BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach.[1] It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages[2][3] to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week (via TV, radio and online).[4] In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.[5]
For the BBC television network that was previously known as BBC World News, see BBC News (international TV channel).Type
Radio broadcasting news, speech, discussions, state media
Worldwide
Broadcasting House, London
Worldwide
19 December 1932
- BBC Empire Service
- BBC Overseas Service
- External Services of the BBC
BBC World Service English maintains eight regional feeds with several programme variations, covering, respectively, East and South Africa; West and Central Africa; Europe and Middle East; the Americas and Caribbean; East Asia; South Asia; Australasia; and the United Kingdom. There are also two separate online-only streams with one being more news-oriented, known as News Internet. The service broadcasts 24 hours a day.
The World Service states that its aim is to be "the world's best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting",[6] while retaining a "balanced British view" of international developments.[7] Former director Peter Horrocks visualised the organisation as fighting an "information war" of soft power against Russian and Chinese international state media, including RT.[8][9][10] As such, the BBC has been banned in both Russia and China, the former following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.[11][12]
The director of the BBC World Service is Liliane Landor;[13] the controller of the BBC World Service in English is Jon Zilkha.
Funding
The World Service was funded for decades by grant-in-aid through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 1 April 2014.[59] Since then it has been funded by a mixture of the United Kingdom's television licence fee, limited advertising[60] profits of BBC Studios,[61] and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funding.[44]
From 2014 the service was guaranteed £289 million (allocated over a five-year period ending in 2020) from the UK government.[62] In 2016, the government announced that the licence fee funding for the World Service would be £254 million/year for the five years from 2017.[44] From 2016 to 2022 the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office contributed over £470 million to the World Service via its World 2020 Programme, about 80% of which is categorised as Overseas Development Assistance, amounting to about a quarter of the World Service budget.[46] In November 2022, the government confirmed the continuing involvement of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in funding the World Service.[44][63]
Availability
Americas
BBC World Service is available by subscription to Sirius XM's satellite radio service in the United States.[74] Its Canadian affiliate, Sirius XM Canada, does the same in Canada. More than 300 public radio stations across the US carry World Service news broadcasts—mostly during the overnight and early-morning hours—over AM and FM radio, distributed by American Public Media (APM).[75] Some public radio stations also carry the World Service in its entirety via HD Radio. The BBC and Public Radio International (PRI) co-produce the programme The World with WGBH Radio Boston, and the BBC was previously involved with The Takeaway morning news programme based at WNYC in New York City. BBC World Service programming also airs as part of CBC Radio One's CBC Radio Overnight schedule in Canada.
BBC shortwave broadcasts to this region were traditionally enhanced by the Atlantic Relay Station and the Caribbean Relay Company, a station in Antigua run jointly with Deutsche Welle. In addition, an exchange agreement with Radio Canada International gave access to their station in New Brunswick. However, "changing listening habits" led the World Service to end shortwave radio transmission directed to North America and Australasia on 1 July 2001.[76][77] A shortwave listener coalition formed to oppose the change.[78]
The BBC broadcasts to Central America and South America in several languages. It is possible to receive the Western African shortwave radio broadcasts from eastern North America, but the BBC does not guarantee reception in this area.[79] It has ended its specialist programming to the Falkland Islands but continues to provide a stream of World Service programming to the Falkland Islands Radio Service.[80]
Asia
For several decades, the World Service's largest audiences have been in Asia, the Middle East, Near East and South Asia. Transmission facilities in the UK and Cyprus were supplemented by the former BBC Eastern Relay Station in Oman and the Far Eastern Relay Station in Singapore, formerly in Malaysia. The East Asian Relay Station moved to Thailand in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed over to Chinese sovereignty. The relay station in Thailand was closed during January 2017, and in Singapore during July 2023;[81] currently, a relay station in Masirah, Oman serves the Asian region. Together, these facilities have given the BBC World Service an easily accessible signal in regions where shortwave listening has traditionally been popular. The English shortwave frequencies of 6.195 (49m band), 9.74 (31m band), 15.31/15.36 (19m band) and 17.76/17.79 (16m band) were widely known. On 25 March 2018, the long-established shortwave frequency of 9.74 MHz was changed to 9.9 MHz.
The largest audiences are in English, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, Bengali, Sinhala, Tamil, Marathi and other major languages of South Asia, where BBC broadcasters are household names. The Persian service is the de facto national broadcaster of Afghanistan, along with its Iranian audience. The World Service is available up to eighteen hours a day in English across most parts of Asia, and in Arabic for the Middle East. With the addition of relays in Afghanistan and Iraq these services are accessible in most of the Middle and Near East in the evening. In Singapore, the BBC World Service in English is essentially treated as a domestic broadcaster, easily available 24/7 through long-term agreement with MediaCorp Radio. For many years Radio Television Hong Kong broadcast BBC World Service 24/7 but as of 12 February 2021, Hong Kong has banned the BBC's World Service radio from its airwaves, following swiftly on the heels of China's decision to bar its World News television channels, seemingly in retaliation for Ofcom revoking the UK broadcasting licence of China Global Television Network. In the Philippines, DZRJ 810 AM broadcasts the BBC World Service in English from 12:00–05:00 PHT (GMT+8).
Although this region has seen the launch of the only two foreign language television channels, several other services have had their radio services closed as a result of budget cuts and redirection of resources.[82][83]
Japan and Korea have little tradition of World Service listening, although during the Second World War and in the 1970s to 1980s, shortwave listening was popular in Japan. In those two countries, the BBC World Service was only available via shortwave and the Internet. As of September 2007, a satellite transmission (subscription required) became available by Skylife (Channel 791) in South Korea. In November 2016, the BBC World Service announced it plans to start broadcasts in Korean. BBC Korean, a radio and web service, started on 25 September 2017.[84]
The BBC World Service previously published magazines and programme guides:
Assessments
British soft power
The World Service claims that its aim is to be "the world's best-known and most-respected voice in international broadcasting, thereby bringing benefit to the UK, the BBC, and to audiences around the world",[109] while retaining a "balanced British view" of international developments.[7] In 2022, the Financial Times wrote that the World Service "is considered a pillar of British soft power",[110] and a House of Lords Library report noted the widespread recognition of this soft power.[44] According to the American socialist magazine Monthly Review in 2022, former director Peter Horrocks inferred the World Service's scope to Russian state broadcaster RT as a means of extending international influence and soft power.[8][9]
In 2014, Conservative MP John Whittingdale, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, characterising the BBC's primary mission as fighting an 'Information War' (a role which some media scholars agree to[111]), saying: "We are being outgunned massively by the Russians and Chinese and that’s something I’ve raised with the BBC. It is frightening the extent to which we are losing the information war.”[10] In March 2022, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, the UK government announced additional emergency funding for the World Service to provide "independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state" and to counter "Putin’s lies and exposing his propaganda and fake news".[112]
BBC Persian Service
In the context of the Iranian Revolution, the BBC World Service's Persian-language service has been criticised for its role in promoting the Shah's regime and undermining local norms in favour of British-selected values, with the British Ambassador in Iran, Peter Ramsbotham, stating in reaction to a Service-sponsored poetry contest (in celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Archaemenid empire) that the organisation "seems to be damaging its image by acquiring a reputation for employing and supporting 'old brigade' expatriates."[113]
Furthermore, it appears that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office made a concerted effort to produce favourable coverage of Persia to BBC World Service audiences in order to maintain cordiality with the Shah's regime. For example, in December 1973, a memo from Ramsbotham details a request from the Iranian Prime Minister for the text of a broadcast about Iran by Peter Avery, lecturer in Persian Studies and Fellow at King's College, Cambridge, which he deemed 'excellent' and wanted to show the Shah. This later became the programme Iran: Oil and the Shah's Arab Neighbours which was aired globally on 1 December 1973, much to the chagrin of the Iranian people, who began airing their frustrations against the British government out on the BBC Persian Service; By 1976, Ramsbotham's successor, Sir Anthony Parsons, concluded that the Persian Service has lost its propaganda value and supported discontinuing the service: "[It] is well known that the vernacular service is financed by the FCO and is therefore firmly considered by the Iranians as an official organ of the government."[114][115][116]
In September 2022, the World Service announced the closure of its Persian and Arabic radio services as part of a cost-cutting plan, but the online and TV services would remain.[110][117]