The apparent opacity surrounding the Kangaroo project, the commercial version of BBC's iPlayer, meant that the UK Competition Commission had no other choice than to push back the deadline to close its investigation.
This came as BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 were told that there has been "a number of important issues which are outstanding between the parties and which they have indicated they are unable to resolve without further negotiation."
This means that the Competition Commission won't be able to provide with the results of its investigations before the end of the year.
Kangaroo, which was announced back in November 2007, was supposed to be launched in a few months' time and would have aggregated the content of three of the four main terrestrial broadcasters and delivered it on a single platform, with thousands of hours of content available within seconds, both new and archived content.
Many think that the project might help beleaguered ITV bring in much needed online revenues; friendsreunited, ITV's other online venture, did generate £22 million in 2007 but it has since been overtaken by other social Networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo.
Others have said that Kangaroo is a monopolistic tool that could prevent rival platform (Virgin or Sky) from competing on equal footing.
Kangaroo will be available as ad-supported or premium, high resolution content and this is something that the Commission will investigate.
iPlayer will work in tandem with Kangaroo and will stick to its seven day viewing limit.
This came as BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 were told that there has been "a number of important issues which are outstanding between the parties and which they have indicated they are unable to resolve without further negotiation."
This means that the Competition Commission won't be able to provide with the results of its investigations before the end of the year.
Kangaroo, which was announced back in November 2007, was supposed to be launched in a few months' time and would have aggregated the content of three of the four main terrestrial broadcasters and delivered it on a single platform, with thousands of hours of content available within seconds, both new and archived content.
Others have said that Kangaroo is a monopolistic tool that could prevent rival platform (Virgin or Sky) from competing on equal footing.
Kangaroo will be available as ad-supported or premium, high resolution content and this is something that the Commission will investigate.
iPlayer will work in tandem with Kangaroo and will stick to its seven day viewing limit.
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