bbc.co.uk is launched

The innovation of the internet was championed internally by Director-General John Birt, who saw how it could transform BBC's global media role, and mobilised R&D and managerial expertise to make it happen. There were initial problems that publication of web pages did not sit within the BBC Charter, but this obstacle was overcome, and on 15 December 1997, the BBC website was officially launched.

Screenshots of bbc.co.uk as it was in 1997

Online milestones quickly followed: that Christmas Day, the Queen's Christmas Speech was shown live online for the first time. Burgeoning sites for sport, weather and children's content quickly followed, the latter transforming a generation's use of media.

By 2005, BBC's online service was reaching almost 12 million users a month. Then in December 2007, BBC iPlayer launched, growing into a market-leading service used by the vast majority of the UK population. In 2012 BBC Online delivered the first comprehensively digital Olympic Games. In May 2021, monthly reach for BBC Online was 81% of 16+ adults in the UK (43.2m), whilst average weekly reach was 61% (32.5m). BBC Online had some record traffic levels in 2020, largely driven by News and Covid spikes, and regularly reached over 100 million unique browsers a week.