Oh boy, where do I start on this one?
Well a couple of days ago I was all about to write one of those “I reckon Apple must be about to announce the Video iPod” posts, full of speculation including references to:
- Those hidden video links/img buttons in iTunes
- Getting the nano out of the way to flog the very last from the soon-to-be-dead mp3-only horse
- PSP getting an early market dominance in the portable video market
- Christmas being the time of most sales for a company like Apple, and they need to have a big “wow” product out for it which can be leveraged as a suitable “gift” (ie not high-end workstations)
Then I found out that Apple were going to be holding some kind of press event at the BBC for London journalists and reporters to watch the live keynote by Steve Jobs (where he will announce Apple’s new product[s]).
Of course, I couldn’t blog that at the time because I found it out via internal BBC sources, sorry. I also couldn’t really blog my original post because people inside the BBC would know that I knew about the event, and it could all get messy, etc…
However this morning some bright spark live on BBC Radio 6 let it slip that the otherwise secret event was happening.
“Apple is set to unveil a new video iPod at the BBC Television Centre in London on October the 12th,” and that the company is “expected to reveal details of the new MP3 and video player as well as video bundles to be available from the company’s iTunes stores.”
So I guess I can now blog this now cos it’s already been leaked by someone else and is know public knowlege!
This is great, but should the BBC really be getting involved in a marketing launch of a company’s product? I would expect that given that the Beeb has its iMP and Podcasting trials already going on, it would be sensible (and highly desirable from Apple’s point of view) for the Beeb to make some vidcasts of, for example, the latest news (perhaps the 3-minute news feed that’s available live on the News website?). But, if it’s only on Quicktime, and it’s launched at BBC TV Centre, the BBC is going to have to be very careful about what is effectively product endorsement. Of course, I could be wrong, I suppose none of this has happened yet.