BBC's Highfield hops off to Kangaroo

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 14 Apr 2008 at 11:25

Ashley Highfield is stepping down as the BBC's director of future media and technology to run new online television service Kangaroo.

Highfield is to become CEO of the joint venture between BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, which will see content from all three providers united under one streaming service later this year.

"This is a fantastic opportunity. Kangaroo is a historic partnership with a combination of innovative technology and terrific content and I'm looking forward to transforming the way audiences watch television," says Highfield.

Highfield was instrumental in launching the BBC's iPlayer service, so has experience of working with high-profile web TV services.

However, Highfield's tenure at the BBC has not been without controversy. Last year he claimed in a magazine interview that only 400-600 Linux users visited the BBC website each week, using these figures to explain that demand for a version of iPlayer for the OS was unnecessary.

Highfield was later forced into an embarrassing u-turn, when he later admitted the number of Linux users could be almost 100,000.

And earlier this month Highfield picked a fight with broadband providers, threatening to create a blacklist of providers who applied traffic shaping to the iPlayer.

If Kangaroo proves as popular as the iPlayer, Highfield may have some bridges to build, with ISPs already crying foul over the increased costs of hosting the service.

The BBC claims that up to half a million television shows are being watched everyday using its iPlayer service, and ISPs claim that this has tripled their overhead costs.