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Comment by morrbo | Hacker News Reader

Personally I kind of agree. Other than storage and traffic considerations I cannot see why the entire BBC archive is not available online. It seems stupid to me that we have literally 50+ years of content, documentaries, panel shows, etc. Which could all easily be put online as they are the BBC's content and have been paid for by the British people already.

I understand that this might be overkill but I definitely find myself wanting to watch older episodes of things like would I lie to you or Rhod Gilbert's work experience or HIGNFY or some other show which disappeared long ago for no real reason. Netflix, Amazon, are all ok but there really is a market for some service which has an entire plethora of shows with permanent storage. I'm also fed up of nextflix getting some show I like only to have it disappeared in a month, or only season 3 of 5 be available. If the BBC can solve that they have my business and I'm sure a lot of overseas business too.

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But the BBC don't actually own the rights to most of their old output. They were made in an era too where streaming rights weren't a thing.assume it's different with newer stuff but...

If it is in the publics best interest for the BBC to own the rights then that can be arranged

Current government would be strongly against that. They want to BBC to use private production companies who'll make the content that BBC then transmits.

This is seen across a wide range of government departments: moving away from big central (often previously state) providers to smaller local private providers.

Well, to private providers anyway. The preference for most things seems to be huge multinationals rather than small local companies.

If it is in the publics best interest for the BBC to own the rights then that can be arranged

Is it in the public interest?

What is the benefit to the public of the BBC spending the money necessary to reclaim the rights to their old content? I can't think of anything. The shows that have any value (eg Dr Who) have already commericialized. Everything else ... why bother? The obvious point is that it'd be nice to watch some of the old shows again, but really, out of the 97 years of content across radio and television probably 99.9999% would never be looked ay by anyone.

Just as a parallel, there's millions of hours of old content on https://archive.org/ that never gets looked at. Why would the old BBC content be any different?

I'd happily pay to get access to the full BBC catalogue - in fact I'd probably find more to watch there than I do on Netflix & Amazon (which I already subscribe to).

Lots of people say that. I imagine the BBC use data from things like https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/archive/ to demonstrate that most people are not viewing the archive content that is available already, so people's claims that they'd pay are not backed up by evidence.

I wonder if they collect statistics of people who spot that there are some old 'Horizons' on iPlayer and then get seriously disappointed at the meagre selection available.

How?

Say the BBC made a great series in 1978 and paid the composer of the music for enough rights to air it in the UK, but not for media which were not yet invented at the time. The composer is now dead, the heirs moved to NZ and Italy, the will (written in 1982) doesn't make quite clear which heir inherited the internet rights, and none of the heirs really care to pay lawyers for the sake of a £500-1500 sale. How do you propose to arrange acquisition of the rights?

This isn't even very farfetched. A lot of old contracts were written without consideration of the streaming possibilities that eventually ensued. BTDT.

Absolutely.

To go a little bit more high brow.

Imagine being able to go through all the Horizon documentaries. Or the Open University Stuff.

What about being able to watch political discussions on joining the Common Market.

Quite why most of this stuff isn't viewed as a public library that we have the right to access, I don't know.

>I definitely find myself wanting to watch older episodes of things like would I lie to you or Rhod Gilbert's work experience or HIGNFY or some other show which disappeared long ago for no real reason.

You can watch selected re-runs from an archive of older content on Dave[1].

>If the BBC can solve that they have my business and I'm sure a lot of overseas business too

I am not sure what you mean by they have my business ─ BBC is not based on a subscription model. It is funded by a licence fee, which is more or less mandatory, unless you can prove otherwise e.g. you don't watch live broadcast etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_(TV_channel)

>If the BBC can solve that they have my business and I'm sure a lot of overseas business too

I meant that there's currently a market gap for a streaming service with a massive (persistent being key) catalogue of data. Netflix and others have a hodgepodge of TV/movies available, which come and go. I was suggesting that the beeb keep the service as it is in the UK, add the archive content, then release a subscription service overseas with access to the full range of shows. Having that amount of money coming into the UK would do nothing but good IMO.

I've seen some replies from others as to OFCOM regulations so it seems this is just a pipe dream at the moment.

> unless you can prove otherwise

Important clarification, the onus is on the TV licensing agency to prove you did watch TV whilst it is being broadcast or you use iplayer. It is not for the member of public to prove they do not.

* Every Dr Who, ever.

* Hitch Hiker's Guide.

* All of Blake's 7.

And that's without trying. There's definitely a business there but the BBC just aren't chasing it.

The trouble is that there is a regulator (OFCOM) that will not allow them to do things like this, because it would prejudice commercial broadcasting rivals (apparently).

When i was young I used to record Jools Holland on VCR and make mix tapes of individual tracks that I enjoyed, it was great fun and made for relatively unique audio.

I'd love to be able to just buy the digital audio (heck, the videos, I can strip the audio out) on a track by track basis. They never made it available, so I can't vOv

I've been an avid viewer of Jools Holland since I was very young and I second this - there have been a few DVDs over the years IIRC and they're finally starting to put current performances on YouTube but having all of the past recordings available would be incredible.

I would love for them to spin out Later...with Jools Holland and some of the earlier stuff and place it on BBC Four, like they are doing with their curated TOTP catalogue. I did find a tracklist on Spotify a while ago, which had tracks from each episode; alas, it is no more.

For those who don't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later..._with_Jools_Holland

The BBC does want to do it - they are being prevented by regulation.

Yeah our local public broadcast does this and it is local market leader. https://www.audienceproject.com/blog/key-insights/new-study-...

BBC became quite unprofitable since the Savile scandal,with the change in management and direction the company became a bit lost. That's why quality of the shows dropped and they lost a lot of the money that came through them via BBC World.

That's why the BBC is already selling out their assets and removing access to british citizens that already paid for the shows in the first place.

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