Kangaroo is blocked by regulator

Kangaroos are curious, bouncing beasts, but nobody likes the idea of them being hunted to death. Project Kangaroo, though, has been extended no such courtesy, a television website hunted down mercilessly by the Competition Commission.

Here's why the decision is bizarre. The Kangaroo website owned by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 aimed at providing an archive of recently broadcast programmes to viewers is banned. The idea was that people could tune in, and catch last month's shows.

Suppose YouTube did a deal with all three to show their archive programming, would that be anti-competitive? It seems hard to believe, and YouTube would get some of the benefit from having the big three creative broadcasters on its site.

But if the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 want to own the website, that's wrong — because they share the profits from the programmes they commission. How outrageous is that? The Commission is worried that they will not supply their programmes to YouTube, or other competitors on a fair basis.

Well, it's not very complicated to get round that. The broadcasters should be forced to sell their content on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis to all comers, and they should sell it individually. A wholesale price could even be set by the regulator, like the ones set for BT when it comes to broadband, if it is that important.

On this basis, on wonders why Sky is allowed to own the satellite platform on which it transmits Premier League games. It might favour its own service over rivals like Virgin Media. Indeed this is the subject of another regulatory enquiry, but regulators are not proposing that Sky should be broken up.

So the end result of this is that British broadcasters are not allowed to co-own a site featuring their own content, but American online giants probably are. Viewers will still be able to get BBC, ITV and Channel 4 shows from somewhere else, but the three may well see some of the revenues they hoped to keep for themselves leak out of the broadcasting system.

That could mean less investment in television, at a time when traditional advertising revenues are collapsing. And it is hardly a good precedent either, given that ministers want to safeguard the future of Channel 4 through all sorts of sweetheart deals with the BBC's commercial arm, Worldwide. What will the Competition Commission think of those?

It is a bad result for the British television industry, and a bad day for virtual Kangaroos too. But then, marsupials never were native to these shores.

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