New Zealand Herald: BBC closes websites in wake of competition report

Since U.K. citizens pay a tax of sorts to fund the country's public television, private companies complained that some of the BBC's web products are improper; both irrelevant to the semi-public agency's mission and also stifling private firms that would provide similar content for profit. A commission's report on the matter concurred with these complaints, immediately spurring the BBC announce it will take down five sites that were less relevant to its mission of providing content that private enterprise likely would not. The nixed sites include ones on fantasy football and soap operas.

At issue is the philosophical question of whether or not the BBC's mission in television - to be the single public service broadcaster - is even an appropriate one on the web. The commission report added that the BBC's stated objective of increasing broadband use in the U.K. was perhaps inappropriately self-appointed.