I spent some time this afternoon in an edit suite in Belfast Broadcasting House.

Some of what I watched, all of it in fact, was pretty powerful stuff. Footage of British soldiers on the streets, saluting the coffin at a republican funeral. A Panorama filmed in a local hall with an audience of political moderates, ordinary well to do people, vehemently giving what for to the English presenter for his misrepresentation of their situation. The young Viscount MP from Fermanagh, who lived in a huge country estate, the moderniser, telling us of his family’s connections to the incumbents.

The footage itself was beautiful. Transferred from 16mm film, it had a wonderful quality to it. It was grainy, but the colour had a grading that made it look like a Hollywood movie. No doubt there will be many more of those with similar scenes. But this was real.

Twenty years later the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone was Bobby Sands, the hunger striker. But what happened to the Establishment? What happened to each of the people who wanted peace and fairness for all, when things started to really get out of hand? At what point did things turn between the Army and those who originally welcomed them?

The answers to all these questions and many, many more are tied up in the BBC’s archive. A million hours of social history, most of it only seen once when it was recorded.

An edit suite is an incredibly creative environment. It encourages you to ask questions. To wonder what happened to someone in the crowd. It compels you to tell stories. But the realities of television and the commissioning process means most of those stories are never told.

But the web allows us to tell those stories. What we must concentrate on is building the tools that allow traditional programme makers to sit in an edit suite, be inspired, assemble their content and tell their story on the web. For that way, the stories get told.

Thank you to Frank, the editor I sat with this afternoon. These are his ideas and inspiration.