“The values that underpin BBC News have become increasingly relevant again.”

JAMIE ANGUS, director of BBC World Service Group.

T his summer Jamie Angus, the director of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) World Service Group, spoke with Campaign while he was passing through Dubai. Angus has 3,000 people working under him, of whom half are based outside the UK. His Group contains the World Service radio station, BBC News television channel, bbc.com website and BBC Monitoring (which tracks overseas media outlets), as well as the corporation’s language services. Basically, his remit contains all of the BBC’s operations outside the UK.

UK government investment announced two years ago has allowed the BBC, the UK’s national broadcaster, to launch the biggest expansion to the World Service since the Second World War.

According to the Corporation’s own Global Audience Measure, more people are tuning in than ever before, with an international audience (outside the UK) of 426 million people a week. That’s an increase of 50 million (13 per cent) over the past year. The figure counts all content broadcast abroad, including massively popular shows such as

Top Gear and all those documentaries presented by Sir David Attenborough. But news takes the lion’s share. BBC News has an audience of 394 million (a rise of 47 million year-on-year), and the BBC World Service itself counts for 319 million of that figure. The World Service consists of 42 language services (including English) across a mix of radio, digital and television. The BBC World Service in English has an audience of 97 million and the BBC World News TV channel is watched by 101 million people.

The World Service Group is based on what Angus calls “a three-legged stool” of funding. It is financed in part by the licence fee that a majority of UK households pay; it receives backing from the UK Government; and its commercial arm brings in money from advertising and by licensing content.

In this time of Brexit and increasing insularity, that first leg might seem like a bit of a hard sell. Why would Brits be content to fund news programming for people in other countries?

“It was something that BBC was concerned about when we took on licence fee funding for the World Service [in 2014],” says Angus.

But in the end, “the argument went over much better than we were expecting,” he adds. “I think licence fee payers understood intuitively the soft value that comes back to them from the World Service.”

He explains: “I always say, semi-jokingly, that if you are a UK citizen overseas, the three brands that are going to dig you out of trouble are the Premier League, the royal family and the BBC World Service. Those three brands cover huge swathes of the world in terms of favourable perceptions of the UK and its citizens.”

The World Service also benefits domestic licence-payers when its teams’ news coverage is aired on UK channels.

There have long been debates about BBC bias, but few would argue that it is at least less prejudiced than many rival media outlets. And its independence – from government and advertiser influence – is deep within its cultural DNA, as well as being set out in the paperwork of its official charter. In this Trumpian era of fake news and alternative facts, the world needs news sources like the BBC.

“We’re living in times where the values that underpin BBC News have become increasingly relevant again,” says Angus. “What is a news brand that you actually know you can trust deep down without having to really interrogate why? BBC News clearly embodies that. In an era of fake news and disinformation, and, of course, a lot of regional tension, particularly this region [the Middle East], audiences are coming back to what they know and trust.”

The three markets where the BBC has seen the biggest audience growth since last year are India, Kenya and the United States. “The United States is in the grip of this extraordinary cultural war, both politically and more widely, and the country is incredibly polarised and divided,” says Angus. “I think people in the US returning to BBC News or using us increasingly frequently are doing so because they see us as one of the few places where they can get a genuinely balanced view.”

He describes the Indian market as having “this incredibly vibrant national media”. But, like the US, he says, “it is unbelievably polarised and opinionated and creates more light than heat”. He says: “The BBC’s role is exactly the opposite; it is to genuinely inform audiences and give them deep context and understanding of issues underpinning events.”

Angus’s three-legged funding stool comes into play again when he explains the BBC World Service Group’s expansion plans. “The commercial geography of the world looks very different from the news-need geography of the world,” says Angus. The inherent tension is that “often the audiences

that need news the most are the least commercial”.

The commercial drivers for expansion come from big anglophone markets such as the US, Australia and New Zealand (and the Gulf region). But UK government investment of about £85m a year means Angus’s team “are capable of taking decisions according to different imperatives,” he says.

When choosing where to introduce new language services, the BBC looks at available reach. Examples of this are the Pidgin service launched in 2017 to serve West African audiences. According to the BBC, 5 million Nigerians use Pidgin as their first language and another 75 speak it, as do many people in neighbouring countries including Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

In India, the BBC has long had a Hindi service, but now speaks to its audiences in Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu and Punjabi too. Those tongues are spoken by 73 million people, 50 million, 75 million and 100 million respectively. Those are some big audiences.

But Angus explains that there are also “just some critical news-need audiences” as well. For example, the World Service broadcasts into politically troubled Myanmar in Burmese, and its Korean service not only reaches the wealthy South Korean market but also carries international news by shortwave into isolated North Korea.

Short-wave radio is generally the way the World Service reaches its poorest (in terms of both wealth and news) audiences. More developed countries have FM transmitters, and the World Service will switch off its shortwave broadcasts and transition to FM when its audience is developed enough. Those countries that are wealthier still consume the BBC’s brand of news through television sets and the internet.

Commercially, says Angus, “brand advertising and brand activities are an increasingly important part of the business”.

He says: “Like every other business, we are moving from a world dominated by display advertising, spot advertising, into a world where actually the demand and the value is increasingly in the partner content, branded content part of the business.”

This plays to the BBC’s strengths. “For the branded content teams, they are able to say with some justification that the creative skill in storytelling and the BBC commitment to quality that underpins what we do is higher than the competitors’ set,” Angus explains.

In the region, Dubai Tourism is a big client, and the BBC is refocusing on the region after successfully featuring Dubai in some flagship shows.

“What we’ve got so far is a reinvestment in the overall core coverage and bringing back in a locally based correspondent,” says Ali Taher, vicepresident of sales for MENA, Turkey and the Mediterranean at BBC Global News. “This will enhance the coverage of the region.”

As Brexit looms large on the BBC’s home front, the UK may be losing some of its respect and diplomatic clout on the world stage, becoming less active overseas and looking increasingly inward. But the BBC will continue to fly the flag abroad.

“THE BRANDED CONTENT TEAMS ARE ABLE TO SAY THAT THE CREATIVE SKILL IN STORYTELLING IS HIGHER THAN THE COMPETITORS’ SET”