Newsnight may or may not be the first news programme to go web-first with a TV report ahead of its official live broadcast. That fact is less impressive than the actual report itself - an 18-minute piece about the economic and social impact of mobiles in Kenya which really is superb.
A web-first strategy has been implemented by some of the UK's newspapers, but broadcasters have been a bit more cautious. It's not relevant for most news programmes of course because they can't publish reports about things that haven't happened yet.
But this adds one more weapon to Newsnights armoury alongside the streamed catch-up show and the video podcasts, a downloadable version of the previous week's show, which recorded one million attempted downloads during December and that's not to be sniffed at. (I was one of those too - a video iPod for Christmas. Nice.)
Anyway, Paul Mason's report on Kenya was published on the site this afternoon ahead of the live broadcast on Monday night. It's linked at the top of the Newsnight homepage, but hurry!
Mason's report is the first in Newsnight's Geekweek. Further reports on green technology, the internet in China and coverage of the Consumer Electronics Association conference in Las Vegas will also be published ahead of the programme all next week.
Newsnight editor Peter Barron said he believes this is a first for any BBC programme of its type. Barron said it unlikely that providing the reports ahead of the show would discourage people from tuning in live.
"We have a million viewers every night. Some of those will watch it every night fanatically, but some might be too tired or go to bed early. This way they can watch the reports when they want, and that's the essence of on-demand."
Barron added that he thought of the idea on the bus this morning while writing his daily editors' blog.
"We might reach a whole new audience because of it - including international viewers."
Barron said that even international users should be able to view a narrowband version of the film. Video is blocked to web users outside the UK on the BBC's sports coverage and on bbc.co.uk/news.
Newsnight's website also offers the latest show as a video podcast and as "watch again". Barron said the webfirst report "wouldn't cost an extra penny" because the technology to put large video files on the site is already in place.
The BBC's Mighty Boosh was the first non-news programme to be published online ahead of the broadcast in 2005.
