Completely agree with the sad trend. Though to be fair, the scourge of geolocation based blocking started with media companies (mostly American, but also bbc and others) in a bid to recreate the DVD region encoding bullshit on the internet. Add to that the NSA merrily slurping up data from the global firehose... there's no innocence left to corrupt at this point.
There are two sides to the scourge. WRT the BBC, they produce quality content, partly funded by us Brits and partly funded by exporting the content to other countries.
With the internet they have limited choices:
* Keep things off the internet and disappoint everyone
* Put things on the global internet and lose export value
* Put things on the internet but geolocate to the UK and retain export value
Clearly for them, the quality of their shows, and for the British public, the last option is the best.
It's a strange system because the BBC is considered public broadcasting but is still funded (i.e. paid) by us citizens. You have to take the UK only as a subscription that we have implicitly paid. Of course, it would be great if they offered an outsider subscription, but there are undoubtedly internal political reasons why they haven't.
Point 3, I think they already have covered. I think it's pretty safe to say that the BBC is a well known and established brand, and also a producer of high quality content.
The best way to look at it now is that they're stuck in a local maxima, they could definitely gain by broadcasting online to the world but it might take some time and will most definitely hit them financially in the short run.
There's also a political aspect wrt the BBC too. They are, as per their mandate, completely politically neutral†. But generally the left side of politics supports continuing the license fee we pay where the right side doesn't. If they should suddenly take a significant drop in revenue and it subsequently does affect what they produce then it also puts them at risk. And the last thing us Brits want to see is our BBC channels filling up with adverts.
Now is an interesting time. For a long time they were a plain old tv broadcaster. Now they're on the internet and broadcasting things there there are people questioning whether they should even be doing that. Eventually I think things will stabilize into some condition, I don't know what but I don't think we are there yet.
† of course, with politics, there are many debates about this
This is a business decision. BBC executives have already (probably) thought about whether they want to charge now or make it free now (and charge later). Its the age old question every company and startup faces -- shall I increase my reputation now and charge later or should I charge now. As its been already pointed out, BBC already has a great reputation.
Different business models result in different pricing decisions. Maybe BBC has determined that keeping things free globally is just not smart business sense for it because of real revenue foregone.
I believe that BBC sells a lot of its programs to channels around the world. I also believe it also markets various DVDs of its programs. BBC entertainment is also available as a paid channel in many countries. If it made these programs free on the web globally that business might be in doubt.
BBC is currently in a binary model which is to be free in UK and then sell its programs globally. The unintended consequence of that it ends up denying global internet users its programs.
What would be best, I believe, would be to provide all choices. For people who are willing to pay outside the UK -- bring them into a subscriber model of some sort. This way BBC can continue selling its programs to companies/channels/customers around the world and let internet users watch BBC programs, for a small cost.
Who knows? BBC might actually be working on subscriber pays model on the internet. Here other considerations come into play: bureaucratic sloth in an organization as big as the BBC and the time it takes to role out a subscription oriented video website.
Doubtful. Even if we were to offer the domestic rate, it currently works out $19/month. Incidentally one of the best things about iPlayer is that it's frictionless, high quality and ad-free. Introducing TV license login would be a huge bummer.
Its a combination of profit and political influence which is what makes BBC and interesting animal. The BBC world service radio gets Britain a lot of global coverage and political mindspace. Showing sherlock homes free?? Maybe not.
> Put things on the global internet and lose export value
If they don't feel like sharing, we can find other sources that will, there's no lack of quality content.
It's a pity that BBC sits on a million hours of TV and radio archived shows, that are collecting dust instead of being cited, posted, commented on, tagged, submitted, etc. Their loss. The web keeps growing and the BBC archives are offline. It's a kind of 'Encyclopedia Brittanica thinking' in an age of Wikipedia - trying to monetize at the expense of global accessibility.
