BBC Streaming BBC Channels on the Internet

Having asked some overseas friends from Germany and America, it seems as though they can view it at the moment.

Streaming for more?
Paul Hayes


When plans of a secret BBC test to stream its UK channels over the internet leaked out, overseas users logged on. Many said they would be prepared to pay to do so again.

On Saturday, April 30 this year, a little piece of broadcasting history took place, although you could easily be forgiven for not having noticed. Even those responsible for it were not fully aware of what was happening. But on that day, BBC television suddenly escaped from the confines of UK transmitters and, for one weekend only, was let loose upon international audiences via the internet.

This was not an intentional exercise. The BBC’s research and development arm, based at Kingswood Warren, was conducting a test for the streaming of the BBC’s television channels to UK-based broadband internet customers, in a move to provide a service similar to that already offered free for all by BBC Radio, whereby all stations are available to listen to live over the internet, with selected programmes stored in a ‘Listen Again’ archive for at least a week following transmission.

But the tests being conducted of the broadband streaming service were just that - tests. As Liz Mitchell of the BBC press office explained, it was “an internal demonstration stream which was intended for an internal audience”. Unfortunately for the BBC, the website addresses for the channels being tested for internet broadcast - BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four and BBC News 24 - were either deliberately leaked by somebody or accidentally stumbled across by some lucky user.

The links first appeared on a message board on a fan website of comedian Chris Morris and the internet being what it is the news quickly spread, finding its way to the message boards of Outpost Gallifrey, an American Doctor Who fan website hugely popular in the science-fiction community, with over 10,000 registered members.
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Of course, this was just a one-off, and once somebody at the BBC became aware of the situation, the live feeds of the channels were cut off late on Sunday evening. “While this was not an ideal situation as the URL was not intended for a public audience, it was a simple technical error made while investigating technologies for encoding and transmission protocols, which was fixed as soon as possible,” is Mitchell’s explanation