Catherine Tate, David Attenborough and Top Gear popped up on YouTube yesterday after the BBC agreed to make content available to the world’s most popular video website.

The deal is a landmark for the BBC, which hopes that the tie-up will help it to succeed in America, although it will mean that the public corporation will take advertising on a wide range of up-to-date television material for the first time.

Ashley Highfield, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, said that he expected “many millions of play-backs” as surfers try out the library of clips — some specially commissioned — being made available.

The corporation is creating three “channels” on YouTube, two of which will supply entertainment and a third news — although the news channel will be aimed solely at the international market and will not be accessible in the UK.

All will feature clips, and will link back to the BBC website where full programmes are available — or will become available. The clips are available at youtube.com/bbc.

The news service will go on air in a few weeks, but the entertainment channels started broadcasting yesterday at 11.30am. Of the two entertainment channels, one will be advertising-free, and funded by the licence fee. It will feature specially commmisioned “behind the scenes” clips, with, for example, the Doctor Who star David Tennant talking about the shooting of forthcoming episodes.

The second entertainment channel, funded by advertising, will be run by the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. It will feature clips from programmes, starting seven days after their original transmissions, with extracts from Top Gear, The Catherine Tate Show and wildlife programming available from yesterday morning.

YouTube, although only two years old, has rapidly become the destination for television on the internet. Viewers watch 100 million videos on the site every day, and anybody can supply material to appear on the site. However, only a limited amount of the content is of traditional broadcast quality.

Yesterday, the BBC advertising-free channel attracted 20,203 viewers by 5pm, while clips on the commercial channel were seen 9,836 times — far less than the millions that a BBC programme may attract on air — but the figures are likely to take off once people know that the material is available.

Taking advertising, though, is controversial, because the BBC is mired in a separate row over whether to allow commercials on bbc.com, its website aimed at overseas viewers. That requires permission from the BBC’s regulator, the BBC Trust, although the YouTube tie-up was not deemed significant enough to be approved.

Rival internet providers argue that the BBC is crowding out their efforts, while some employees are unhappy that the BBC is taking advertising at all.

However, David Moody, director of stategy at BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the corporation, defended the use of adverts. “The BBC has for a long time taken advertising in its magazines, or on the Top Gear website.”

Even for the Google-owned YouTube, the partnership is important. It is trying to persuade American television groups to work with it, amid allegations that YouTube cannot control video piracy by its members.

YouTube users will be able to comment on all the clips, rate them, recommend them to friends and post their own video responses — although such uncensored material may make for uncomfortable reading for the BBC.

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