According to MediaGuardian, the BBC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft so that both “companies can explore opportunities for the delivery and consumption of BBC content and the evolution of next-generation broadcasting”.

Ashley Highfield, BBC director of new media said “The BBC needs to work with all players in this space to make sure our programmes and content are enjoyed by the widest possible audience, without always having to come to bbc.co.uk to find it”.

Here are some ideas on how to do this:

• Move all current internet streams away from RealPlayer and onto Quicktime.
• Finish Project Jupiter, or at least make it reliable.
• Expose the functionality of Project Jupiter through a public API.
• Promote the Open Source and Backstage projects, perhaps congregating them and migrating them to Google Code.
• Drop the BBC internet Media Player project, and signup with other on demand services, such as the iTunes Store. Dates, times and schedules will become increasingly unimportant, because subscription services will remind consumers (or deliver direct) content when it becomes available. And that means no Autumn schedule, or any other period for that matter. Just commission it and deliver it, because time will be irrelevant.
• Duplicate all DAB content as MP3 streams.
• Investigate the possibilities of archiving and delivering content through Amazon S3 and ECC.