Aristotle argued that drama must have three acts. But now television classics will be distilled to only three minutes as shows undergo ruthless editing for the YouTube generation.

Character and plot development could become the screenwriter’s dying arts as broadcasters slice up programmes for teenagers absorbed by websites offering TV’s greatest clips.

The <a href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1750004.ece>7-Minute Sopranos</a>, a condensed version of 77 hours of the hit mob series posted by a fan on YouTube in March, has sparked a television revolution.

Sony Pictures has crunched hour-long episodes of Starsky and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels into three-and-a-half to five-minute internet “minisodes”, including screen credits.

Mercilessly shorn of extraneous dialogue, the “minisodes” move at bewildering pace through the briefest of plot set-ups, chase scenes and fisticuffs before a breathless resolution.

British viewers will have a chance to place classic BBC programmes through the “crusher” when the corporation’s Creative Archive becomes available online. Classic comedy, dramas and documentaries will be available for licence fee-payers to “reedit”, add their own clips or background music and forward to their friends.

The BBC hopes that viewers will produce their own “artistic creations” from the source material — although BBC clips must not be used for “derogatory” or “commercial” purposes. Twenty thousand viewers are to act as guinea-pigs before the launch this year.

Ashley Highfield, BBC director of future media, said: “It will test what old programmes people really want to see, from Man Alive to The Liver Birds, and how they want to see them — full length or clip compilations.”

But screenwriters are shuddering at the prospect. Alan Plater, the acclaimed dramatist who has written popular drama series including Dalziel and Pascoe, said: “It’s like asking Beethoven how he would feel if his symphonies were cut to three minutes.”

Real drama is not the knockabout action imagined by broadcasters, according to Plater: “In Smiley’s People there is a five-minute scene where Alec Guinness is just looking for something,” he said. “The tension was terrific, much greater than a fistfight.”

Sony, which has prepared 300 minisodes from a library including cop show T. J. Hooker and sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, believes it has stumbled on television’s future. Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Pictures Television, said: “We thought this was the way to apply that logic of YouTube viewing to scripted drama that is fun and interesting.”

However, legal challenges could threaten the scheme. Viacom, parent company of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, has slapped a $1 billion (£500 million) lawsuit on Google, which owns YouTube, claiming copyright infringement over thousands of clips uploaded via the site.

YouTube maintains that it is covered by a legal provision which holds that website owners are not responsible for material uploaded without their knowledge — as long as they take it down if and when a copyright owner complains.