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Speaking at the Banff Television Festival in Canada, the directorof BBC Vision, Jana Bennett, announced the plans and revealed that the archivingprocess had already started.
Vast archive
Initially the service will be information-only. Every BBCshow – including classics like Fawlty Towers and old-schoolDoctor Who – will be given their own web presence, which will include facts andinformation about every single episode.
Once this groundwork has been put intoplace, the BBC will look into archiving actual video.
Bennett had this to say about the launch: "Eventuallywe will add our programme back catalogue to produce pages for programmingstretching back over nearly 80 years – featuring all the information we have onthe richest TV and radio archive in the world.
"The BBC is committed to releasing the public value inthat archive."
There’s no word as of yet how the video will be accessed butit looks likely that the BBC’s iPlayer will be utilised and so will Kangaroo,an on-demand service developed in conjunction with ITV and Channel 4. There isalso talk of certain classic shows being added to iTunes.
It was also announced that this 'playback' plan will be developed within the current BBC online budget, which was recently in the news after an overspend of £36 million.
Years in the making
It was initially in 2003 that plans for a digital archivewas announced. Speaking to the BBC, Greg Dyke, then director general of thechannel, announced that: "For the first time there is an easy andaffordable way of making this treasure trove of BBC content available to all.
"I believe that we are about to move into a second phase ofthe digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than privatevalue; about free, not pay services; about inclusivity, not exclusion." It looks like, in 2008, this plan is finally coming to fruition.
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