[onion2k]

If it is in the publics best interest for the BBC to own the rights then that can be arranged

Is it in the public interest?

What is the benefit to the public of the BBC spending the money necessary to reclaim the rights to their old content? I can't think of anything. The shows that have any value (eg Dr Who) have already commericialized. Everything else ... why bother? The obvious point is that it'd be nice to watch some of the old shows again, but really, out of the 97 years of content across radio and television probably 99.9999% would never be looked ay by anyone.

Just as a parallel, there's millions of hours of old content on https://archive.org/ that never gets looked at. Why would the old BBC content be any different?

[arethuza]

I'd happily pay to get access to the full BBC catalogue - in fact I'd probably find more to watch there than I do on Netflix & Amazon (which I already subscribe to).

[onion2k]

Lots of people say that. I imagine the BBC use data from things like https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/archive/ to demonstrate that most people are not viewing the archive content that is available already, so people's claims that they'd pay are not backed up by evidence.

[arethuza]

I wonder if they collect statistics of people who spot that there are some old 'Horizons' on iPlayer and then get seriously disappointed at the meagre selection available.