BBC to offer entire archive downloadable for free (1 Viewer)

[Eric F]

According to an article in the Nov 2003 issue of Wired- the BBC plans on digitizing their entire library of material, and offer it all for free. That's right, everything, TV Shows, radio shows, old broadcasts, everything.

It doesn't get into details, the format, their distribution network, but it says they intend on offerng this come Summer 2004. Getting the distribution rights for all this material must be a monumental task.

I guess I can start cutting back on my BBC DVD purchases now.

 

[Jim Beaver]

Do you think they'd have Chronicles of Narnia on there?

 

[MartinTeller]

This sounds rather implausible.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I hope some of their vintage "making of" documentaries are in there, especially the Zardoz and Excaliber ones.

 

[Jason Seaver]

This sounds rather implausible.

I agree that it Summer 2004 is a ridiculously ambitious timeframe for everything, if that's what you mean. But considering that the BBC is a publicly-funded service, providing their content to an audience at minimal cost could be seen as part of their mandate.

 

[Eric F]

It sounds implausible to me too, but I didn't write the article-

Wired 11/2003 p29,31

Something Completely Different: The BBC is putting its vast archives online for free. Call it the next media model. by Danny O'Brien

I would post it verbatim, but I suspect the folks at Wired would not like that.

 

[MartinTeller]

What about stuff like The John Peel Show? I'd love to hear some of those broadcasts, but do they really have the rights to distribute all those songs?

 

[Mark_vdH]

Could it be that it's only available online as streaming media?

Quite a few popular Dutch TV shows that are being shown on public television, are also being kept available online like that.....

 

[Eric F]

According to the article they want to distribute the whole programs.

There's the sheer engineering task of digitizing and sharing an enormous backlog of audio, video and text...digitizing would cost about $15 per hour of taped material, which translates to about $100,000 for a year's worth of one channel.

But innovation should cut some of the cost, and distribution could be nearly free. One small group of BBC execs has already floated an ingenious notion: P2P networks. Why spend money on racks of hardware and fat pipes when your most popular files will be shared by your viewers, who will burn them onto DVDs themselves and create their own copies to match demand?

I'm not going to post any more unless Wired gives me permission. If someone else wants to, that's up to them.

 

[BrianB]

This sounds rather implausible.

It was the head of the BBC that announced it.

"Dyke to open up BBC Archive"


It should be noted that a lot of popular BBC programs aren't actually made/owned by the BBC. This is strictly for BBC material.

 

[PaulP]

Could it be that it's only available online as streaming media?

Streaming? Ha!

 

[David Lambert]

Okay, so now the question noone has asked:


Why?

 

[Andy_G]

Because, in principle, it is good to have as much art as possible available as freely as possible. Free availability of archived material is a good thing.

 

[BrianB]

Okay, so now the question noone has asked:
Why?

I'd hazard a guess at reasons such as a political move to ensure the "need" for the BBC & its archives, a new purpose to ensure funding in the current economic climate etc rather than wholly altruistic reasons, knowing how much fire the BBC has been under in the past few years.

 

[PhilipG]

A lot of current radio material is already online.

See this link to BBC Radio Player for example.

Don't go selling your DVDs yet though. I do not expect anything close to DVD quality, and I'm sure it won't be everything at once. It'll probably work like the new British Pathé website, with low-res streaming for free, and high-res for a (high) price.

 

[Duncan Harvey]

AFAIK its only going to be selected clips from educational programmes.