Britain's state-funded BBC unveiled a wide-ranging set of proposals for partnerships with other free-to-air broadcasters designed to ensure the survival of the public-service model of which they are all a part.
As advertising-funded terrestrial rivals battle the twin threats of new digital competition and an advertising slump, the BBC yesterday offered to share resources including its popular iPlayer catch-up service and to help bring web services to TV.
"What you're seeing in these proposals is a BBC... that knows that its relative certainty of funding, its scale and its technology place it in a privileged position to potentially assist the rest of the industry," Director-General Mark Thompson told a news conference.
Public-service licence holders in Britain are obliged to show a certain amount of programming such as children's shows and local news in exchange for tax breaks on analogue spectrum and near-universal access to UK homes.
The BBC received £3.4 billion in fees - charged to all television users in Britain - in its 2007-2008 financial year, and employs about 24,000 people worldwide.
It said its proposals could benefit other public service broadcasters (PSBs) by more than £120 million a year by 2014, through a combination of creating new revenues, avoiding loss of revenues and reducing costs.
The BBC said it remained committed to its planned online TV joint venture with ITV and Channel 4, Kangaroo, despite offering to share the iPlayer technology and brand. The two services would overlap in many regards.
Kangaroo has been delayed by competition concerns and its chief executive resigned last month.
The proposals were made partly in response to a review of the entire PSB model by the British regulator, which is expected to publish its conclusions early next year.
With a switchover to digital TV due to be completed in Britain in 2012, ITV argues that the value of its PSB licence no longer justifies the cost of producing such programming, and Channel 4 faces a significant funding shortfall in a few years' time.
One possible solution for Channel 4 proposed by the watchdog is to give the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, to Channel 4. BBC Worldwide made a profit of £118 million in 2007-2008.
Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, said that option had not been discussed internally although BBC Worldwide was in talks with Channel 4 to explore possible commercial cooperation.
Channel 4 welcomed the move, saying the benefits for it would be limited and that iPlayer's commercial potential was small in the short term.
The BBC also offered to support other broadcasters' regional news programming, for example by pooling raw footage, and to share digital production technology.