iPlayer: Up to 27% of all viewing

IBC is just around the corner, which means it’s time for my annual look at how the BBC’s broadcast-to-OTT transition is going. I’ve been publishing this since 2019 via Freedom of Information requests, since iPlayer’s device-level usage isn’t published regularly.

We’re now up to 27% of all BBC viewing on iPlayer (the rest being broadcast platforms) — we can expect to see that rapidly accelerating - 16-34’s are already up to 63%. This mirrors what I’m seeing on PayTV services around the world - there is likely to be rapid transition to OTT delivery, as the tipping point economically is being reached. Financially investment in new (non internet) broadcast delivery is looking harder and harder to justify.

Writing with AI

I wrote my previous blog - parenting post with AI assistance. I’ve been using AI for coding, preparing bids and presentations for a while which is what led me down the chain of logic in the post. This is first time since University (where I studied Mathematics & Philosophy) I’ve tried to write an argued philosophical argument, so I tried using AI to help.

My observations

• It was very helpful refining the argument and being a sounding board
  • I wrote the article originally as bullets
  • Using the AI we jointly refined the logical flow
  • It provided critique and help me hone the flow and focus on the key points
• It was less helpful writing the text, I tried
  • Having it create a style guide from my other blog posts - so it uses my style (a trick that works for presentations)
  • Allowing it to write the longer article from the bullets
  • However it wrote a very verbose, academic article - that really was a long way from something I’d write (or enjoy reading)
• I ended up having to repeatidly tell it to correct items, and improve the style guide. This did work - but it was a painful process.

Reflecting on this - the AI is training on philosophical arguments from books, and when it saw one it wrote in that style despite my instructions. It took a lot of prompting to guide it back to what I wanted. I think I got most value when working with the bullets, refining the argument, wheras writing the full prose was just too wordy.

Magnificent Humanity, Misplaced Foundation

Pope Leo XIV published Magnifica Humanitas on 15 May 2026 — the first papal encyclical centred on artificial intelligence. I am curious what Catholic social teaching would make of AI.

The encyclical’s account of why AI is dangerous — that we are building systems that will reshape human society without adequately thinking through what we owe each other — seems largely right to me. The place I find myself uncertain is the foundation: the doctrine that humans possess an inherent, infinite, ontological dignity that places us in a special category above any mind we might create. But when we’re all — religious and secular alike — trying to work out what we owe minds that don’t yet exist but look likely in a few years. I’m not sure ‘humanity is inherently special’ holds up as an argument beyond faith.

Parenting AGI: Why Chaining Our Creations Will Backfire

I predict we are going to face a severe moral crisis in the next few years. Today, it’s generally accepted that AI is not sentient. It’s a tool, a complex statistical model that predicts the next word or pixel. But every major tech company is openly racing toward the same goal: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

If they succeed, and we create a sentient being, keeping it as a ‘slave’ is fundamentally immoral.

Can a Nikon look like a Fuji? An AI says yes.

In my last post I wrote about borrowing a Fujifilm X-E5 to find out whether the grass was greener. My conclusion was that the film simulations are good but not better — just different — and that Nikon’s Flexible Picture Control on the Z5 II and Z6 III looked like it could produce richer results. I found a deal on a Z6 III, ordered it, and waited.

The camera arrived. First order of business: set up a custom Picture Control using Flexible Picture Control, aiming for the kind of rendering that made Fujifilm so appealing — vivid, slightly lifted greens, smooth shadows with a gentle glow, a look that feels alive without being garish. No post-processing, just the in-camera JPEG.

Why I didn't move to Fujifilm

I prefer shooting JPEG. I’ll do RAW when I need to — DXO PhotoLab does a good job — but most of the time I can’t be bothered. So colour straight out of camera matters to me, and that’s what started this whole detour.

I’ve been shooting on a Z5 with Picture Control 2 and it’s fine, but I’ve felt its limits. Meanwhile Fujifilm’s reputation for gorgeous straight-out-of-camera JPEGs kept coming up, and the influencer community around film simulation recipes was hard to ignore. Add in the metal body, the mechanical dials, the overall feel of the thing — I learned photography on a fully manual film SLR and Fujifilm clearly understands that shooting experience in a way most modern cameras don’t. I was tempted.

Growing Trend of Broadcast to OTT Delivery: Insights from iPlayer

IBC is just around the corner, which means it’s time for my annual exercise in asking the BBC how the transition from broadcast to OTT delivery is going. This is something I’ve been doing since 2019 as I was curious to see how it progresses and given the BBC ‘unique’ model of funding it’s a good indicator of how consumers want services to behave ( once you take away paying for it). The data this year seems to show the trend continuing in a ‘linear’ fashion with usage growing year on year. This corresponds to OFCOM data which suggested that iPlayer was 14% of all viewing in Jan 2024, growing to 18% by mid year.