BBC past to go online

The Guardian reports that the BBC is going to release nearly a million hours of programming from its vast broadcasting archive for online browsing.

The project is already under trial with 20,000 users, and the BBC hopes it will be available to the British public by 2008. The company has to clear a lot of copyrighted material, as well as contact actors, agents, composers and presenters, and this is a time-consuming process.

The BBC also plans to make a huge amount of supporting material available, including scripts, programme notes and letters relating to shows. If it can secure permission to use them, they will make up a huge database of documents that viewers can search easily and quickly.

Paperwork the BBC hopes to place online includes a signed expenses form Attenborough sent when he was filming in Indonesia: dated 10 August 1954, it requests tropical clothing.

The BBC also has letters from Attenborough, sent care of the British embassy in Jakarta, telling BBC bosses about his first impressions of the country.

The corporation has been planning to exploit its valuable archive for some time. New technology means it is far cheaper to store and distribute video and audio streams, and the growth of broadband has boosted demand for high-quality content.