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April 19, 2007

Million Hours of BBC Free Online

Being a huge fan of the the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC), I love their newscasts as well as their programs, I was really excited to see this article from the Observer/Guardian. They hope to creat a supporting database for the shows that has scripts, expense reports, correspondence, etc. It sounds like it may be slow going as they secure various rights but I know I want to listen to the interview when “Antonia Raeburn talks to Grace Roe and Eleanor Higginson, two suffragettes from the Pankhurst era, about their campaign to win the vote” and the “poignant interview, broadcast on the day he was assassinated in April 1968, the civil rights leader says: ‘The important thing isn’t how long you live, but how well you live.’” And, of course the John Lennon and Yoko Ono ” interview transmitted in January 1981, two days before the ex-Beatle was killed, and never repeated. They talk candidly about the motivation for their famous ‘bed-in’ protests.”I can’t wait…

BBC to put one million hours of its past online

Corporation wants its entire archive to be available for free

James Robinson, media correspondent
Sunday April 15, 2007
The Observer

Thousands of hours of broadcasting history are to be made available to the public online as part of a plan to open up the BBC’s entire archive to licence-fee payers free of charge.
The radio and TV material, some of which has never been repeated, includes an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.

Other programmes 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 has never been repeated but 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 one 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 programmes. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month, and the service could be available nationally in a year’s time. Highfield will announce details of the scheme in a speech this week….MORE

posted by Anna at 1:20 pm |

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