Will Project Canvas redesign the way we watch TV?

There is no denying that the BBC iPlayer has become a part of many peoples’ lives, the BBC having reported receiving a little under 115 million requests in December 2009. And, with more and more ways to access the service – PC, iPhone, Xbox, PS3, the recently announced Cello TV, and, my personal favourite, Wii – these numbers can only grow.

So what about the other UK on-demand platforms, 4OD for Channel 4, iTV Player and 5’s Demand 5? None of them work on my Wii, and hitherto I’ve had to switch to my Media PC – meaning more devices sat under my TV to annoy my wife.

Enter Project Canvas.

This alliance of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5 and ISPs BT and Talk Talk wants to offer a single aggregator for the different UK VOD services (BSkyB excepted, to its inevitable chagrin) through a set top box by Christmas 2010, with televisions, Wiis and the rest soon to follow.

On-demand services are leaving the niche and becoming part of the mainstream – for example, those 115 million December requests included 14 per cent of the audience for the Christmas Dr Who, some 1.4 million people. VOD is also no longer the preserve of the young and pushing it into the living room will only accelerate the changing patterns of TV consumption, and in particular, one would think, the use of PVRs.

All of which will of course have an impact on the way we measure TV. For the agency trying to assess the impact of a review on Top Gear, it’s a whole new layer of complexity. Previously, television audiences were measured by the likes of BARB and Rajar, whose consumer panel approach has some parallels in the internet measurement methodologies of companies such as ComScore and Compete.

These similarities don’t make the data commensurable, but there is at least a logic in combining figures for broadcast and VOD, one that is largely absent from attempts to link newspaper circulations and website visits.