BBC and ITV’s new streaming service, BritBox, will launch in the autumn priced £5.99 a month but will go live without any exclusive new programmes and faces little chance of eating into Netflix’s market dominance.

BritBox is being pitched as a cheaper additional streaming service for consumers who already subscribe to Netflix, with a focus on providing thousands of hours of archive material and classic boxsets from the two broadcasters.

Headline launch programmes on the service are the ITV reality show Love Island, the BBC sitcom Famalam and the dramas Cleaning Up and Gentleman Jack. There will also be archive drama and comedy including Gavin & Stacey, Victoria, Happy Valley, Broadchurch, Les Miserables, The Office and Benidorm.

Although there will be a “broad range” of programmes made exclusively for BritBox, the service will have a limited budget and no standalone shows have yet been commissioned.

The plan for the future is to create a conveyor belt of new content going from the BBC and ITV to BritBox. Programmes will first be shown on traditional live television channels, then made available for free on existing catch-up services, then transferred across to BritBox.

BBC content will be available on iPlayer for up to a year before making the jump to Britbox, while ITV material will move behind a paywall after 30 days on ITV Hub. Not all programmes will transfer across, as BritBox will have to agree licensing deals with independent producers.

Despite being a joint venture, BritBox will essentially be controlled by ITV, whose existing management team will oversee the service and own 90% of the enterprise. The BBC is not investing in the service but has been given a 10% stake and will treat it as its priority commercial streaming service, pushing most of its in-house programming towards BritBox in addition to lending its brand and providing marketing support.

Other broadcasters could ultimately get involved. Channel 4 said it continued to be in “constructive discussions” about adding its archive material to BritBox at a later date, while Channel 5 could also join.

The collaboration between the BBC and ITV has been long-awaited. In 2008, all of the UK’s major broadcasters planned to pool their content and create a pioneering project under the name Project Kangaroo, which would have been one of the most advanced streaming services in the world.

However, the competition commission blocked the plan, arguing it could make the existing broadcasters too dominant in the online video market. The decision is seen within the British television industry as the original sin that allowed US companies such as Netflix to dominate the streaming market, leaving UK companies playing catch-up.

Netflix’s position is largely regarded as unassailable by traditional broadcasters, with the BBC iPlayer’s market share declining from 40% to 15% over the last five years. The US company has more than 10 million UK customers.

ITV, whose share price has fallen in recent months as it dealt with the fallout from the cancellation of The Jeremy Kyle Show following the death of a guest, has said it intends to invest about £65m in BritBox during its first two years. Netflix’s global content budget alone is about $15bn a year, fuelled by substantial borrowing, although it recently missed subscriber growth targets.