Â鶹Éç

This follows the publication in January 2011 of the Trust's provisional conclusions on a review of the current Â鶹Éç syndication policy. A consultation carried out on these provisional conclusions raised a number of issues which the Trust has taken into consideration in the draft policy, published today.

In the revised policy, the Trust has set out a number of principles with which all syndication arrangements must comply. These include:

• Ensuring that licence fee payers have easy and timely access to the full range of Â鶹Éç on-demand content;
• Content is easily identifiable as Â鶹Éç content, and is subject to editorial control by the Â鶹Éç;
• Â鶹Éç content should only be available in appropriate places and contexts;
• Content should be high quality – for example easy to use, with high picture and audio quality;
• Content should be accessed free of charge and free from advertising and sponsorship; and
• There should be access to parental controls and accessibility features, such as subtitling and audio description.

The provisional conclusions published earlier this year said that the Â鶹Éç should only syndicate its on-demand content via three standard versions of the iPlayer, delivered over the internet. Exceptions were only permitted where a platform operator was unable to adopt one of these standard versions.

The Trust remains of the view that the interests of licence fee payers will usually best be served by securing access to the full range of Â鶹Éç content on other platforms and devices within a Â鶹Éç 'environment' such as the iPlayer. However, the Trust accepts that circumstances may occasionally arise that justify special arrangements that depart from this model. The revised policy proposes a more flexible approach. The Â鶹Éç must comply with the principles that the Trust has set but the Trust is not prescribing how this should be achieved in any specific instance.

Â鶹Éç Trust Vice-Chair Diane Coyle, who led the review, said:

"Licence fee payers should be able to find Â鶹Éç on-demand content available on lots of different platforms, but this has to be done in a way that gives value for money and satisfies some basic principles to ensure that Â鶹Éç content serves the public as it is meant to. We've taken on board what the industry told us earlier this year. I hope that we have reached a sensible way forward in this complicated area, and we will take account of any final views before publishing the new policy early in 2012."

The consultation will run until 21 December 2011 and the final policy is expected to be published in early 2012. Alongside this, the Â鶹Éç Executive will also publish more detailed guidelines, which will set out how they will implement the policy that the Trust has published.

Notes to Editors

1. The Â鶹Éç Trust published a policy on the provision of Â鶹Éç on-demand content to third parties in August 2007. A routine review of the policy began in December 2009, including a public consultation. The Trust  published provisional conclusions on this review in January 2011 alongside a further public consultation. Following the results of this consultation the Trust undertook a programme of work to help understand the concerns raised by stakeholders, and published a revised policy alongside a third consultation on 09 November 2011.
2. The syndication policy covers full-length television content, full-length radio content, promotional trailers and news clips, made available on demand
3. Further information on the Trust's syndication policy review can be found here.