'Cunning BBC video offer has divided press'

Stephen Glover in the Independent today looks at the way the offer of free video clips from the BBC for use on newspaper websites has split the national press.
He writes: "The Corporation knows its very successful free website is seen by papers as unfair competition – the most egregious example of the recession-proof BBC sticking its greedy fingers into other people's crumbling pies.
"So it has cunningly come up with a plan that suggests it cares about hard-pressed publishing groups. Four of them – Daily Mail and General Trust, Guardian News and Media, Telegraph Media Group and Independent News and Media – will carry BBC news videos".
Glover points out that : "News International, which owns The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World, has rebuffed the BBC's overtures. So too has Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror, and Express Newspapers. The press is split over an issue – its future on the internet – where it needs to be united."
He adds: "Newspapers will only be able to charge for access to their websites if they act together" and claims: "I regret that the Corporation should have succeeded in dividing, and apparently ruling, our national newspapers."
Steve Hewlett in MediaGuardian today also argues that the BBC's new spirit of partnership is not all its seems.
He says: "As traditional advertiser-funded business models deteriorate, the problem for newspapers is how you make money from news online when consumers have a Rolls-Royce service - the BBC - available free at the point of use. This [the BBC video offer] doesn't solve that.
"Meanwhile, the BBC is feeling pretty pleased with itself. The big issue of "free" won't go away - but the BBC may expect to get a little less heat from some of its critics, particularly perhaps from those media organisations that are now the beneficiaries of its largesse. Potential enemies have been turned into "partners"."
It is interesting that both columnists are writing for papers that are among those who have agreed to take the free BBC news video clips.