BBC to Create Web Archive of All it's 81 Years Broadcasting

[engine]

From Dixon of Dock Green to David Attenborough's finest, Hancock's Half Hour and Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC has vowed to create a home on the web for all its programmes past and present, in an attempt to exploit the "long tail" of its archive.

Spanning 81 years of radio and television, the project will create a web page for every episode of every single programme ever broadcast on the BBC, and be the basis of a future plan to introduce a searchable vault of archived shows.

It will bring information on every BBC programme ever shown, with clips, links and, eventually, whole programmes available either via the seven-day catch up service iPlayer, or commercial online video featuring Kangaroo, an on-demand service being developed with ITV and Channel 4, or a new online archive.

BBC to Create Web Archive of All it's 81 Years Broadcasting [guardian.co.uk]

[Dabrowski]

Odd that this article itself isn't hosted by the BBC news site?

[g1smd]

Bit late this, after they destroyed tens of thousands of hours of archives a decade or two ago.

[Syzygy]

And indeed, very little of programmes like Dixon of Dock Green were ever saved in the first place. Archiving of such material wasn't deemed as important.

Syzygy

[dreamcatcher]

If they archive only the things worth watching, they should easily fit it onto a single DVD. ;)

dc