Not exactly - the BBC often serves the same content without displaying ads in the UK. I'm not clear what's going on in this case, but it's more likely that thi

Not exactly - the BBC often serves the same content without displaying ads in the UK. I'm not clear what's going on in this case, but it's more likely that this is out of its public remit - as a funded public service, they're not to compete with commercial companies in sensitive industries/they're not allowed to use public money on content irrelevant to their remit and so BBC Worldwide has to be somewhat carefully separated. e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4058031.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4058031.stm This may be down to Rupert Murdoch's lobbying pressure.