Sky snubs BBC Trust with call for full Canvas review

13 May 2009 | 16.23 Europe/London

Sky has launched a scathing attack on the BBC and the BBC Trust over the proposed Project Canvas which would see BBC, ITV and BT collaboration on a set top box which would bring online video content to the living room - essentially a Freeview box but with iPlayer-style functionality.

Sky’s response to the BBC Trust is very strongly worded and essentially calls for the BBC Trust to refer the matter to Ofcom. In fact, the report kicks off with an attack on the BBC Trust consultation process itself saying that the Canvas proposals lack ‘clarity’ and so make this stage of the process ‘preliminary and not determinative’.

This paves the way for the broadcaster and ISP to launch an offensive against the proposed platform claiming the proposals conceive a role for the BBC “far beyond what is necessary for it to fulfil its primary purpose and obligations”.

As such it believes the Freeview successor platform should “qualify for review by the Office of Fair Trading as a ‘relevant merger situation’.

The shot across Project Canavs’ bows comes after the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, an online video on demand service pooling the content of BBC Worldwide, C4 and ITV within a single site. The authorities claimed this would lead to a service that was too powerful and anti-competitive.

Project Canvas has come in for similar criticism with Ofcom warning it could face a regulatory probe and set top box manufacturers Pace, Sony and Panasonic feeling they are being kept out of the proverbial loop.

However, the Canvas partners have hit back saying the platform would bridge internet content and the living room and, they stress, “access to the Canvas platform would be open to any third-party, including Sky”.

Nevertheless, it seems inevitable that, as Sky’s attack alluded, it will defend its position as the country’s premier pay-tv broadcast very hard and push for a regulatory review, regardless of the outcome of the BBC Trust’s public consultation, which it has already dismissed as ‘preliminary’.