BBC Worldwide calls for simplified digital standards

BBC Worldwide operations director Lesley Johnson has called for unified standards in the digital space to allow firms to simplify their supply chains.

Speaking on a panel talk at the PEVE Entertainment conference in London this week, Johnson called for the industry to work together in the same way that allowed them to establish of earlier physical formats.

“DVD worked as a very fast-selling product, it worked because it was just simple for the consumers to understand and have that piece of kit – if you put the disk in, it works. We were familiar with CD before that and we’ve done a really great job as an industry of actually pulling together around that format. We’re now really desperately in need of that happening in the digital space,” said Johnson.

However, she added that the publicly-funded BBC has a remit and responsibility to support different formats in order to not skew or influence the market.

“We have to, to an extent and within reason, make sure that we can at least cautiously support new formats. And if they don’t take off, we’ll wait for them as we did with HD DVD when we carried on with Blu-ray,” said Johnson.