BBC Global News Maintains Record 233m Audience

For the second year in succession, the BBC’s combined international news services attracted a global weekly audience of over 233 million during 2007/8, according to independent surveys.

The global audience figure for the combined services of BBC World Service radio, BBC World News television and the BBC’s international online news service bbcnews.com is up 23 million from 211 million two years ago with many people using more than one service.

BBC World News - the commercially funded international English language news and information television channel – now has estimated record audiences of 78 million viewers a week; up two million on 2006/7.

BBC World Service’s weekly radio audience estimate is 182 million listeners a week across its 33 language services; down a million on last year’s record 183 million total. However its English language service attracted 40 million weekly listeners; up two million on last year.

The BBC’s international-facing online news sites – which include bbcnews.com and the Webby Award-winning bbcworldservice.co.uk - attracted 13 million weekly unique users.

BBC Global News Director Richard Sambrook said: “Maintaining the BBC’s impact in this fiercely competitive global media marketplace for news services is a huge achievement.

“We are also pleased that the quality of our programs and services have been recognized this year with four gold Sony Awards for BBC World Service radio programs; a Webby for our online services and a prestigious Peabody Award for BBC World News.

“This demonstrates that people around the world still turn to the BBC when they need quality news and information that is independent and trusted.”
* The new BBC World Service global audience estimate is derived from a comprehensive programme of independent audience research over a four-year cycle. This year’s figure incorporates new data from 20 countries – some 51 per cent of this year’s audience.
* The BBC World News audience figure is compiled from multiple surveys (syndicated, omnibus and specifically commissioned) from over 100 countries.
* The surveys are carried out by independent market research groups and comply with international standards of audience research.

Source: BBC World Service Publicity

Net News Publisher for World News