Press and online coverage following yesterday's announcement at Mobile World Congress regarding our plans to roll out a series of mobile applications to stream news, sport and the iPlayer has been predictably extensive.
Online forums, blogs and specialist sites were very swift to pick up on the news, with most merely repeating what we published in our Internet blog. All the broadsheets gave fairly neutral reportage initially, with the Telegraph celebrating the news that football fans will be able to watch the World Cup on their smartphones. The Guardian and the Independent recognised that the reaction from other news organisations to the BBC News app may be less than enthusiastic. The Times also identified that: 'The move will also intensify the debate about paid-for content in the media sector.'
By this afternoon paidContent, Digital Spy and MediaWeek all reported on the move by the The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA): 'to lodge an objection with the BBC Trust calling on the governing body to apply its Public Value Test to the service'. Covering the same story, BBC News have reported that: 'A spokesperson for the BBC said that its online service licence, granted by the BBC Trust, was "quite explicit in allowing the BBC to repurpose its online content for consumption on mobile devices".'
Clearly, this is a case of 'watch this space'...
