A Broadband Bank

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Anyone who missed the first season of the BBC's hit comedy The Office can wait for a rerun, buy the DVD for $22 or burn a copy illegally. But the BBC plans to offer another choice: log on at www.bbc.co.uk, pick the episode you fancy and, at least if you're a British citizen, watch it free on your PC. That tantalizing prospect was raised by an announcement at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August by BBC director general Greg Dyke. The Beeb is planning a "digital creative" archive that will make what he calls "the best television library in the world" available online. It's a service, Dyke says, that the BBC's charter compels it to provide free to all British citizens. But BBC lovers abroad may have to reach for their credit card, and therein lies a golden opportunity.

The archive will allow BBC-owned content — from news to sport to drama — to be downloaded and used for noncommercial purposes. Initially, the Beeb envisages educational uses like schoolchildren downloading documentary footage for their multimedia homework projects. However, though the BBC has offered no launch date or technical details, the creative archive can also be seen as a play by the company to position itself as a major force in global broadband TV.

Media giants and telecom companies are still trying to figure out how to exploit the new markets offered by the shift to broadband and video-on-demand. TiVo and systems like it, being rolled out by cable and satellite-TV providers, allow viewers to download TV shows and movies and watch them when they want, skipping ads if they choose. U.S. networks haven't figured out viable revenue models for that. The BBC has no such roadblock, since its shows are financed by the citizenry and broadcast in Britain commercial-free. That means it can get on with digitizing its content and figure out how to profit later.

Implementing the service should be a snap. Server space just gets cheaper. And the number of broadband homes in the U.S. and Europe will quadruple to 122 million by 2007, according to media-research firm Screen Digest. As for how to cash in, the BBC charter says nothing about having to give away the goods overseas. So while Web viewers in Britain will be able to watch gratis, BBC viewers abroad may have to pay up — assuming the BBC can foil large-scale file swapping. "The government's sure to force them to do this," says Peter White of Rethink Research, a Britain-based digital-media-research company. White thinks a global broadband audience could eventually eliminate the BBC's need for British public funding. The Beeb, he says, "is only just beginning to realize how commercially valuable it is."