Pact agrees terms of trade with BBC

Pact members have this week approved the BBC's new terms of trade concerning new media rights and the release of programming into the UK secondary market.

Pact members have this week approved the BBC's new terms of trade concerning new media rights and the release of programming into the UK secondary market.

The new terms, which were put to the Pact council last month, will come into effect immediately for all BBC commissions from independent producers and will help pave the way for the launch of the corporation's iPlayer, which was given the green light by the BBC Trust last week.

'We've got an agreement now with Pact about the rights we have in its programmes and what we can do with them,' the BBC's head of rights and business affairs, James Lancaster, told Broadcast.

While initial agreements were reached with the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV last summer, it has taken months of negotiations to hammer out the full long-form agreements.

Under the new terms agreed with the BBC executive, users will have seven days to watch programmes within a 13-week floating window.

In return, producers will receive a better share of secondary revenues, up from 50% of net to 75%, as well as clearer guidelines on when programming will be released into the secondary market. But with regard to the iPlayer the BBC Trust said last week that the floating window should be cut from 13 weeks to 30 days.

In practice, the BBC has been offering producers its new terms since before December. And both C4 and ITV, which have also reached full agreements with Pact, have issued trust letters for producers, setting out the additional rights they now expect and the relaxations on holdbacks.

So far C4 has done deals with over 100 indies for its VoD service and most commissioned programmes are now available on 4oD, while ITV is also in negotiations with indies, ahead of the launch of its new media player in March.

The only terrestrial broadcaster not to strike a deal with Pact was Five, but after six months of negotiations it too is close to agreeing new terms, which will pave the way for the expansion of its VoD offering.