While NBC faces criticism over its digital offering, over in the UK, the BBC is roaring on with an all-out, open strategy for its biggest ever interactive sports event, comprising multiple live streams, rolling text updates, Flickr photos - and no holding live back for prime time. BBC Sport Interactive head Ben Gallop, a veteran of previous Olympic campaigns, told me video output has doubled and the website clocked more video views in the first two days of these games than during the entire fortnight at Athens 2004: "We're just seeing enormous traffic, record levels that we've frankly never seen before..." Lots more after the jump...

Though the array of competitons taking place in China might give a scheduler a headache, some 2,750 hours of coverage are made available behind the interactive red button on digital TV platforms, where viewers can make their own selection from up to seven simultaneous events, picture-in-picture…

-- Interactive: "There isn't an event like the Olympics in terms of offering viewer choice, and we know from previous games that nothing drives red button usage the way the Olympics does. In 2004, the first interactive Olympics we did, we had more than 10 million people go interactive just on the satellite platform - that's more than double the next most popular event the BBC's ever done, Wimbledon with about four million. More than anything we can do - whether it's Glastonbury or another sports event - the Olympics gets people looking on interactive TV."

-- On NBC: "We are not a commercial organisation, NBC are; that may be why they've chosen to hold back some of their content from the web. For us, it's all about universal access, we want universal reach, we're not about making money, we just want more and more people to access the games in however many ways they want to. There aren't any limitations for us, I'm sure they have very different considerations."

-- Rights: With so much more video being pumped out, Gallop is conscious of the BBC's duty to protect that content: "The IOC are among the most stringent in sports rights when it comes to digital platforms, and we have a very strict arrangement with them that our content must not leak outside the UK." But, while NBC has worked hard on fingerprinting solutions to remove its Olympics output from sites like YouTube, Gallop's BBC is far more hands-off: "That's really for the IOC, that's their role to monitor and see what happens. We're just not in a position to control how people use TV coverage and put it up online."

-- Online: All the iTV streams are also pumped on to the web, along with rolling text updates, geo-tagged Twitter streams and map mashups. But vdeo is the big draw and the Olympics site is mainly benefiting from BBC News and Sport sites' abandonment of pop-up Windows Media Video and RealVideo in favour of in-page Flash video. Short recorded clips within stories are proving popular: "These games are slightly antisocial, happening when most people in the country are either in bed or in work. The opportunities for people to just sit in front of the telly all day, waiting for the action, aren't as obvious as Athens, when it was a European timezone. They need to get a fix of the action wherever they are - that means we need to offer them a really strong on-demand service and make sure we make the live action available wherever they are."

-- iPlayer: The VOD service, available online and TV, is used for catch-up of whole sports events, while the website is used to show short clips and live action: "When it comes to sport, the real appeal is with the BBC Sport website", Gallop said. What's more, though it hosts all BBC programmes from the last week, the Olympics undertaking is so large that iPlayer is unable to host all aired Olympics videos as VOD, Gallop said - not for rights concerns, "but because of bandwidth issues".

-- London 2012: The BBC is experimenting delivering video clips to T-Mobile customers via its mobile Olympics site; other networks don't seem to have been able to cope with the requirements: "We've had discussions with all the mobile operators, it hasn't been possible to work with all of them on it, largely for technical reasons. In terms of challenges, that's been an interesting one… We have an editorial vision for what we want to achieve, but it's working in the realities of the UK mobile market; there are challenges. In the future, it's something we want to do with all of them.

"This particular platform is more about how it develops in the future. We don't see it as a mature service. Beijing is an end in itself, but it's also a stepping stone for London - we want to try things out, see how they work to learn for four years' time." The main priority is to ensure that "every bit of action" is made available digitally.

Related

• Opening Day: NBCOlympics.com 70M Pageviews, With No Opening Ceremony Vid; BBC's 700K Online Streams
• NBC's Online Olympics: Missing the Commentary; 4-Screen Feeds Awesome
• 10 Days and Counting: NBCU's Digital Olympics: The Full Slate Of Offerings
• NBCU To Stream 2,200 Hours Of Olympics Coverage Live; Swimming, Gymnastics, T&F Not Included
• NBC's Totalitarian Olympics: More on Restrictions; Online Video Only After TV Broadcast

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Here's to embargoes, arrangements and accidents. As predicted, BBC future media and technology (FM&T) controller Erik Huggers is to be crowned director of the unit, according to Guardian.co.uk. Or is he… ?

The website published the story yesterday but it mysteriously disappeared immediately, perhaps the result of an embargoed story mistakenly published too soon. Spokespeople for the public broadcaster, who on May 30 told me the recruitment process was "well underway", last night told me only: "We'll make an announcement when there's something to say." So we held off. But today the story reappeared seemingly as planned, at 8am on the dot, forecasting Huggers' appointment "as early as today". Late this morning, UK time, the BBC told me no announcement is due.

Huggers' promotion would come 14 months after he joined the corporation, replacing Ashley Highfield, who became Kangaroo CEO two weeks ago. He will control a 2008/09 budget of £114.4 million ($228 million) for BBC alone, plus FM&T's CIO and CTO functions and R&D, as well as responsibility for other infrastructure and projects like iPlayer, totaling £400 million ($797 million).

But he would also inherit a division from which radical changes are expected, after last year's £36 million ($72 million) overspend. The BBC Trust ordered a new management structure by December. It blamed last year's reshuffle - in which BBC New Media's activities were split across three units including FM&T - for weaknesses in managerial control, so Huggers will "work alongside a (new) BBC FM&T executive charged with strengthening the divisions' editorial strategy and development", the story goes.

Dutchman Huggers was recruited essentially as Highfield's deputy in May 2007. A former senior director overseeing Microsoft's entertainment business, he promptly brought two MSFT alumni with him. With that new-look team, his latest top task was building a new video delivery network. He has taken well to the BBC's increasing need for transparency (keeping a good blog and speaking openly at a recent conference). Highfield joined Kangaroo on July 1 after leading iPlayer through multiplatform controversy to web-based popularity; he left on a £466,00 salary, last week's annual report showed.

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Digital revenue at the BBC's overseas, profit-making BBC Worldwide division ballooned from £13.9 million ($27.4 million) to £21.9 million ($43.2 million) in the year to March 31, thanks to ads on the new BBC.com and to sales from the likes of iTunes and YouTube. The controversial BBC.com made £1.5 million ($2.96 million) from ads and sponsorships since its November launch. The site only runs ads outside the UK and plans to increase inventory, while "an international commercial iPlayer functionality is being explored", too.

Distribution and sale of clips to destinations like YouTube, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes, MySpace TV and Playstation reaped a sixfold revenue increase at £7 million ($13.8 million) - testament to the off-site dissemination strategy. Despite the gains, digital losses grew from £3.9 million ($7.7 million) to £10.9 million ($21.5 million) on "substantial investment" in BBC.com and the Kangaroo VOD TV JV. BBCWW pledged to continue investing next year, however. More at paidContent:UK…

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The BBC Trust today published details of the BBC's local broadband "video journalism" proposal, which has so worried commercial regional publishers. The details here reveal the plan would require a £23 million ($45.29 million) annual budget by 2012/13, starting in 2009/10 for a total £68 million ($133 million) investment over the period - or 90 percent of its entire local spend, which is already due to come from above bbc.co.uk's baseline allocation. On average, each local operation would cost £350,000 ($689,325).

The project would cover 60 areas in the English language and five in Welsh, all mapped on to existing BBC Local regions. The BBC is targeting 3.2 million weekly hits (11 percent of UK households) by 2013/14. It says it will offer the majority of its branded news videos for syndication to local news sites and, indicating possible joint ventures with commercial rivals, it's promised an annual £800,000 ($1.57 million) fund by 2012/13 to buy in local news from those rivals. More on PCUK...

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The king is gone, long live… whom exactly? BBC future media and technology director Ashley Highfield's move to Project Kangaroo opens up perhaps the most powerful position in UK digital media, controlling a £400 million budget and attracting 18.1 million monthly visitors to the UK's number-five website. So who are the early runners and riders? I polled some insiders for this print-and-keep guide...the candidates on our UK site paidContent:UK.

After much rumour, the BBC has made its iPlayer TV catch-up service available on iPhone - its first mobile implementation. The service does not use the new SDK nor an iPhone version of Flash but delivers 516Kbps streams in H.264 format through the handset's web browser, over WiFi - theoretically, this should make it available over iPod touch. It offers on-demand shows transmitted in the last seven days, but only in the UK (BBC Worldwide's forthcoming Kangaroo project will be international and has pledged a mobile component). Digital media technology head Anthony Rose distinguished between delivering iPlayer to phones with browsers and those without - the former being much easier.

BBC's commercial arm will start distributing shows through Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes by next week, reports The Register, citing sources. The launch will happen on Tuesday, and BBC Worldwide's digital media director Simon Danker has contacted the BBC's third party production partners to inform them of the new distribution channel. No details of pricing and which show will show up on iTunes.

Update 1: WSJ also reports citing sources: Initially only about 10 different drama and comedy shows will be sold on iTunes, which doesn't currently have any TV shows from British studios, the person said. It isn't clear which shows will be available.

It is interesting that this deal is only for UK, and will be paid, when UK users can stream/download the same shows online on BBC's website for free. Not sure why anyone would pay then, unless the archives are deeper.

Update 2: An FT story explains it better: The shows will be a mixture of recently aired shows that are no longer available free on the separate BBC iPlayer, and programs from the BBC archives. This could mean paid downloads of BBC programs are available on iTunes months before the launch of Project Kangaroo, the BBC's on-demand streaming and download partnership with ITV (LSE: ITV) and Channel 4, which is due later this year.

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MySpace and BBC Worldwide are partnering to deliver new and archived short-form BBC content through MySpaceTV. The deal is described as the first global agreement between MySpace and a major broadcaster. For BBC Worldwide, it's part of the move to expand its broadband video reach and to promote content that will be available on Kangaroo (the BBC Worldwide, ITV (LSE: ITV), Channel 4 on-demand effort) in the UK and on BBCW's commercial media player. The new channel???http://www.myspacetv.com/bbcworldwide???is already live and should be available in any territory covered by MySpaceTV. The promo clips from shows including Top Gear, Doctor Who and Robin Hood can be viewed, embedded and shared across MySpace (and other sites, based on the experiment I just did.)

Meanwhile, also announced: MySpace has promoted Jeff Berman to oversee all of its content and marketing initiatives as the new EVP of content and marketing. Prior to this he was the GM of MySpaceTV...now he will add oversight of music, film and other branded initiatives ranging from MySpace Celebrity and MySpace Impact. The new responsibilities are the ones Shawn Gold used to oversee, but he left in November to start his own venture. More on his appointment here.