BBC: Encyclopedia II - BBC - BBC Services

BBC - BBC Services

Further information: BBC Television, BBC Radio

Among its many services are domestic radio and television stations. The BBC also jointly operates a number of other broadcasting services, namely the UKTV channels, some of the Discovery channels, and several other services available on satellite & cable services in the UK.

It also has many non-broadcasting commercial ventures within the United Kingdom including book & magazine publishing (BBC Books), and multimedia production services (DVDs, CDs, computer games) provided by BBC Multimedia.

The BBC has both satellite and cable broadcasting joint-ventures serving the United States, Canada, and other countries. In addition the BBC operates a number of radio and television world services in cooperation with funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one of which includes a recently set up TV news station in the Middle East in the Arabic language.

Before the introduction of Independent Television in 1955 and subsequently Independent Radio in 1973, it held a monopoly on broadcasting. More recent deregulation of the British television broadcasting market produced analogue cable television and satellite broadcasting and later digital satellite, digital cable and digital terrestrial television (DTT). Today the BBC broadcasts in almost all media and operates an Internet service, bbc.co.uk.

BBC - BBC Departments

• Governances & Accountability

• Programming Groups
  • News
  • Drama Entertainment & CBBC
  • Factual & Learning
  • Sport

• Broadcasting Groups
  • World Service
  • TV
  • New Media & Technology
  • Radio & Music
  • Nations & Regions

• Professional Services
  • Strategy (formerly Strategy and Distribution and merged with Policy and Legal)
  • Marketing, Comms and Audiences
  • Finance Property & Business Affairs
  • BBC People (to 2004, Human Resources & Internal Communications)

• Commercial Groups
  • BBC Resources Ltd
  • BBC Worldwide Ltd

BBC - BBC News

BBC News is the largest broadcast news gathering operation in the world and it produces almost 160 hours of news output every hour. BBC News provides its services to BBC domestic radio as well as television networks such as BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, BBC World, BBCi, Ceefax and BBC News Online. New BBC News services that are also proving popular are mobile services to mobile phones and PDAs. Desktop news alerts, e-mail alerts, and digital TV alerts are also available.

The BBC News Centre maintains its headquarters within the BBC Television Centre. It also operates regional news offices throughout the UK and bureaux in almost every country around the world. Coverage of political events is controlled from the Millbank Studios in Westminster. On 5 July 2004 the BBC celebrated 50 years of television news. Its first bulletin was telecast in 1954. The BBC had carried news programmes prior to this, but in the form of newsreels.

Although the BBC news service in the UK is mostly non-commercial by reason of its financial base, it does compete for its audience with commercial companies such as Sky News and ITN. During major events the majority of domestic television viewers in the UK tune to BBC news for information, but its coverage does not come without criticism.

BBC - Radio

Further information: BBC Radio, BBC Local Radio

The BBC has five major national stations, Radio 1 ("the best in new music"), Radio 2 (the UK's most listened to radio station, with 13.7 million weekly listeners), Radio 3 (specialist-interest music such as classical, world, arts, drama and jazz), Radio 4 (current affairs, drama and comedy), and Radio 5 Live (24 hour news, sports and talk).

There is also a network of local stations with a mixture of talk, news and music in England and the Channel Islands as well as national stations of BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru (in Welsh), BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal (in Scots Gaelic), BBC Radio Ulster, and BBC Radio Foyle.

The BBC has been in the forefront of digital radio broadcasting with Five Live Sports Extra (a companion to Five Live for additional events coverage), 1Xtra (for black, urban and gospel music), BBC 6 Music (alternative genres of music), BBC7 (Comedy, Drama & Kids shows), Asian Network (Asian talk, music and news in many Asian languages), and World Service.

For a world-wide audience, the BBC produces the BBC World Service, which is broadcast on shortwave radio (DAB Digital Radio in the UK) and can be received in many places across the globe. It can be received in most capital cities and it is a major source of news and information programming, and it is funded by the British Foreign Office. It broadcasts in 43 different languages, (including English) in the most relevant local language.

The German Service, created in 1938, which has recently been discontinued, played an important part in the propaganda war against Nazi Germany. The authoritative source is Carl Brinitzer's book "Hier spricht London". Brinitzer, a German lawyer from Hamburg living in exile in London, was a founding member. Another famous member of staff was Egon Jameson (Egon Jacobsson), a former Ullstein journalist from Berlin.

Since 1943, the BBC has also provided radio programming to the British Forces Broadcasting Service, which broadcasts in countries where British troops are stationed.

All of the national BBC radio stations, as well as the BBC World Service, are available over the Internet in the RealAudio streaming format. The BBC has also recently experimented with the free, open source Ogg Vorbis streaming audio format and podcasting.

BBC - Television

BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC's flagship television channels. The BBC is also promoting the new channels BBC Three and BBC Four, which are only available via digital television. The BBC also runs BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, and two children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies. The BBC's commercial subsidiary BBC Worldwide is also part of a joint venture with Flextech in the TV company UKTV, and provides various channels for overseas markets, such as BBC World, BBC Prime, BBC America, BBC Canada and BBC Kids (in Canada), and BBC Japan.

Since 1975, the BBC has also provided its TV programmes to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), allowing members of HM Forces serving all over the world to watch and listen to their favourite programmes from home on two dedicated TV channels.

BBC - Worldwide

BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC responsible for the commercial exploitation of BBC programmes and other properties. It broadcasts television stations throughout the world. The cable and satellite stations BBC Prime (in Europe, Africa the Middle East, and Asia), BBC America, BBC Canada, and BBC Japan broadcast popular BBC programmes to people outside the UK, as does UK.TV in Australasia. BBC Worldwide also runs a 24-hour news channel, BBC World. In addition, BBC television news appears nightly on many Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States, as do reruns of BBC programmes from Lionheart TV.

BBC Worldwide also maintains the publishing arm of the BBC and it is the third-largest publisher of consumer magazines in the United Kingdom [1]. BBC Magazines, formerly known as BBC Publications, publishes the Radio Times and a number of magazines that support BBC programming such as BBC Top Gear, BBC Good Food, and BBC Music. In addition, BBC Worldwide acquired the independent magazine publisher Origin Publishing in 2004.

BBC - Internet

The bbc.co.uk [2] website, formerly BBCi and before that BBC Online, includes a comprehensive news website and archive. It is the UK's most-visited digital destination with over 3 million web pages and that number is rising fast every day. According to Alexa's TrafficRank system, in January 2006 bbc.co.uk was the 11th most popular English Language website in the world. (References: Global Top 500 Sites - Top English Language Sites)

The website allows the BBC to produce sections which complement the various programmes on television and radio, and it is common for viewers and listeners to be told website addresses for the bbc.co.uk sections relating to that programme. The site also allows users to listen to most Radio output live and for seven days after broadcast using its RealPlayer-based "Radio Player"; some TV content is also distributed in RealVideo format. A new system known as iMP is currently under development, which uses peer-to-peer and DRM technology to deliver both radio and TV content for offline use for up to 7 days.

In recent years some major on-line companies and politicians have complained that the bbc.co.uk website receives too much funding from the television licence, meaning that other websites are unable to compete with the vast amount of advertising-free on-line content available on bbc.co.uk. Some have proposed that the amount of licence fee money spent on bbc.co.uk should be reduced — either being replaced with funding from advertisements or subscriptions, or a reduction in the amount of content available on the site. In response to this the BBC carried out an investigation, and has now set in motion a plan to change the way it provides its online services. bbc.co.uk will now attempt to fill in gaps in the market, but will guide users to other websites for currently existing market provision. (For example, instead of providing local events information and timetables, users will be guided to outside websites already providing that information.) Part of this plan included the BBC closing some of its websites, and rediverting money to redevelop other parts.

BBC - Interactive

BBCi is the brand name for the BBC's interactive digital television services, which are available through Freeview (digital terrestrial), as well as Sky Digital (satellite) and (cable) NTL and Telewest. Unlike Ceefax, BBCi is able to display full-colour graphics, photographs, and video, as well as eductional programs. Recent examples include the interactive sports coverage for football and rugby football matches, BBC Soundbites which starred young actress Jennifer Lynn and an interactive national IQ test. All of the BBC's digital television stations, with the exception of BBC Parliament on digital satellite, allow access to the BBCi service. However, the amount of content available on the digital television BBCi service does not currently match the amount available on Ceefax, which is still available on analogue terrestrial television.

BBCi provides viewers with over 120 interactive TV programmes every year, as well as the 24/7 service.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "BBC Services", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki