Bouncing On

For all of my criticism down the years (which was always aimed at the BBC and its peculiar constitution and not intended to be personal), the appointment of Ashley Highfield as the CEO of Kangaroo is undoubtedly the right one. I only hope that he has a better implementation team in place than at the BBC (where he was previously in charge of Future Media and Technology) since a commercial operation like Kangaroo (and please get a new name!) will need to be fleet of foot (well, maybe Kangaroo is a good name..), and decisions to favour downloads over streaming which could be forgiven in a PBS environment will be financially damaging for an overtly commercial operation.

The role will also bring commercial pressures unknown to a BBC employee, and, unfortunately, with the BBC, ITV and C4 on board, the political pressure might even be worse than at the BBC. Personally, I turned down an opportunity for the CTO role for this reason. It will be much more fun blogging on the developments at the company than taking part.

Kangaroo is an exciting new development in the UK media landscape and will inevitably do well. How well will depend on Ashley's ability to transition from a civil service to a highly commercial context.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Iolo,

I was told on good authority, and it has also been reported in Mediaweek, the 'go to market' name is Seesaw.

I had a quick look at the obvious domains, .com and .co.uk and they don't seem to be owned by 'corporate' entities.

Or maybe they just dreamed up Seesaw to put us off the scent!

All the best.

Phil
Iolo Jones said…
There seems to be an up and down theme appearing here! Thanks, Phil
Anonymous said…
I think kangaroo is a wonderful name.
Iolo Jones said…
I wouldn't expect less from an Aussie!