INFORMATION COMMITTEE The Committee will meet on Wednesday 16 May at 4pm in Committee Room 3A AGENDA Session 2012-13 1st Meeting 1. Minutes of meeting held on 14 March 2. Update on broadcasting and online video Paper by John Angeli, Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting [INFO/12-13/01] 3. Embedding video on websites Paper by John Angeli, Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting [INFO/12-13/02] 4. Web and Intranet Services Oral update and presentations from Benet Hiscock, Director of Public Information, Seonaid Whitley, Head of Outreach, and Tracy Green, Head of Webcentre [No paper] 5. Development of information resources for tablets and smartphones Oral update from Isolde Victory, Directory of Library Services [No paper] 6. Any other business 7. Date of next meeting JOHN TURNER Clerk 020 7219 6772 turnerjd@parliament.uk
Info/12-13/01 16 May 2012 1st Meeting 2012-13 Information Committee Broadcast and online video - update John Angeli, Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting Introduction 1. Widening access for the public to the activities of the House of Lords remains a key strategic aim. This note updates the committee on the most recent steps taken to engage audiences and outlines plans for the future including steps to support the work of the House. 2. The Committee is invited to take note of developments in broadcast and online video since the creation of the new broadcast licence. Broadcasting Licence arrangements 3. As the Committee will be aware, the arrangements governing the televising of Parliament underwent a fundamental change with the ending of the PARBUL (Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Limited) arrangement at the end of July 2011. For more than 20 years the UK s major broadcasters had part-funded the televising of Parliamentary procedure. This arrangement was helpful both financially and in terms of the expertise which the broadcasters offered, particularly in the early years of televising. The PARBUL arrangements did however place some limitations on access through the licensing arrangements. The new broadcast licence introduced last summer has widened access. 4. In July 2011 there were 6 broadcast licences in place (the UK broadcasters and Reuters). Over the past 9 months the number of broadcast licence holders has reached 102. This includes a large number of international broadcasters and independent television production companies (see Annex 1 below). 5. Broadcasters no longer pay for a licence to access House of Lords content although there are costs associated with televised committee coverage. 2
Committee coverage 6. The process for commissioning televised coverage of select committees has remained in place, with a fee levied by Parliament for the costs of the TV gallery operators. The costs are shared by all broadcasters accessing the high quality feed. The BBC, Sky and ITN are regular bidders and other notable media organisations requesting coverage include Bloomberg, British Forces Broadcasting Services, Reuters and the Press Association. 7. Working with the Lords media office we have ensured that broadcasters now receive information about upcoming committees at the same time as they hear about Commons committees. By Wednesday morning media organisations are alerted to meetings for the coming fortnight with bids closing on Thursday evening. 8. Our contractor, Bow Tie, is also now reporting which organisations have bid for coverage and this is being shared with the media office. Lords Committee control room upgrade 9. The main TV galleries for Commons and Lords chamber coverage are based at 7 Millbank. The Lords Committee control room is sited just off the Committee Corridor and is where the TV director and assistant are based for committee coverage. Refurbishment of this area was undertaken earlier this year and we also took the opportunity to upgrade the facility for local resilience purposes. We now have continuity of coverage for the House of Lords should 7 Millbank become unavailable in an emergency. Resilience 10. In January we looked at resilience plans in the event that coverage of the House of Lords is needed outside of Westminster. A fully updated report will be made available at the end of May. 3
Online Audience 11. We are now creating detailed reports of online viewing figures for video on the Parliamentary site. These show growing audiences for both the chamber and committees. Whilst bearing in mind that 2010 was an election year it appears there was significant growth in online views in 2011 (see Fig 1). Figures for the first quarter of 2012 suggest an increase of approximately 20% on the same period last year. 140000 120000 100000 80000 House of Lords video views on www.parliamentlive.uk Total views 2010 87,499 2011 258,998 60000 2010 2011 40000 20000 0 Lords Chamber Lords Grand Committee Lords Committees Joint Committees Figure 1 4
12. We are also able to generate figures for each committee meeting and chart progress across 2010-2011 (See Fig 2) 18000 16000 14000 12000 House of Lords Committee coverage video views on www.parliamentlive.uk Total views 2010 18,874 2011 57,744 10000 8000 6000 2010 2011 4000 2000 0 Figure 2 Video on mobile devices 13. As online access migrates to mobile devices we are investing in new encoders which will offer access to live and on-demand video content. We are aiming to have this service in place by October 2012. Initially this will offer coverage of the Lords and Commons chambers. A business case will be presented for expansion of this service to incorporate committees. 5
Non-procedural events 14. The requirement for video coverage of non-procedural events is an important aspect of Parliamentary outreach. In September 2011 the broadcast unit helped to support coverage of the Commonwealth Youth parliament debate in the House of Lords providing a feed to the BBC which was then broadcast on BBC Parliament. In November 2011 the Broadcast Unit assisted the Lords in the live streaming of a Hansard sponsored event Parliament and the Public: how the Lords makes a difference. In April 2012, working with the Lords media office, we were able to provision a live television feed of Lord Richard s news conference on House of Lords reform. Archive 15. Parliament now has in the region of 35,000 video tapes and 50,000 audio recordings stored with the British Film Institute. There is currently a significant cost associated with storing these items on shelves but little by way of easy access. With the assistance of the Liz Hallam Smith and the Digitisation Programme Board we are developing proposals for digitising the content. Visits by the Parliamentary Recording Unit and Parliamentary Archives team to the BFI and BBC Archives have been undertaken John Angeli Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting 10 May 2012 6
ANNEX 1 Broadcast Licence Holders April 30 th 2012 Name of Organisation 1 ABC Television - Australia 2 AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE 3 Al-Jazeera International 4 Al-Jazeera Arabic A&O Buero filmproduktion gmbh 5 6 ARD / Phoenix Germany 7 ARTE 8 Artline Films Association Press Television News 9 10 BFBS 11 BHRT - Bosnia & Herzegovia 12 Bloomberg British 13 Corporation 14 BskyB Broadcasting Business News (Europe) Partnership trading as CNBC 15 16 BNT - Bulgaria 17 Canal + 18 CBC 19 CBS News Inc 20 Channel 1 Russia 21 Channel 4-4 Ventures Limited Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited 22 23 Cloud Media Entertianment 24 CNN 25 CPAC 26 Crow Hill Films 27 C Span Darlow Smithson 28 Productions 29 DBC - Denmark 30 E TV News - South Africa 31 E Sat TV - South Africa 32 EBU 33 Endemol UK - Initial 34 Eyeline Productions 35 Euronews 7
36 Faulds Productions 37 Finestripe Productions 38 Fox News 39 France 2 40 France 24 41 Global Radio 42 Halidom Productions Ltd 43 HRT - Croatia 44 Interscience Film gmbh 45 ITN 46 ITV 47 Keo Films 48 Illegitime Defense 49 Lithuanian TV & Radio 50 Liverpool FC TV 51 M6 France 52 Matchlight Limited 53 MTV3 - Finland NBC News NBC Universal Media LLC 54 55 NHK 56 NIS Ltd. - INTER TV 57 Noon Multimedia 58 NOS - Netherlands 59 NRK 60 ORF - Austria 61 P.O.P.1 62 Princess Productions Prospect Pictures / Prospect Cymru Wales 63 64 Press Association 65 Raw Television 66 RTP - Portugal 67 RTE 68 RTBF -Belguim RTL Mediengruppe 69 Deutschland 70 RUV - Iceland 71 SVT 72 RAI - Italy 73 Reuters 74 Remark Production 75 RTS - Serbia 76 RTVS - Solvenia 77 Scanpix - Sweden 8
78 Sky News Australia 79 Snapper TV 80 SNRT - Morocco 81 SSRG - Switzerland 82 Stornoway Productions 83 TAC Presse 84 Toyko Broadcasting System 86 Tiger Aspect 87 Troisième Oeil Productions 88 Two Four Digital 89 TF1 - France 90 TRT - Turkey 91 TV2 - Denmark 92 TV4 Norway 93 TV4 - Stockholm 94 TV Asahi 95 TVE - Spain 96 TVP Poland 97 Voice Productions 98 VRT - Belguim 99 YLE - Finland 100 Y Net News - Israel 101 ZDF 102 Zadig Productons 9
INFO/12-13/02 16 May 2012 1st Meeting 2012-13 Information Committee Access to live coverage of the House of Lords and its committees via an embeddable player John Angeli, Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting Introduction 1. This paper sets out the current and proposed use of embedding of parliamentary broadcast. The Committee is invited to endorse recommendations that codes allowing embedding of live proceedings be applied to coverage at the earliest opportunity, and that the licence be updated to allow wider use of parliamentary content on non-commercial websites. Background 2. Parliament granted permission for embedding of procedural content online in July 2010 for a trial period of one year. The variation in the PARBUL licence (which covered arrangements at the time) followed recommendations contained in the 2009 House of Lords Information Committee Report Are the Lords Listening? which stated: People should be allowed to embed the House's proceedings on their websites, so that our proceedings can have as wide a distribution as possible on the internet 3. BBC Democracy Live has taken a leading role in facilitating embeddable video content. BBC Parliament reports this has worked well for its users and that there have been no issues regarding abuse of the service. 4. The Parliamentary Recording Unit, which provides a broader range of embeddable content on Parliament s website, paints an equally positive picture for the trial period. The PRU reports that users have utilised the embedding facility on more than 4,000 occasions over the past 18 months and there have been 100,000 views via the embeddable player as a result. Like the BBC they have not encountered any difficulties or misuse of material over this period. 10
Next steps 5. A number of steps are now required to move this service forward. 6. In light of the positive outcome of the trial the Information Committee may wish to recommend that embedding becomes a permanent feature of Parliament s audio/video licences. 7. At the outset of the trial the concerns of some PARBUL members meant Parliament chose not to embed live material. Parliament is no longer constrained by the PARBUL arrangement which ended in July 2011. 8. Currently, users of the Parliamentary website have to wait until the end of proceedings before they can embed an archive version of House of Lords procedure. One of the key advantages of live video streaming is that it offers real time information on proceedings in the chambers and committees. Clearly access to live content would enhance the relevance of the service to the public. 9. It is recommended that an embed code for live coverage of all House of Lords content is introduced at the earliest possible opportunity. 10. Operationally the changes would take 1-2 days to implement. Our online video contractor, TwoFour advises it will be able to monitor usage as there may be some increase in bandwidth use and associated costs. It would also be appropriate to develop some tools for ending a live stream where the end user has broken the terms of use. 11. Currently the wording on the embedding licence (below) only allows embedding for personal use : UK Parliament permits you to embed its video and audio material on your website as long as you agree to various conditions (see below). Please note: This is for use on your personal website. 12. The Information Committee last year agreed in principle that it would be appropriate to broaden access to include education establishments and non-commercial sites. These proposals were outlined in the Broadcasting Licenses: Principles paper1 in January 2011. 13. It is recommended that the licence is updated to allow wider use of the content to non-commercial sites. 14. The licence also requires embedding of an entire sitting when often a shorter section of a debate or exchange is desired by the end user. For this to be achieved further development work by our current contractor would be necessary. 15. Working with the Lords media office, the outreach and education teams it will be possible to open up this service to wider audiences and to target specific geographic and demographic communities. 1 INFO 10-11/18 11
16. The Web and Intranet Service can also advise on signposting of the embed feature to ensure wider take-up. Conclusion 17. The Committee is invited to: Endorse the application of embed codes to live broadcasts of House of Lords proceedings. Endorse the updating of the broadcasting licence to allow wider use of content by non-commercial websites. Advise on taking work forward to allow portions of House of Lords sittings to be made available for embedding. John Angeli Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting 10 May 2012 12