Getting the online audience to pay for the best content is one of the revenue streams the beeb expects to collect. It also expects to sell subscriptions to users as well.

Whereas BBC Radio and TV can't sell advertising, beeb can, and fully intends to. The beeb has high expectations of advertising. Advertisers may not be able to get a slot on the TV version of Top Gear or Match of the Day, but they will on the online version.

The beeb will also generate cash through shopping - selling BBC videos, CDs and other merchandise over the Web.

But the main argument is simple: subscribers and advertisers will flock to the beeb because it has the best content.

We have heard the 'content is king' argument before - when CD-ROM technology became standard on home PCs in 1994. Book publishers rushed to spend money developing CD-ROMs because they had great content. By January 1996 nearly every book publisher was proud to parade its "interactive" division.

By July they were bailing out. Content wasn't king; distribution and marketing were.

Is it possible the same thing will happen to great content on the Web: dismayed in the slagheap of dull sites, the public will give up trying to find the gems.

But the beeb is not entirely divorced from the BBC; it still retains at core the public service values which make for the Corporation's famously unbiased programmes and famously pompous attitude.

"Our aim is to make the Net the third medium after TV and radio," says Simon Sadie, beeb head of advertising. "Beeb will become as everyday an experience as watching TV listening to radio and reading magazines."