Is half a BBC better than none?

Is half a BBC better than none?
: David Brake cautions that we all may have gotten a bit too excited about the BBC’s announcement that it would put its programming on the Internet:

In fact, while BBC News’ summary suggests Dyke said the Creative Archive would contain “all the corporation’s programme archives”, the speech actually promised to allow “parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download” (emphasis mine). Nothing there about all of the BBC’s archives. And the example he uses – kids downloading, “real moving pictures which would turn their project into an exciting multi-media presentation” make it sound like a collection of digital clip-art.

1 response to “Is half a BBC better than none?”

  1. Harry Avatar

    The BBC brings in a lot of revenue from selling the foreign rights to its programmes so obviously they would need to protect that by limiting access to those in the UK.
    And after all we paid for it!
    Also they have also handed over second broadcast rights to some digital channels (like UK Gold) and so that would restrict what material could be avaliable.
    But even within these more narrow terms it is still very good news.