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?
- How did the move to colour TV broadcasting affect the archive?
- 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
How does the BBC decide what to keep in the archive today?
At the moment, everything is recorded and everything is kept for a minimum of five years. But we do exercise a selection policy on that. We keep what you would expect us to keep, so all the drama is kept, all the entertainment is kept, all the very high value, expensive programmes to make. We keep our news, we keep all the current affairs. The areas where we tend to be more selective would be, for example, in a long-running quiz show, where it's really important to have examples of that, but we wouldn't necessarily keep them all for ever. Because when we're talking about keeping something here, we're saying we're going to keep it for ever and that's a big overhead to have.
