BBC to Put Entire Radio & TV Archive Online

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is to to put it's entire radio and television archive online, free for everyone, as the BBC Creative Archive." The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless, this is a gigantic amount of data, and to see it go online, and open to the public is very cool.

Comments

BBC currently uses realmedia

[Neophytus]

All of the programmes currently avaliable are in streaming realmedia, catered to the 56k audiance. I could see this initiative falling flat on it's face unless a burnable, portable and high quality format is used.

Re:BBC currently uses realmedia

[GiMP]

But if the format is something unreadable and obscure like VIVO or something more evil, or locked via DRM.. why bother making it available at all if nobody can reasonably view it?

Re:BBC currently uses realmedia

[Joe Tie.]

Real media is a sick, sick dog that people just aren't willing to put to sleep.

I'm very glad real is still around. The situation might change when Theora has an offcial release, but for the moment the only viable codecs/formats for low bitrate encodes come from Real and Microsoft. And while Real's support for non windows machines isn't perfect, it's far better than Microsoft's. Admitingly real's player is pretty bad, but most techy people are just going to be using real's codecs with another player anyway.

This would be great!

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be a great use for Bittorrent. It would be expensive for BBC to distrubite these; with Bittorrent, it would keep the costs down, and present a non-piracy method to the public.

Re:This would be great!

[AntiOrganic]

As a bonus, it would legitimize BitTorrent in the public eye, which is, unfortunately, regarded commonly by industry lobbyists in the same piracy context as Kazaa. While Red Hat uses BitTorrent to distribute ISOs, what legislator cares about Red Hat? Besides, everyone knows ISOs are pirated software. The BBC is much more influential.

Re:This would be great!

[dougmc]

It might be the first large scale legitimate use of P2P.

Of course it wouldn't. The usage of BitTorrent to distribute Redhat 9 was pretty large scale, for example.

Or was that not large scale or legitimate enough for you? :)

(There are other examples, but that's the largest one I can think of off the top of my head.)

Meanwhile, in the good old USA . . .

[acceleriter]

. . . taxpayer and contributor supported NPR only makes audio available in proprietary, streaming formats. Perhaps if they want to lock up their content, they should stop taking taxpayer money and donations, hmm?

P.S.: Those things that sound like commercials in the NPR broadcast can't be commercials, because public radio doesn't have commercials by definition. They must be "sponsorship acknowledgements."

Re:Meanwhile, in the good old USA . . .

[kennylives]

While I don't particularly like the use of proprietary streaming formats, I do recognise that they're using what's likely to reach a majority of their audience. Ideally, they could use MP3's, but I suspect that you're probably talking more along the lines of Ogg, which, let's be honest, doesn't even appear on the radar for these guys (nor most of their audience).

So, yeah, you can write letters to them to make your displeasure known, and to try to convince them to use a more free-software-friendly format. But to characterise the use of RM/WM as a misuse of taxpayer money is just wrong. The fact is that NPR is not directly government funded, nor has it been for years. From the 2000 NPR annual report:

NPR receives no direct general operating support from any national or local government source. NPR does compete along with other producers for specific project grants from federally funded entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

(source - NPR Annual Report - page 21. Yes, it's a pdf, STFU). The report goes on to put the amount of money coming from those organizations at less than 2% of NPR's revenues.

Re:Will this actually include *entertainment*?

[Scarblac]

Well, since they have the copyrights over loads of stuff, and they are a public organization, not a company, I think they'll just have to shut up. They're simply serving the public like they're supposed to :-)

I think I speak for all of us when I say

[Lord Kholdan]

Please let it be divx instead of realmedia or other crap!

The BBC is paid for by British taxes...

[gmcraff]

... And I, not being a British subject, would still be willing to pay a lesser "TV tax" subscription for the access to a near-TV quality, downloadable archive in a portable format.

Let's be fair: the cost of these fine productions (and let's not get into the nit-picks about cardboard sets and cheesy sci-fi aliens) has already been borne by the TV-tax paying British public. They got to see ad-free television produced by people who were willing to take artistic risks because the they weren't subject to the tyranny of the marketing department.

If this is your style, I suspect you'd like to support them in producing more of the like. I like the sci-fi and the some of the comedy the BBC produces. If I could have access to new productions, even if it was a year or so after the first run in England, I'd would be willing to pay for it.

I think this archive of older radio and TV is a fantastic idea, even if it's not in a portable format right now. Fair enough: if you getting it for free, you can't complain how you're getting it. If the BBC would like an extra revenue stream, earmarked to support risk-taking entertainment that might not be universally popular, but still take direct feedback from the public, rather than markerters, I'll find a way to convert a few US dollars to pounds sterling to support it.

So, a question for anyone who wants to take it on: What would be a good business model for the BBC to take, understanding that their mandate is to produce entertainment for the British public, to enable foreigners to have access, provide support and feedback without jeopardizing that mandate?

Re:The BBC is paid for by British taxes...

[garyok]

... and that's the business model. I honestly don't see a future where anyone gets charged for the BBC, except the UK taxpayers. And I don't really want that to change, as that would make the BBC into just another commercial broadcaster, deciding its programming based on commercial criteria in the long run.

The BBC isn't (and never was) just for UK residents. It's always had a mandate to bring culture (as opposed to ignorance) to everyone in the world. Yeah, the Beeb has priorities, and maybe they'll throttle the bandwidth to non-UK clients, but charging? Nah. And as a license payer I wouldn't want them to.

While this idea might generate quite a bit of funding from the developed nations, it'd also block access from the developing nations, and it's the developing nations that would need this stuff the most. It's not just Blackadder and Dr. Who, there's a ton of educational material in the archives, including the Open University, that should be free to anyone with an internet connection (and a lot of patience).

Re:Remember who's paying for this!

[danila]

Believe me, we (people outside UK) do and we are really grateful to people like you (no kidding). Tuning to BBC World is literally like a stream of fresh air in almost all countries. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism for us to support BBC, except to occasionally buy some DVDs, but Britain gets our most sincere gratitude.

On an unrelated note, Global Business just started airing (and webcasting) the first episode of the 3-series programme about Russian business that I helped to make. :)

Re:What and when?

[mickwd]

"recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England"

Rather a snide remark from some-one who used to get something for free that people in "Little England" have to pay for.

You still get all their web content for free, don't you ?

Ownership

[BuilderBob]

The big question is what acutally consitutes the "BBC archive"? Is it everything that's ever been shown on the BBC, or is it only the in-house produced BBC programs?

To take an obvious example, The Simpsons, their definately not BBC property, so I doubt they'll be in the archive, neither will any of the other American imports (24, Buffy, Star Trek, etc.). But then, what about Blackadder? Surely that was made by the BBC? The rights to Blackadder are owned by Tiger productions (Rowan Atkinson's company), this includes the DVD rights for example. Will this be in the archive?

What about Monty Python, 'Allo 'Allo, Red Dwarf, Dr Who or Hitchhikers? A (non-authoritative ) Amazon check suggests that they are all distributed by BBC worldwide, which is the commerical arm of the BBC (and produces all of the commercial UK-* stations on Sky), but how many of these have additional rights? Red Dwarf (the book) is owned by Grant Naylor, Hitchhikers by Douglas Adams. How many books will get sold if these episodes are available for free?

There's also the digitising problem, It might not seem like it, but only in the last 5 years have any TV programs been digitally stored. And the BBC tend to lose things, they lost episodes of Dr Who for example (one is still missing I think), so how many of these archives will be complete?

I am truly hoping that most BBC aired programs will be there (you might have to wait for "The Office"?) but I have a horrible feeling it'll be an archive of Eastenders (bad bad soap opera), Casualty (no blood-n-guts E.R. clone) and Noel's house party (please god no).

--

What a time to be sitting on a Gigabit university network... :)

Re:Does this mean...

[Black Hitler]

That all the Monty Python episodes will be available? That would be really cool, but I just spent ~$100 on the 14 DVD boxed set. Nuts!

I wouldn't count on this, since thanks to a U.S. court decision in the late '70s the Pythons own all the rights to the TV series, not the BBC or anyone else.

I cannot conceive of this archive existing without some very large and substantial gaps. So much BBC programming (particularly nowadays) is created with the collaboration of private sector companies that it would be a rights nightmare. I also can't help but notice that no time frame is provided here so for all we know he's talking about the distant future and hasn't even seriously begun looking at how to implement this.

A dream come true.

[sanx]

Speaking as an ex-pat Brit, the BBC is the premiere producer of high-quality content on the planet. There isn't a single content producer with an archive that can match the Beeb's.

Although Blair is desperate to get rid of the BBC or to change its mandate to make it advertiser-funded (in no small part because it criticises "New Labour") any change made to the way the BBC operates or is funded would spell the end of one of the greatest organisations anywhere in the world.

The BBC can produce the programs they do, and report news in the way it does, because it answers to no-one. Not the UK government, not to sponsors, not to advertisers. It doesn't have to keep anyone happy. Think of this: How in-depth was the reporting of the M$ vs DoJ debacle on MSNBC? How in-depth was the reporting of AOHell's financial woes on CNN?

The BBC recently came under huge criticism for their claim that the UK's official government dossier on Iraq's WMD was "sexed up". In the viewer feedback section they had on this, at least half of the comments posted on the BBC's site were anti-BBC. Some were calling for it to be shutdown and disbanded. Can you imagine CNN doing the same?

I think the decision to open up their content archive to the public for free is truly wonderful. I think it also has business possibilities for the BBC. Would ISPs in the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries get business from advertising a high-speed BBC content mirror? I think so. ISP pays the BBC to mirror their content = ISP gets more customers = BBC gets more money.

If the BBC's sale of DVDs and videos remained unchanged or even went up as a result, it would also put a final nail in the coffin of the MPAssA and RIAssA's arguments that: free download = doom, gloom, bankrupt artists = death of civilisation as we know it. The BBC has the might to compete with anyone on the world stage. Their public popularity is, and has been for many year, the envy of every other media company in existence. The RIAssA and MPAssA would not have a leg to stand on should the BBC come out in favour (backed up by figures, of course) of making content freely-available.

Now, where do I get that OC43 connection from?