BBC to aggregate newspaper content - Rumour

Tue Dec 15 2009, 09:00 AM

The BBC is reportedly planning to open up its news site by showing readers the top stories appearing on rival UK newspaper sites. The move would effectively turn the BBC into a news aggregator, and follows mounting pressure from the likes of News Corp, which accused the BBC this summer of "flooding the market" with its free news websites and hurting rivals' profits.

Under the new plan, the BBC would reportedly provide links to its commercial rivals from the BBC news homepage. The move marks a bold extension of the BBC's existing initiatives. Earlier this month, the broadcaster began running a "See Also" news blog, which links to external news sources. In July, it began helping its rivals by licensing video news content to UK newspaper sites, including The Independent, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.  

Speaking to The Independent, Erik Huggers, the BBC's director of Future Media and Technology, said that the flow of content into the BBC website was currently limited to a small amount of user-generated content. However, he claimed there would be an increase in information sharing in the future: "I think it's going to be interesting to see over the next year or so how there's going to be potential for making it flow the other way round as well."

The plans are part of a wider initiative by the BBC to share resources and technology with rivals, in order to safeguard licence fee funding after the digital switchover in 2012. However, speaking recently to StrategyEye, the BBC's COO of Future Media and Technology, Kerstin Mogull, reiterated the BBC's commitment to free news.

"I think there's room for the BBC and newspapers to do well online," she said. "One thing to mention is that we are, free of charge, sharing quite a lot of our content with The Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, The Independent and their websites. So we can help in that way, and we're interested in helping again as part of the partnership agenda."

The comments come amid the ongoing debate about online paywalls. News Corp claims it will begin charging for content across all its news sites from next year, in an effort to increase digital revenues as print sales continue to fall.