down around them.

Excerpts follow.

BBC Chief Has Radical Designs on Internet

Unlike U.S. networks, which have only made tentative steps on the Internet for fear of losing advertising revenue, the BBC has thrown almost its entire schedule online. To do that, the broadcaster has bet big on iPlayer, a free computer program offered via the BBC's Web site and Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which allows anyone in the U.K. to download and watch BBC shows that have appeared in the past week.

Launched on Christmas Day, the iPlayer is already emerging as a cultural phenomenon, particularly among young viewers. About 17 million BBC shows were downloaded in the seven weeks after iPlayer's launch, compared with one million videos sold in the first three weeks after TV shows were put on Apple's iTunes store.

"It's pretty cool," says Ella Bloom, an 18-year-old University of Stirling student, who recently used iPlayer to watch a fashion-model show on her computer. "My friends told me about it." BBC executives say they believe the iPlayer will become the industry standard in Britain and will be launched in the U.S. this year.

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"This year?"

Sounds like "real soon now."

Maybe it's time to move to England, where things seem to be happening.

Skipweasel?

Anyone?