James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
Mike Hughes is the Head of Business for the Evening Gazette. He will be blogging on all matters of importance to Teesside businesses - and some that are just worth knowing »
Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » When I was a lad (cue Hovis advert music and clichéd images of small boy pushing large bike loaded with bread up a steep cobbled Lancashire mill town hill), it was fairly easy to tell the difference between state-funded and commercial television.
The biggest difference was, of course, that ITV was stacked full of commercials for all sorts of products that would get witheringly stern looks from Gillian McKeith these days, whilst the BBC channels were free from such intrusions.
These days, however, youâÂÂd be struggling to notice the difference, with trailers for new programmes, services and ways of watching your favourite programme littering the airwaves of our primary public service broadcaster.
And you would have had to try really hard over the last month or so to avoid hearing all about the CorporationâÂÂs latest triumph.
The BBC iPlayer (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer), proudly wrapped in ecclesiastical purple, trumpets that it âÂÂmakes the unmissable unmissable,â and the chaps from Top Gear, amongst others, have been collared to tell us, in a fairly roundabout way, how you can now watch BBC programmes from the last seven days on your computer.
All jolly clever, and very handy too, especially after I forgot to tape the first episode of the new series of Torchwood, and early figures show that the number of users has increased 14-fold since the big iPlayer marketing push began.
But aside from helping forgetful types like me, what should this development mean for future BBC programming, especially bearing in mind that our licence fees paid for its evolution?
Theoretically, the fact that you can watch programmes from the preceding week should mean that thereâÂÂs less need for omnibus editions of soap operas or âÂÂsecond chance to seeâ programme options at various points of the week.
Taking this train of thought a further stop down the line, this should surely create some holes in the TV schedule, which could be filled in either one of two ways â new, exciting, fresh programming (well, new, anyway), or some repeats of stuff thatâÂÂs more than a week old.
Bearing in mind the tightness of BBC budgets in recent years, the cost of commissioning new programmes and the need to keep Jonathan Ross rolling in money, and it sadly looks like the âÂÂmore repeatsâ avenue could be the one down which the Corporation has to go â an ironic outcome of investment in new and exciting technology thatâÂÂs supposed to make us look forward, rather than back.
That said, the iPlayer is, in itself, a very welcome addition to the fast-expanding number of multimedia platforms on which you can view BBC content â strange to think that, not so long ago, all we used to do was âÂÂwatch the telly.âÂÂ
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