Spending on bbc.co.uk, excluding BBC Worldwide's beeb.com, increased from £66.7m to £69.2m last year.

The cost of providing interactive TV rose from £15.3m to £17.1m. The BBC also spent £8.1m on developing the Digital Curriculum, the online educational service due to launch next year.

BBC Online had an average of 22.8m unique users a month last year in the UK. The figure for users worldwide was almost double the UK figure at 48.1m.

About 3.5m digital satellite viewers use the BBC's interactive TV service every month.

The corporation's governors said online expenditure increased last year because of the cost of covering events such as the Athens Olympics and the Euro 2004 football championship.

Following criticism in the Graf report, the BBC has closed websites that were deemed not distinctive enough or whose public service value did not outweigh their negative affect on commercial rivals.

The governors said "successful" trials of software designed to open up the BBC schedules and archives would continue throughout 2005/6.

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