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BBC hopes to put 1 million hours of shows on Internet

Thousands of hours of broadcasting history, some of which have never been transmitted, are to be made available to the public online as part of a plan to open up the BBC's entire archive free of charge.

The footage includes an interview with US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with musicians John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.

Other programs include a 1956 episode of the nature series Zoo Quest in which a young David Attenborough captures the komodo dragon on film for the first time. The episode could soon be available online as part of the ambitious project, headed by the BBC's director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield.

The BBC wants to put nearly 1 million hours of material on the internet for viewers to watch, listen to and download and has already begun the long process of retrieving and transferring programs. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month, and the service could be available more widely in a year's time. Highfield will announce details of the scheme in a speech this week.

A 1968 Woman's Hour radio program marking the 50th anniversary of women gaining the vote features interviews with suffragettes.

Other material includes a dramatic government appeal, from May 1940, asking for volunteers to sail to Dunkirk to help rescue the 330,000 French and British troops stranded there.

Most of the programs have never been repeated because the BBC does not own the rights to part of the material used in each broadcast.

The corporation is currently trying to clear the material so it can place it online, although the negotiations are proving more complicated than expected. Although it owns the copyright to most shows, it does not have the right to repeat many of them. Actors, agents, composers and presenters have to be contacted.

Ultimately, however, it wants to make every program available, no matter how obscure.

"Lots of it might not be of wider interest, but if your mum was on a daytime quiz show, it will still be of interest to you," Highfield says.

The BBC also plans to make a huge amount of supporting material available, including scripts. If it can secure permission to use them, they will make up a huge database of documents.

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.
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