If content is king of the internet, Auntie BBC might be forgiven for thinking she is its queen by divine right. Look at the way online behemoths are hopping into bed with the biggest content providers, eagerly anticipating the fruits of broadband technology transforming the potential of the world wide web. AOL-Time Warner, Time Warner-EMI, Seagram- Vivendi... it's time to take your partners.
There will be more such partnerships as internet firms realise that if they fail to persuade users to tune in regularly they have no unique selling point. And amid all this, the BBC stands out as a content giant.
A survey by the promotion group British Trade International claimed the BBC was Britain's most successful export - ahead of the Beatles, Shakespeare and the royal family. So the potential for using the net as a new delivery system for the corporation's wealth of content, allowing it tap into new audiences prepared to pay to watch The Good Life on demand, to whom it can then sell things and build advertising revenues, is huge .
The stress on content could end the reign of telecom firms as wonder stocks, and put media companies on top. This is a transformation not lost on Rupert Gavin, ex-head of BT and now chief executive of BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, which is charged with earning Auntie £200 million a year by 2006.
'In the mid-Nineties, the revenue driver was the communication connection. That was where the money was, and everyone was giving away their content for free. But the communication cost is being marginalised and the differentiation is going to be content,' says Gavin.
'It is a concept of people paying in some way, be it subscription or pay-per-use or micro payment. That's where value will be added.
Only, of course, it's not as simple as that for the corporation. Its funding through the licence fee means Auntie needs to be careful about how she uses the net to make money. She can't simply build a few websites and start charging everyone for access.
But she can divide up her internet activities so that the BBC keeps to its public service commitment by offering content to all, with a separate division dreaming up e-commerce wheezes.
Three years ago, even before setting up its BBC Online portal, the corporation started experimenting with how the internet could help swell the coffers of BBC Worldwide which would use the cash to generate new programming for all. The result was beeb.com, originally set up with computer firm ICL.
This year Auntie started lavishing more attention on beeb.com, bringing in new staff to overhaul the site. It became a fully fledged e-commerce portal drawing on the strengths of some of Auntie's best programme and magazine brands - including Top of the Pops, Top Gear, Gardeners' World and Holiday .
Already one of the top 10 e-commerce sites in the UK, according to research by analysts at consultancy MMXI Europe, beeb.com's success lies in the quality of its content which draws in punters in their thousands and then offers them the chance buy BBC-licensed products ( Walking With Dinosaurs chocolate egg, anyone?) and the ability to click through to partner e-commerce sites. For this beeb.com takes a cut.
Last week, in a sign of how seriously Auntie is committed to developing its e-commerce potential, the corporation did what would recently have been unthinkable. It announced a deal with a venture-capital firm, and an American one to boot.
TH Lee Global Internet Managers is to plough £32.5m into beeb.com and its free internet service provider cousin, beeb.net. This gives the US firm a 13 per cent stake in a business now valued at £240m. This might not seem too high considering some dotcom valuations but, given the fact that beeb.com generated revenues of only about £2m last year, Gavin admits it still puts the business on a 'pretty stratospheric rating'.
He says UK venture-capital firms were interested in coming in on the deal, but Lee got the nod because of its experience in investing in content-rich internet firms.
The aim is for the two businesses to become 'nicely profitable' in between three and four years. Lee is committed for 'up to five years', and has 'not yet specified which exit strategy' it favours for eventually recouping its investment. A partial flotation is the most obvious solution, but how this would work has yet to be thrashed out.
What is clear, though, is that Lee's investment will help the BBC do more than turn beeb.com into a sort of Amazon.com for fans of Tinky Winky and Jeremy Clarkson.
The really interesting thing is how the cash will be used to help fund the distribution of BBC content over the net. The BBC has been trialling delivery of video on demand (VOD) in this way since last spring. Now it is looking at developing a separately branded site from beeb.com, from which users will be able to download films and programmes, allowing them to watch TV when and how they want, if they pay.
'We haven't yet made the decision as to whether we construct our own VOD portal. But it would almost certainly be a different portal to beeb.com, which is all about e-commerce. That said the two portals would relate to each other,' Gavin said.
However, he argues that what he describes as 'fuzzy media' is the real key to the BBC's online future. By this he means that the way the net, once broadband is rolled out, will allow for true user interaction via both video and text.
So a typical scenario would see a user clicking on a language portal, watching a programme on how to speak French and then being able to pay to download a special course. Quizzes are another obvious area to be explored in this way. Soon we could all be Mastermind .
And as for soaps, well if some of the trials now going on are successful we could be downloading all the week's episodes of EastEnders in one go on any day we choose. But only, of course, if we were the prepared to pay.
'The fact that one individual chooses the time and methodology to access our content is not something the great mass of licence fee payers should be forced to subsidise,' Gavin said. And the beauty is that such highly rated content, not to mention e-commerce applications, has a global reach. Think of all those dollars.
But it is clear in all of this that delineation is of fundamental importance. If UK online users are not aware which part of BBC cyberspace they are in - the commercial or the public service arenas - the damage to the corporation's brand will be tremendous. Managing this sensitively will be Auntie's key to success.
She knows, however, that she can't hide from her online commitments, chiefly because they offer it one of the strongest revenue streams for the future - money to help pay for its public-service programmes.
As Gavin said: 'The BBC is a content company. It's not for us to lecture consumers on how they should want to consume their media.'
