Timeline of the BBC World Service

A timeline of notable events relating to the BBC World Service, the world's largest international broadcaster, which began broadcasting in 1932.

1930s
  • 1933
    • No events.
  • 1934
    • No events.
  • 1935
    • No events.
  • 1936
    • No events.
  • 1937
    • No events.
  • 1938
    • 3 January – The BBC begins broadcasting its first foreign-language radio service, in Arabic.
    • 14 March Portuguese for Brasil and Spanish for Latin America begin.
    • 4 June – Portuguese for Europe programmes begins.
    • 27 September – German, French and Italian programmes begin.
    • November – The Empire Service is renamed the BBC Overseas Service.

1940s
  • 1942
    • 1 March – Gujarati and Marathi programming begins.
    • 10 March – Sinhala programming begins.
    • 1 October – Hokkien Chinese programming begins.
    • 7 October – Programming in Russian begins.
    • 2 November– French for Canada programming begins.
  • 1943
    • 29 March – German for Austria programming begins.
    • 26 May – Programming in Russian ends.
    • 29 May – Luxembourgish programming begins.
    • 4 July – Programming in Japanese begins.
  • 1947
    • No events.
  • 1948
    • 7 February – Programmes in Hokkien Chinese end.
  • 1949
    • 3 April – Urdu programming begins.
    • 30 October – Hebrew and Indonesian programming begins.

1950s
  • 1950
    • No events.
  • 1953
    • No events.
  • 1954
    • No events.
  • 1955
    • 3 April – French for South-East Asia programming ends.
  • 1956
    • No events.
  • 1959
    • The World Service launches its first sports programme. Called Saturday Special the programme runs for one hour in the summer of 1959.

1960s
  • 1961
    • 4 March – Swedish programming ends.
  • 1962
    • 3 June – Programming in Thai resumes.
  • 1963
    • No events.
  • 1964
    • No events.
  • 1966
    • The World Service’s reach in Africa is expanded with the opening of the Ascension Island relay.
    • 4 July Outlook is broadcast for the first time.
  • 1968
    • 28 October – Hebrew programming ends.
  • 1969
    • 7 June – BBC Nepali Iaunches as a weekly programme..

1970s
  • 1970
  • 1971
    • No events.
  • 1972
    • No events.
  • 1973
    • No events.
  • 1974
    • No events.
  • 1975
    • No events.
  • 1977
    • No events.
  • 1978
    • No events.
  • 1979
    • Sportsworld launches.

1980s
  • 1981
    • 15 August – Pashto programming begins.
    • 31 December – Programming in Italian and Maltese ends.
  • 1982
    • September – The BBC World Service becomes available to UK listeners for the first time, albeit only in south east England.
  • 1983
    • No events.
  • 1984
    • No events.
  • 1985
    • August – For the first time in its history the World service is taken off air due to strike action in protest at the British government's decision to ban a documentary featuring an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin.
  • 1986
    • No events.
  • 1989
    • 1 April – The BBC launches BBC TV Europe, a subscription-based pan-European television station. [5]

1990s
  • 1990
    • 11 March – Programming in Sinhala resumes.
  • 1991
    • 16 January – Upon the outbreak of the Gulf War, the BBC begins a continuous news service which is broadcast in the UK on BBC Radio 4 FM frequencies and around the world on the World Service.
    • 2 March – Radio 4 News FM closes and programming on the World Service returns to its usual output.
    • 31 March – Japanese programming ends after 48 years and Malay language programming ends after 50 years.
    • 15 April – The BBC World Service Television news service is launched. Unlike World Service radio which is funded by direct grant from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, WSTV is commercially funded and carries advertising, which means that it cannot be broadcast in the UK.
    • 29 September – Programmes in Croatian and Serbian begin.
    • 14 October – World Service TV launches its Asian service.
  • 1992
    • 1 June – BBC Ukrainian launches.[6]
    • June – The World Service launches a programming covering the Wimbledon Championships called Sportsworld at Wimbledon.
    • The BBC World Service is broadcast regularly on FM in the UK for the first time when it begins to be carried overnight on BBC Local Radio.
  • 1993
    • 20 February – The BBC Albanian service is relaunched after being off air for 26 years.
    • November – The World Service’s monthly listings magazine London Calling is ‘replaced’ with a 100-page colour magazine and is renamed BBC Worldwide. It is later renamed to BBC On Air.
  • 1994
    • 8 September – Kinyarwanda programming begins.
    • 30 November – Azerbaijani and Uzbek programming begins.
  • 1996
    • 6 January – Macedonian programming begins.
    • 9 June – A Sunday edition of Sportworld launches.
  • 1997
    • March – The first edition of Everywoman is broadcast.
    • 4 November – Debut of the BBC World Service soap Westway.
    • 31 December – The Finnish service ends after 57 years.[7]
  • 1999
    • BBC 648, which provided French and German language content for northern Europe from the Orfordness transmitting station, ends with the closure of the BBC's German service.[8] – the French for Europe service had closed in 1995.[9] Consequently, all programming from this transmitter is in English only.

2000s
  • 2000
    • No events.
  • 2001
    • Technology programme Go Digital launches.
  • 2002
    • No events.
  • 2003
    • No events.
  • 2005
    • 5 October – It is announced that broadcasts in a number of European languages will end by March 2006, to finance the launch in 2007 of TV news services in Arabic and Persian.[11]
    • 10 October – The BBC’s Latin American service is renamed BBC Mundo.
    • October – The BBC World Service soap opera Westway comes to an end after eight years on air.
    • 16 December – Kazakh programming ends.
    • 23 December – Polish programming ends after 66 years and Slovene programming ends after 64 years.
    • 30 December – Bulgarian programming ends after 65 years.
    • 31 December – Hungarian and Greek programming end, both after 66 years and Slovak programmes ends after 64 years.
  • 2006
    • 13 January – Thai programming ends for a second time.
    • 31 January – Croatian programming ends.
    • 28 February – Czech programming ends.
    • April – The final edition of Everywoman is broadcast.[12]. Archived episodes of the programme have since been made available on the BBC website.
    • October – The first edition of World Have Your Say is broadcast.
  • 2007
    • No events.
  • 2008
    • 18 February – The World Service ends analogue short wave broadcasting in Europe. [13]
    • 6 April – Discussion programme The Forum debuts.
    • 1 August – Romanian broadcasts end after 69 years.[14]
  • 2009
    • No events.

2010s
  • 2010
    • September – The BBC announces that Sportsworld at Wimbledon is to be axed as a cost-cutting measure. [15]
  • 2011
    • January – The closure of the Albanian, Macedonian, Portuguese for Africa, Serbian[16] and English for the Caribbean services is announced. All of these services close over the next three months. 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.
    • 27 March – These budget cuts also result in the switching off of the Orfordness transmitting station in Suffolk, which had been transmitting the BBC World Service on 648 kHz MW to much of northern Europe since 1982.
    • 29 March – Technology programme Go Digital is renamed Click.
    • Also in 2011, the Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Azeri, and Spanish for Cuba services ceased radio broadcasting, and the Hindi, Indonesian, Kyrgyz, Nepali, Swahili, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi services ceased shortwave transmissions.
  • 2013
    • 1 April – World Briefing, the World Service’s standard 30-minute news bulletin, is cancelled and replaced by The Newsroom.
  • 2014
    • 1 April – The World Service stops being funded by the UK Government grant [18] and is now funded by the television licence fee and the profits of BBC Worldwide Ltd.[19] although the Government is providing limited funding until 2020.[20]
    • 10 July – Thai programming re-commences, but only on social media.[21]
  • 2015
    • No events.
  • 2016
    • November – The BBC announces the largest expansion of foreign language programming since the 1940s.[22]
  • 2017
    • 21 August – The first of the new language services start broadcasting when transmissions in Nigerian Pidgin begin.
    • 18 September – Programming in Afaan Oromoo and Tigrinya begin.
    • 26 September – Korean programming begins.
    • 2 October –
      • After 73 years off air, Gujarati programming resumes and after 59 years off air, Marathi programming resumes.
      • Programming in Punjabi and Telugu begin.
  • 2019
    • No events.

References
  1. "Historic moments from the 1930s". BBC World Service. Retrieved 16 July 2012.
  2. "The 1960s". BBC World Service. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  3. Kim Andrew Elliott, 13 February 2011.
  4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour/institutional/aboutus.shtml
  5. Transponder News TeleSat News, 21 July 1996
  6. (in Ukrainian) Бі-Бі-Сі – зрозуміти світ, BBC Ukrainian
  7. ""BBC World Service Europe"". Archived from the original on 23 January 1998. Retrieved 2013-04-17.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link). BBC. 23 January 1998. Retrieved 17 April 2013. "Unfortunately, the Finnish Service was closed on the 31st December 1997."
  8. BBC's German Service goes off air, BBC News, 27 March 1999.
  9. 75 years BBC World Service – A History.
  10. Glenn Hauser (13 November 2004). "BBC 'On Air' Magazine is Suddenly Axed". Hard Core. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
  11. "BBC East Europe voices silenced". BBC News. 21 December 2005. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
  12. Michael Church: The needless destruction of a cultural treasure The Independent, 14 October 2005
  13. BBC World Service. "Shortwave changes for Europe February 2008" http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/help/2008/02/080208_sw_changes_euro.shtml
  14. "BBC shuts down Romanian service". bbc.co.uk. BBC. 25 June 2008. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  15. "World Service cuts". London.
  16. "A fond farewell to BBC Serbian". BBC News. 26 February 2011.
  17. "BBC – New BBC Radio Breakfast show aimed at African audiences – Media Centre". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  18. "About Us: BBC World Service". British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. 22 October 2010. Retrieved 9 January 2011.
  19. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 April 2015. Retrieved 7 April 2015.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  20. Conlan, Tara (23 November 2015). "BBC World Service to receive £289m from government" – via The Guardian.
  21. "BBC launches first social media-only news service – for Thailand". Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  22. "BBC World Service announces biggest expansion 'since the 1940s'", The BBC,
  23. BBC starts Igbo and Yoruba services in Nigeria
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