Sales? (Score 1)

This probably isn't an "effort to boost ... sales". The BBC exists for public service, and has been experimenting with various ways of making its current and archive material available for free to the public. The main thing which prevents this is concerns about the impact on commercial producers of similar content, and whether that would be damaging. Just recently the BBC Trust http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ have approved plans to make more stuff available. (I'd search for a link to the news story but it's hard to search for "BBC" on the BBC!)

The BBC's public purposes are http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/framework/purpose_re mits.html

• sustaining citizenship and civil society
• promoting education and learning
• stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
• representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
• bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
• in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

DVD sales exist to support these goals.