The BBC is planning to start selling programmes over the internet “soon after transmisson”.
Mark Thompson, the corporation’s Director-General, denied that the plan was a “second licence fee by stealth” but said that it would be an important new source of revenue.
In a Royal Television Society lecture, he said the new “download-to-own” service would allow people to purchase BBC content after it was no longer available on iPlayer, which allows viewers to watch programmes for seven days after transmission.
Mr Thompson said the plan, called Project Barcelona, would be submitted to the BBC Trust for approval later this year.
He said programmes would be available for “a relatively modest charge” and that the service was a way of making available the large proportion of BBC programmes “never seen or heard of again” after the seven-day iPlayer window.
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“This is not a second licence fee by stealth or any reduction in the current public service offering from the BBC — it’s the exact analogy of going into a high street shop to buy a DVD or, before that, a VHS cassette.”