BBC Jamming suspended
The BBC has had to suspend its £150m online education Service BBC JAM as it has fallen foul of EEC regulations. It follows complaints from commercial online companies to the European Commission about the £150m project.
The project was set up despite warnings and strict conditions placed on it in 2003 about likely impacts on other companies.
Under the BBC's charter, the corporation is charged with promoting learning for school-aged children.
One of the conditions BBC Jam was set up with was that half of its content budget had to be spent on commissioning material from outside the BBC.
Conservative broadcasting spokesman Ed Vaizey said:
"This is a mess of the government's own making.Oh well that's another few million of our money the Government has wasted.
"They told the BBC to set up Jam even though a number of education companies were already providing those services.
"We have constantly raised concerns about BBC Jam and its impact on the private sector. It does not surprise us that the service has been suspended. The blame rests fairly with the government."
The complainants say the service, designed as a learning resource for children aged five to 16 in support of the national curriculums, damages their businesses.
BBC Jam is an online learning resource for children, designed to be used at home to support key areas of the school curriculums across the UK. It will be suspended from 20 March 2007.
Acting BBC Trust Chairman Chitra Bharucha said in a statement:
"The Trust has requested BBC management to prepare fresh proposals for how the BBC should deliver the Charter obligation to promote formal education and learning, meeting the online needs to school age children.An official statement is available here.
"Despite a rigorous approval process involving the BBC Governors, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and the European Commission resulting in extensive conditions on the service, BBC Jam has continued to attract complaints from the commercial sector about the parameters of its activities."
BBC NEWS | Education | BBC suspends net learning project
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2 comments:
Education, Education, OOPS!
Not only has the BBC suspended its ‘BBC Jam’ Digital Curriculum service but from the end of March the educational TV programmes that BBC Jam was intended to replace will also cease to be made and the staff who made them will be made redundant. So by suspending BBC Jam and stopping school TV production within a few days of each other, the BBC now makes no new formal education material at all for children and schools, something that has been an essential part of its public service remitfor 50 years. Time to make a fuss, write to MPs, etc.
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