The BBC Gets The Long Tail, Putting 81 Years Of Television Online
Jun 10th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: General, Internet TV, Video 
Somebody at the BBC gets the idea of making the most of niche content – they’ve announced plans to put 81 years of classic British television online:
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.
“Eventually we will add our programme back catalogue to produce pages for programming stretching back over nearly 80 years – featuring all the information we have on the richest TV and radio archive in the world,” said Bennett. “The BBC is committed to releasing the public value in that archive.”
This has the potential to dramatically change the television landscape.
If the BBC puts 81 years of television online, others will follow, creating a mass of Internet video unlike anything the world has ever seen.
This is also likely to lead to changes in content production & distribution around the world. For example – if we can get 81 years of BBC TV online, will anybody want to watch a limited subset of this through US public television?
“…if we can get 81 years of BBC TV online, will anybody want to watch a limited subset of this through US public television?”
Ummm, yes. For the foreseeable future, yes. Those of us who would rather watch a show from the comfort of our sofa instead of hunched over a laptop screen: yes. Those of us who want to enjoy HD content that isn’t being buffered every five minutes: yes. Those of us who don’t have cable (Surprise! We exist!) and actually enjoy NOT being tempted to spend too much time staring at a screen: yes. Those of us who believe in the mission of public television: yes. Those of us who, through age, disability or inclination would rather just walk over to a box and press “ON” as opposed to navigating to a website and sifting through hundreds of choices, and then selecting a stream: yes.
Hate to burst your bubble but not everyone wants to jump on every high-tech bandwagon that comes along.
everycritic – thanks for bringing up another viewpoint on this.
And you’re right – Internet TV is still too slow and too complicated.
[…] The ambitious venture was outlined by the director of BBC Vision, Jana Bennett, at the Banff television festival in Canada. She described the plan to add the back catalogue of BBC programmes onto individual web pages for each episode would feature “all the information we have on the richest TV and radio archive in the world.” […]