BBC reaps benefits from internet broadcasting

London Briefing / Chris Johns: The idea that the internet can be a disruptive influence on established business models is very familiar to executives of telephone companies.

Disappearing customers, falling profit margins and new competitors popping up daily are all contributing to collapsing share prices. The old British Telecom, now known simply as BT, has been caught up in the most recent bout of telco panic, with a share price fall of nearly 10 per cent in relatively short order.

But to be fair to BT, its management has recognised for some time that the internet changes everything. BT's business is, as a result, being rebuilt around the web. While investors would love to give BT credit for leading where many other companies fear to tread, few of us can work out whether the telephone giant will actually make any decent money from its bold moves.

If the disruption of the business of making telephone calls is by now familiar, the destruction of one or two media companies is less so. Rupert Murdoch's empire, for example, is clearly being rattled by the possibility that its massive investment in satellite technology is about to be rendered obsolete by the ubiquity of high-speed broadband. If we can get our movies down the same pipe as our internet connection, there is very little need for that satellite dish.

Some broadcasting executives are reported to be worried by the growing habit of people spending more time in front of their computer screens than their TV sets. Murdoch is responding to this in a number of ways: he has bought a broadband provider and is said to be ready to launch a high-definition television (HDTV) offering.

The essential problem is created by the existence of ultra high-speed internet connections: these mean that anything that can be distributed in digital form can be done so at very low cost, with almost no barriers to entry. It doesn't take much these days to set yourself up as a distributor of digital content. Markets are waking up to this and the search is on for content owners rather than distributors.

Original, creative products can be distributed by anybody, but built by very few. Movies are the obvious example, but there are many others. Hence, investors are now looking for content owners. We want to invest in people and institutions that own back catalogues and have a proven track record of popular creativity.

If I was Gordon Brown I would be looking again at privatising the BBC. It used to be that the idea of selling off the nation's broadcaster was politically incorrect and financially dubious. Left-wingers still hate privatisation on principle, but they are a dwindling band. The health service may still be sacrosanct, but not much else is ringfenced. Financially, the value of the BBC must be rising exponentially: its back catalogue is an undervalued asset and its ability to make things that people want to watch must be worth a fortune.

A small example of how the world is changing is that the second most popular podcast, according to the BBC's new chart - that a podcast chart even exists says it all - is the Radio 4 Today programme. This single programme was downloaded 400,000 times last month, which compares to total monthly downloads - of all programmes - of 400,000 six months ago. Growth on this scale indicates rapid adoption of the new technology, and the fact that a current affairs programme is high up in the charts suggests that the early adopters are not just young people.

Many UK newspapers now podcast their most popular columnists.

Tony Blair, inevitably, has recently got into the act, but Europe's first recorded political podcast occurred last month when French prime minister Nicholas Sarkozy hit the internet. One UK newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, now has a podcast editor. Podcasting is only the most visible aspect of the changing landscape of broadcasting. Already, we can discern a world where we are not tied to any broadcasting schedules: we just download what we want when we want. Just think about those back catalogues in the BBC's vaults: their value must be rising by the minute. If the BBC was a plc, I would buy shares in it.

Chris Johns is an investment strategist with Collins Stewart. All opinions are personal.