Archives
An archive is a collection of information and media much like a library or interactive-storage facility. It is a necessity for an on-demand media service to maintain archives so that users can watch content that has already been aired on standard-broadcast television. However, these archives can vary from a few weeks to months to years, depending on the curator and the type of content.
For example, the BBC iPlayer's shows are in general available for up to seven days after their original broadcast. This so-called "seven-day catch-up" model seems to become an industry standard for internet-television services in many countries around the world. However, some shows may only be available for shorter periods. Others, such as the BBC's Panorama, may be available for an extended period because of the shows documentary nature or its popularity.
In contrast, 4oD channel 4's on-demand service offers many of its television shows that were originally aired years ago. An example of this is the comedy The IT Crowd where users can view the full series on the internet player. The same is true for other hit channel 4 comedies such as The Inbetweeners and Black Books.
The benefit of lLarge archives, is that they bring in far more users who, in turn, watch more media, leading to a wider audience base and more advertising revenue. Large archives will also mean the user will spend more time on that website rather than a competitors, leading to starvation of demand for the competitors.
Having an extensive archive, however, can bring problems along with benefits. Large archives are expensive to maintain, server farms and mass storage is needed along with ample bandwidth to transmit it all. Vast archives can be hard to catalogue and sort so that it is accessible to users.
Read more about this topic: Internet Television