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Thousands of hours of broadcasting history, some of which have never been transmitted, are to be made available to the public online as part of a plan to open up the BBC's entire archive free of charge to Britons.
The footage includes an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and another with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in which the former Beatle talks candidly about the impact their relationship had on the band.
Other programmes include a 1956 episode of the nature series Zoo Quest in which a young David Attenborough captures the komodo dragon on film for the first time.
The episode has never been repeated but could soon be available online as part of the ambitious project, headed by the BBC's director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield.
The BBC wants to put nearly one million hours of material on the internet for viewers to watch, listen to and download and has already begun the long process of retrieving and transferring programmes. A trial involving 20,000 users will begin next month, and the service could be available more widely in a year's time.
Other shows the BBC hopes to make available include a 1981 performance of Othello, starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Bob Hoskins as Iago.
A 1968 Woman's Hour radio programme for the 50th anniversary of British women gaining the vote features interviews with suffragettes who campaigned alongside the Pankhursts.
Other material includes a dramatic Government appeal, transmitted in May 1940, asking for volunteers to sail to Dunkirk to help rescue the 330,000 French and British troops stranded there.
The BBC is now trying to clear the material so it can put it online, although the negotiations are proving more complicated than expected. Although it owns the copyright to most shows, it does not have the right to repeat many of them. Actors, agents, composers and presenters have to be contacted and that is time-consuming. Ultimately, however, it wants to make every programme available, no matter how obscure.
The BBC also plans to make a huge amount of supporting material available, including scripts, programme notes and letters about shows. If it can secure permission to use them, they will make up a huge database of documents that viewers can search easily and quickly.
Although the archive would be free in Britain, it may carry advertising and charge overseas users to access the programmes.
The plan will have to be approved by the BBC Trust.
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