There are very good reasons why the BBC can't just load iPlayer with archive content

There are very good reasons why the BBC can't just load iPlayer with archive content

This would also likely explain why BBC America is loaded up with modern American content (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation) rather than classic comedies from the BBC archives.

"There was another reason for all these rules: both government and the various entertainment unions wanted it to be as hard as possible for the BBC to reshow and reuse old programmes. Repeats, in an era of three television channels, literally meant putting members out of work, so making showing a repeat almost as expensive as making a new programme was considered a wise move across both the industry and the political spectrum. (Later, most contracts had a clause allowing for a single repeat of the material without payment, as long as it was made within two years of the programme's original transmission. The result, predictably, was tabloid anger about the TV schedules most summers during the late 1970s.)

"How does all this work in practice? Let's take an example. Dad's Army was a BBC series, and the corporation owns the finished programmes of its 80 episodes - even, in theory, of the three that are not known to exist. Yet the programme concept belongs to its writer/creators, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, as do the scripts, even though Croft was a BBC producer: that means copyright payments are due whenever the programmes are exploited in any way by the BBC. In addition, several cast members and/or their estates will be due payments - often a percentage of their original performance fee - when the programme is shown. So will some crew who were not BBC staff.

"This is why, when older programmes are reshown on BBC television, they do not always go onto iPlayer in the way new programmes do. This is because this additional use, and any remuneration for it, was not covered by contracts made at the time of the programme's production, for the obvious reason that no one had yet invented iPlayer.

"And so, putting such programmes online, even when they've been repeated, requires new negotiations. Dad's Army itself was notably absent from iPlayer for several years, even when repeated on BBC Two: presumably someone was either refusing permission or holding out for more than the BBC could offer."