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. Programmes in German, Italian and French started on 27 September 1938, and by the end of 1942, the BBC had started broadcasts in all major European languages. On 3 January 1938 the first foreign-language service was launched-in Arabic. This address was read out five times as the BBC broadcast it live to different parts of the world.
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The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good. The Director General, Sir John Reith, said in the opening programme:ĭon'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.
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First hopes for the Empire Service were low. 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". The BBC World Service began on 19 December 1932 as the BBC Empire Service, broadcasting on shortwave and aimed principally at English speakers across the British Empire. įurther information: Timeline of the BBC World Service The current controller of BBC World Service English is Mary Hockaday. There are also two separate online-only streams with one being more news-oriented, known as News Internet. īBC 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. The World Service was funded for decades by grant-in-aid through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government until 1 April 2014. The service was also guaranteed £289 million (allocated over a five-year period ending in 2020) from the UK government. The World Service is funded by the United Kingdom's television licence fee, limited advertising and the profits of BBC Studios. 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.
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In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week (via TV, radio and online). It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC.