To commercial newspapers’ gripes the BBC is “the 300lb gorilla on our garden“, add a collection of concerns on web TV and travel guides. The Sunday papers have rounded up new submissions over both BBC Worldwide’s Lonely Planet acquisition and the Kangaroo VOD JV of which it is the lead member…
– Lonely Planet: City guide group Time Out has written to the Office Of Fair Trading (OFT), urging it to investigate the purported £75 million acquisition of travel guide group Lonely Planet, of which it bought 75 percent in October. Sunday Times says the letter worries BBC Worldwide will be able to supply “an inexhaustible fund of factual, technical and editorial information and expertise quite beyond the resources of any privately funded organisation such as Time Out”. Time Out’s Tony Elliott: