Following on from its hugely successful iPlayer, the BBC has today announced that its entire catalogue of television programming will be made available online.
81 years of BBC footage will be made available digitally via the BBC website, according to the director of BBC Vision, Jana Bennett.
It won't happen anytime soon, however. The archive will initially take the form of websites dedicated to individual shows such as Faulty Towers, containing detailed information and facts. Archived video will then be added once the infrastructure is in place.
"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 hasn't yet confirmed if the catalogue will become available via its iPlayer service, or if it'll be restricted to its website. The announcement does, however, raise plenty of other questions. Will the service be entirely free, and if so, will viewers require a TV License?
It'll no doubt take the BBC years to make its entire archive available, but one things for certain, digital distribution is here to stay.
