EuropaWorld 12/1/2001 The World Service

To the radio audience of the British Isles, the morning of 19 December 1932 was nothing out of the ordinary. The BBC radio broadcasts were not scheduled to begin until 10:15. However, to other audiences on the opposite side of the globe, this morning represented something very different. For it was earlier that morning that the first international broadcasts from the BBC were transmitted. The Empire Service - later to become the World Service - had begun. The first transmission lasted two hours and was beamed at Australia and New Zealand. In the following fifteen hours, four further transmissions were beamed to different parts of what was then the British Empire.

The development of such an international service had been long called for from English-speaking colonies who complained that although they could pick up signals from the United States, they could pick up none from Britain. A Colonial Conference of 1927 had therefore endorsed the idea of 'Empire broadcasting' - a service that would transmit programmes with the objective of giving unbiased news around the world and projecting British life, culture and developments in science and industry. After five years of overcoming both the technical and financial difficulties of such a venture the pre-cursor to the BBC World Service was born, under the leadership of John Reith (see Extraordinary Lives). Its first great occasion came six days later when a Christmas day message was broadcast around the world by His Majesty King George V, a tradition followed by all his successors. "Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled this Christmas Day to speak to all peoples throughout the Empire...I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all, to men and women so cut off by the snows and the deserts or the seas that only voices out of the air can reach them..."

Although the British Empire has disappeared and the Empire Service has become the World Service, many of its original objectives of impartial global reporting and education remain the same. Today, the BBC World Service provides international news, analysis and information in 42 languages for more than 800 hours a week. Programmes in English are also broadcast to all parts of the world 24 hours a day.

The World Service operates under the same charter as domestic BBC services. Under its terms the Government, in close consultation with the World Service, has the final decision over which languages are broadcast, but editorial control of the programmes rests entirely with the BBC. This editorial independence has earned the BBC a reputation for high standards of journalistic integrity and impartiality, and a worldwide audience of more than 150 million.

Funding for the World Service comes from two sources: the Government, and BBC Enterprises. The British Government provides the World Service with an annual Parliamentary Grant for broadcasting activities. BBC Enterprises also provides funding from the capital generated from the sale of BBC programmes and products.

In 1999, a charitable arm of the World Service - the BBC World Service Trust - was launched to offer a range of schemes for training broadcasters and making programmes in developing countries. One of its first ventures has been the human rights project 'I have a right to...' The project aims to raise awareness of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights situations in different parts of the globe. Radio programmes are being broadcast in 13 languages to a potential audience of 125 million people , making this the BBC World Service's largest ever global education project. (More details of I have a right to..' were included in EuropaWorld 13 October 2000)