The BBC World Service has announced plans to accelerate its transformation into digital content and increase audience influence around the world.
The move comes in furtherance of a strategy announced by the BBC earlier this year, to be a modern organization with digital leadership that is easy to use, invests in broadcast fees as best as possible and develops the content it provides to its followers.
This move is in line with changes in the needs of audiences around the world – with more people turning to digital news platforms – along with the current financial challenges around the world.
Among the services announced to be closed are BBC Arabic Radio after 84 years of its launch, in addition to broadcasting in a number of other languages, including Farsi, Chinese and Bengali.
High rates of inflation, rising prices, and the increasing cost of settling broadcasting fees forced the BBC to make difficult choices for most of its services around the world.
BBC World Service needs to save £28.5m, as part of a total £500m annual expenditure, and re-invest and move the organization towards digital.
In light of this came proposals to close about 382 jobs in the BBC.
According to the proposals, the BBC service in seven other languages will switch to digital content only, following the success of the service in other languages that already provide pure digital content and achieve good audiences.
This means that about half of the BBC’s 41 services will provide content only digitally.
The BBC World Service will continue to provide its content in all languages and in all countries from which it is currently broadcast, including new languages added during the 2016 expansion, and the service will not be closed in any language.
Some television and radio programs will be suspended under the new plans. BBC Arabic and BBC Persian radio stations will stop broadcasting.
The World Service will continue to provide its followers with news in times of turmoil, and will provide audiences in countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan with access to critical news services, through appropriate broadcast platforms.
The English-language World Service will also continue its round-the-clock radio broadcast, which will be available around the world. Provided that adjustments are made in the timings of programs and podcasts, as necessary.
The BBC World Service has already achieved record levels of growth on the digital front. The service currently reaches about 148 million people at a weekly rate.
Views for global service languages digital content have doubled (or more than doubled) – from 19 percent to 43 percent since 2018.
“The BBC’s global role has never been more important than it is now,” said Lillian Landor, director of the BBC’s Global Service.
She said that “the BBC is trusted by hundreds of millions around the world because of its professionalism in the news it provides, especially in countries where professionalism is prized,” adding, “We help people in times of crisis. We will continue to provide the best journalism to the masses, whether in English or in more than 40 languages, as well as increasing the impact and impact of our journalistic work by pushing our news stories to a broader horizon.”
She continues, “There is an urgent need to expand the digital content offered through our global service in order to improve the service and improve communication with our audience. The way audiences access media content is changing, and in the process the challenge of reaching people around the world is growing.” Quality and reliable journalism.
Suggested changes to the global service include:
- Focus on our platforms and market presence, and limit the volume of radio and TV content broadcast on partner platforms in certain countries.
- The focus is more on impact than reach, which means we need to get more audiences on our platforms. Here the audience’s connection to the BBC is closer, and on this a longer-term link can be built.
- Development of a primarily digital broadcast system, and the creation of a news-gathering content production center to deliver high-impact content for broadcasting on BBC non-English-speaking services.
- moving some productions out of London so that they are closer to the target audience – for example, moving Thai service from London to Bangkok; the Korean Service to Seoul; Bengali to Dhaka; The African Bulletin to Nairobi.
- Compilation of long content activities such as investigations and documentaries carried out by the Africa Eye (Eye of Africa) team, and the investigations and documentary unit carried out by the BBC Arabic team – in preparation for more cooperation between our platforms and services in a way that facilitates the opportunity for news stories to reach further horizons about the world, as well as the United Kingdom.
- Building a new Chinese global unit in London, telling the world the story of China from a global angle.
- Building a dynamic content hub in Africa; It provides impactful, distinctive, original and primarily digital content that is the first of its kind in the twelve African languages, along with coverage of the continent across the rest of the BBC’s services.
- Continuing the linear television broadcast in Arabic and Farsi, and investing in building radio and digital capacities in Arabic and Farsi to replace radio.
- Closure of some radio services – eg Arabic, Bengali, Farsi and some locally broadcast television programs from countries in Africa and Asia.