Imagine if the BBC was created today. Imagine what it would be like if it was born into this world of the semantic web, linked data and always on, high bandwidth connections.

Programmes would be ondemand, programme metadata would advertise and make the programme findable and then it would live a long and happy life, forever tied to that programme with a strong, persistent identifer.

Programmes wouldn’t disappear. The information about programmes wouldn’t disappear. In the world of /programmes, the world of today, the information about programmes doesn’t disappear. So why should the information about an archive programme have disappeared?

The fact a programme was broadcast fifty years ago doesn’t in and of itself make that programme special. The archive isn’t somehow different. Yes the BBC has been, and continues to be, of enormous social and cultural importance to the United Kingdom, but how do we surface the impact it has had? How do we show how important the BBC has been in shaping British culture?

Well, we’ve got to forget this idea of “the archive”. We’ve got to weave the history of the BBC, it’s programmes and their social impact into the very heart of bbc.co.uk. Archive content has got to lose it’s status as something special, something different. It’s got to hold it’s own against the content of today.

There’s no such thing as the archive, only time.