The BBC Television Archive
Hear from the people behind the scenes at the BBC Archive
The BBC Television Archive
The BBC Television Archive
An interview with Adam Lee, BBC archive expert
We haven't got copies of everything we've broadcast in the archive. Find out why we've got the items we've got and how the BBC tries to keep them safe in this interview with Adam Lee, BBC Television Archive expert.
- Click on a heading below to jump to that section of the film
- What's in the BBC Archive?
- Why aren't there many recordings from the early days of television?
- Once the technology was available, why weren't all programmes recorded?
- When did the BBC start to record programmes regularly?
- When did the BBC start to ensure that important recordings were not destroyed?
- How does the BBC decide what to keep in the archive today?
- Does the BBC offer recordings it's not keeping for the archive to anyone else?
- As technology evolves, what challenges have you faced in preserving the archive?
- What is the BBC doing to preserve the archive for the future?
Transcript
What's in the BBC Archive?
We've got about 4 million physical items for TV and radio. That's equivalent to 600,000 hours of TV content and about 350,000 hours of radio. So we're getting very close now to a million hours of material. We also now have a New Media archive, which is keeping a record of the content that goes out on the BBC's websites. We also have large sheet-music collections, we have commercial music collections. We have press cuttings going back 40 years as well. So it's a very large-scale operation.
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