BBC World Service

The BBC World Service began in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service, broadcasting on shortwave[12] and aimed principally at English-speakers across the British Empire. In his first Christmas Message (1932), King George V characterised the service as intended for "men and women, so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them".[13] First hopes for the Empire Service were low. The Director General, Sir John Reith said in the opening programme:

Don't expect too much in the early days; for some time we shall transmit comparatively simple programmes, to give the best chance of intelligible reception and provide evidence as to the type of material most suitable for the service in each zone. The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good.[13][14]

This address was read out five times as the BBC broadcast it live to different parts of the world.

On 3 January 1938 the first foreign-language service was launched—in Arabic. Programmes in German started on 29 March 1938, and by the end of 1942, the BBC had started broadcasts in all major European languages. As a result, the Empire Service was renamed the BBC Overseas Service in November 1939, supplemented by the addition of a dedicated BBC European Service from 1941. Funding for these services—known administratively as the External Services of the BBC—came not from the domestic licence-fee but from government grant-in-aid (from the Foreign Office budget).

Bush House in London was home to the World Service between 1941 and 2012.

The External Services broadcast propaganda during the Second World War of 1939-1945. Its French service Radio Londres also sent coded messages to the French Resistance. George Orwell broadcast many news bulletins on the Eastern Service during World War II.[15][16][17]

By the end of the 1940s the number of broadcast languages had expanded and reception had improved, following the opening of a relay in modern-day Malaysia and of the Limassol relay in Cyprus in 1957. On 1 May 1965 the service took its current name of BBC World Service.[18] It expanded its reach with the opening of the Ascension Island relay in 1966, serving African audiences with a stronger signal and better reception, and with the later relay on the Island of Masirah in Oman.

In August 1985 the service went off-air for the first time when workers went on strike in protest at the British government's decision to ban a documentary featuring an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin.

Subsequently, financial pressures decreased the number and the types of services offered by the BBC. Audiences in countries with wide access to Internet services have less need for terrestrial radio. Broadcasts in German ended in March 1999, after research showed that the majority of German listeners tuned into the English-language service. Broadcasts in Dutch, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Malay stopped for similar reasons.

On 25 October 2005, the BBC announced that broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai would end by March 2006, to finance the launch in 2007 of television news-services in Arabic and Persian.[19] Additionally, Romanian broadcasts ceased on 1 August 2008.[20]

In 2011, a BBC Kyrgyz service newsreader and producer Arslan Koichiev resigned from his BBC post after revelations and claims of involvement in the Kyrgyzstan revolution of April 2010. He had been based in London, but often traveled to Kyrgyzstan and used BBC resources to agitate against President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, appearing on a Kyrgyz radio station under a pseudonym with a disguised voice. One of the leaders of the revolution, Aliyasbek Alymkulov, named the producer as his mentor and claimed that they had discussed preparations for the revolution.[21] According to independent news agency Fergana News "Mr Alymkulov claimed that Koichiev arranged secret meetings "through the BBC" and organised the march at the presidential palace on 7 April 2010" [22]

In January 2011. the closure of the Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa, Serbian, and English for the Caribbean services was announced.[23] This reflected the financial situation the Corporation faced following transfer of responsibility for the Service from the Foreign Office, so that it would in future have been funded from within licence-fee income. The Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Azerbaijani, and Spanish for Cuba services ceased radio broadcasting, and the Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi services ceased shortwave transmissions. The British government announced that the three Balkan countries had wide access to international information, and so broadcasts in the local languages had become unnecessary. As part of the 16% budget cut, 650 jobs were eliminated.[24][25]

The BBC World Service is located in Broadcasting House, London.

The Service broadcasts from Broadcasting House in London, which is also headquarters of the Corporation. It is located in the newer parts of the building, which contains radio and television studios for use by the various language services. The building also contains an integrated newsroom used by the international World Service, the international television channel BBC World News, the domestic television and radio BBC News bulletins, the BBC News Channel and BBC Online.

At its launch, the Service was located along with most radio output in Broadcasting House. However, following the explosion of a parachute mine nearby on 8 December 1940, it relocated to premises away from the likely target of Broadcasting House.[26] The Overseas service relocated to Oxford Street while the European service moved temporarily to the emergency broadcasting facilities at Maida Vale Studios.[26] The European services moved permanently into Bush House towards the end of 1940, completing the move in 1941, with the Overseas services joining them in 1958.[27] Bush House subsequently became the home of the BBC World Service and the building itself has gained a global reputation with the audience of the service.[27][28] However, the building was vacated in 2012 as a result of the Broadcasting House changes[27] and the end of the building's lease that year;[29] the first service to move was the Burmese Service on 11 March 2012[30] and the final broadcast from Bush House was a news bulletin broadcast at 11.00GMT on 12 July 2012.[29][31][32][33]

The BBC World Service encompasses an English 24-hour global radio network and separate services in 27 other languages. News and information is available in these languages on the BBC website, with many having RSS feeds and specific versions for use on mobile devices, and some also offer email notification of stories. In addition to the English service, 18 of the language services broadcast a radio service using the short wave, AM or FM bands. These are also available to listen live or can be listened to later (usually for seven days) over the Internet and, in the case of seven language services, can be downloaded as podcasts. News is also available from the BBC News 'app', which is available from both iTunes and the Google Play Store.[34] In recent years, video content has also been used by the World Service: 16 language services show video reports on the website, and the Arabic and Persian services have their own television channels. TV is also used to broadcast the radio service, with local cable and satellite operators providing the English network (and occasionally some local language services) free to air. The English service is also available on digital radio in the UK and Europe.[35][36]

Traditionally, the Service relied on shortwave broadcasts, because of their ability to overcome barriers of censorship, distance, and spectrum scarcity. The BBC has maintained a worldwide network of shortwave relay stations since the 1940s, mainly in former British colonies. These cross-border broadcasts have also been used in special circumstances for emergency messages to British subjects abroad, such as the advice to evacuate Jordan during the Black September incidents of September 1970. These facilities were privatised in 1997 as Merlin Communications, and later acquired and operated as part of a wider network for multiple broadcasters by VT Communications (now part of Babcock International Group). It is also common for BBC programmes to air on Voice of America or ORF transmitters, while their programming is relayed by a station located inside the UK. However, since the 1980s, satellite distribution has made it possible for local stations to relay BBC programmes.

The World Service aims 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",[37] while retaining a "balanced British view" of international developments.[38] Like the rest of the BBC, the World Service is a Crown corporation of the UK Government. For the financial year 2018-19, it received £327 million.[39] In addition to broadcasting, the Service also devotes resources to the BBC Learning English programme.[40]

This table lists the various language services operated by the BBC World Service with start and closure dates, where known/applicable.[35][41][42]

Steve Titherington - BBC World Questions broadcasting from Budapest

The World Service in English mainly broadcasts news and analysis. The mainstays of the current schedule are Newsday, World Update, Newshour and The Newsroom. There are daily science programmes: Health Check, the technology programme Click and Science in Action. At weekends, some of the schedule is taken up by Sportsworld, which often includes live commentary of Premier League football matches. Other weekend sport shows include The Sports Hour and Stumped, a cricket programme co-produced with All India Radio and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. On Sundays the international, interdisciplinary discussion programme The Forum is broadcast. Outlook is a human interest programme presented by Matthew Bannister and Jo Fidgen, which was first broadcast in July 1966 and presented for more than thirty years by John Tidmarsh. Trending describes itself as "explaining the stories the world is sharing..." Regular music programmes were reintroduced with the autumn schedule in 2015. Many programmes, particularly speech-based ones, are also available as podcasts.

Previous broadcasts included popular music programmes presented by John Peel and classical music programmes presented by Edward Greenfield. There have also been religious programmes, of mostly Anglican celebration and often from the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, weekly drama, English-language lessons, and comedy including Just A Minute. Other notable previous programmes include Letter from America by Alistair Cooke, which was broadcast for over fifty years; Off the Shelf with its daily reading from a novel, biography or history book; A Jolly Good Show, a music request programme presented by Dave Lee Travis; Waveguide, a radio reception guide; and The Merchant Navy Programme, a show for seafarers presented by Malcolm Billings.

Since the late 1990s, the station has focused more on news, with bulletins added every half-hour following the outbreak of the Iraq War.

The World Service uses several tunes and sounds to represent the station. A previous signature tune of the station was a five note motif, composed by David Arnold and which comprises a variety of voices declaim "This is the BBC in..." before going on to name various cities (e.g. Kampala, Milan, Delhi, Johannesburg), followed by the station's slogan and the Greenwich Time Signal.[70][71] This was heard throughout the network with a few variations – in the UK the full service name was spoken, whereas just the name of the BBC was used outside the UK. The phrase "This is London" was used previously in place of a station slogan.

The tune "Lillibullero" was another well known signature tune of the network following its broadcast previously as part of the top-of-the-hour sequence.[71] This piece of music is no longer heard before news bulletins.[70] The use of the tune gained minor controversy because of its background as a Protestant marching song in Northern Ireland.[70][71]

In addition to these tunes, the BBC World Service also uses several interval signals. The English service uses a recording of Bow Bells, made in 1926 and used a symbol of hope during the Second World War, only replaced for a brief time during the 1970s with the tune to the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons". The morse code of the letter "V" has also been used as a signal and was introduced in January 1941 and had several variations including timpani, the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (which coincide with the letter "V"), and electronic tones which until recently remained in use for some Western European services. In other languages, the interval signal is three notes, pitched B–B-C. However, these symbols have been used less frequently.

The network operates using GMT, regardless of the time zone and time of year, and is announced on the hour on the English service as "13 hours Greenwich Mean Time" (1300 GMT) or "Midnight Greenwich Mean Time" (0000 GMT). The BBC World Service traditionally broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben in London at the start of a new year.

The BBC World Service previously published magazines and programme guides:

• London Calling: listings
• BBC Worldwide: included features of interest to an international audience (included London Calling as an insert)
• BBC on Air: mainly listings
• BBC Focus on Africa: current affairs

• BBC World News
• BBC World Service Television
• BBC Media Action
• 1988–94 British broadcasting voice restrictions

Wikimedia Commons has media related to BBC World Service.

• BBC World Service Radio at BBC Online
  • BBC World Service Radio frequencies
  • BBC World Service Radio in different languages
• BBC News Language Selection at BBC Online