BBC Programme Catalogue - Now out of action permanently, it seems

When a public version of the BBC Programme Catalogue was made available online a while back as a 'beta' version, it became an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of television since it then became easy to find out selected information related to the BBC's archive holdings.

The database wasn't perfect by any means; for example, there were discrepancies between the BBC's internal INFAX database and the public access version, the radio side of things in particular was incomplete and there was usually no indication of whether or not the BBC actually had a copy of a particular programme in its archive.

But it was a heck of a lot better than having nothing at all.

Then this public resource was taken offline with the expectation that one day it would become available again (indeed the rumour was that it was just moving servers), so occasionally I would check the archive catalogue page to see if it had returned.

This state of affairs lasted for many months without any hint of change, until I revisited the catalogue page today only to be confronted by the following message:

"This experimental prototype trial has now concluded. Thank you for your continued interest in the BBC Programme Catalogue. The BBC is now looking into how this data can be incorporated into its programme information pages."

Given how long it has taken for the respective BBC department to come to this conclusion, I fear that we can expect to wait years as opposed to months for such a resource to be made public again, and when/if it does appear again the available information may be even less useful than before.

Without a definitive written answer from the BBC on this issue, we can only speculate as to the reasoning behind the demise of the public archive catalogue, but rumours include preventing bored tabloid newspaper journalists from dredging up BBC 'facts' such as how many times Little Britain has been repeated on BBC Three (ie. too many).

Others have suggested that actors/writers/etc. may use the catalogue to discover whether or not they have been paid the correct repeat fees, but I suspect that this wouldn't be an issue in practice since I expect that the BBC has been scrupulously honest in its past dealings with programme producers.

And of course there could be a bandwidth issue with public catalogue access, although the internet bandwidth issue in relation to the the iPlayer is probably a far more pressing concern at present.

It's a pity that such a potentially useful resource has been withdrawn, and we can only hope that it will return one day in a form that will remain useful to anyone interested in accessing programme catalogue information as opposed to just selected facts perhaps reappearing in a potentially 'dumbed down' version.