Clips of every programme ever made by BBC are to go online

The venture will see a web page created for every episode of every programme screened on BBC radio and TV, and will form the basis of a future plan to create a massive searchable archive.

The pages will initially contain only information, clips and links, but the corporation hopes eventually to make whole programmes available.

Time warp: William Hartnell in a classic Doctor Who episode and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene in The Forsyte Saga, also from the BBC's Sixties back catalogue

This will either be via the seven-day catch-up service iPlayer, by Kangaroo - a commercial on-demand service being developed with ITV and Channel 4 - or as a new online archive service.

It is unclear whether the archive service will be free.

The new details were revealed by Jana Bennett, director of BBC Vision, at the Banff television festival in Canada.

Director general Mark Thompson had previously outlined the plan last year.

Ms Bennett said: 'Eventually we will add our programme back catalogue to produce pages for programming stretching back over nearly 80 years - featuring all the information we have on the richest TV and radio archive in the world.

'The BBC is committed to releasing the public value in that archive.

'These permanent pages will always direct the audience to the programme wherever it may be on the web - first in iPlayer, then elsewhere on bbc.co.uk, or on iTunes, or on any number of other on-demand services.

'Each page and clip will be promotional for that programme in perpetuity.

'They will offer the possibility of hits that go on and on - or are rediscovered.'

The project will be funded from the existing budget of its digital arm, recently criticised by the BBC Trust for over-spending by £36 million.

More than 90 million programmes have been watched online since the BBC launched the iPlayer at Christmas.

• The BBC Trust is to report on whether the corporation is fairly reporting on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland after long-running complaints of English bias in news. It commissioned Anthony King, professor of government at the University of Essex, to assess whether the governments of the devolved nations and the province are adequately and fairly covered.