The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the principal public service broadcaster in the United Kingdom, with its headquarters at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff. Its main responsibility is to provide public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. The BBC is an autonomous public service broadcaster that operates under a Royal Charter. Within the United Kingdom its work is funded principally by an annual television license fee, which is charged to all United Kingdom households, companies and organizations using any type of equipment to record and/or receive live television broadcasts; the level of the fee is set annually by the British Government and agreed by Parliament.
Outside the UK, the BBC World Service has provided services by direct broadcasting and re-transmission contracts by sound radio since the inauguration of the BBC Empire Service in December 1932, and more recently by television and online. Though sharing some of the facilities of the domestic services, particularly for news and current affairs output, the World Service has a separate Managing Director, and its operating costs have historically been funded mainly by direct grants from the UK government. These grants were determined independently of the domestic license fee. A recent spending review has announced plans for the funding for the world service to be drawn from the domestic license fee.
The Corporation's 'guaranteed' income from the license fee and the World Service grants are supplemented by profits from commercial operations through a wholly owned subsidiary, BBC Worldwide Ltd. The company's activities include program- and format-sales, magazines including Radio Times and book publishing. The BBC also earns additional income from selling certain program-making services through BBC Studios and Post Production Ltd., formerly BBC Resources Ltd, another wholly owned trading subsidiary of the corporation.
In the UK, BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC's flagship television channels. Several digital only stations are also broadcast: BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, and two children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies. Digital television is now in widespread use in the UK, with analogue transmission being phased out by December 2012.[47]
BBC One is a regionalized TV service which provides opt-outs throughout the day for local news and other local programming. These variations are more pronounced in the BBC 'Nations', i.e. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the presentation is mostly carried out locally on BBC One and Two. BBC Two variations within England are currently rare, though most regions still have the ability to 'opt out' of the main feed, albeit on analogue only. BBC Two was also the first channel to be transmitted on 625 lines in 1964, and then carry a small-scale regular color service from 1967. BBC One would follow in November 1969.
A new Scottish Gaelic television channel, BBC Alba, was launched in September 2008. It is also the first multi-genre channel to come entirely from Scotland with almost its entire program made in Scotland. The service is currently only available via satellite and cable television.
In the Republic of Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the BBC channels are available in a number of ways. In these countries digital and cable operators carry a range of BBC channels these include BBC One, BBC Two and BBC World News, although viewers in the Republic of Ireland may receive BBC services via 'overspill' from transmitters in Northern Ireland or Wales, or via 'deflectors' – transmitters in the Republic which rebroadcast broadcasts from the UK, received off-air, or from digital satellite.
From 9 June 2006, the BBC began a 6–12 month trial of high-definition television broadcasts under the name BBC HD. The corporation has been producing program in the format for many years, and states that it hopes to produce 100% of new program in HDTV by 2010. On 3 November 2010, a high-definition simulcast of BBC One was launched.
Since 1975, the BBC has also provided its TV program to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), allowing members of UK military serving abroad to watch and listen to them on two dedicated TV channels.
In 2008, the BBC began experimenting with live streaming of certain channels in the UK, and in November 2008, all standard BBC television channels were made available to watch online.
The BBC has five major national stations:
§ Radio 1 ("the best new music and entertainment")
§ Radio 2 (the UK's most listened to radio station, with 12.9 million weekly listeners)[50]
§ Radio 3 (classical and jazz music)
§ Radio 4 (current affairs, factual, drama and comedy)
§ Radio 5 Live (24 hour news, sports and talk)
In recent years some further national stations have been introduced on digital radio platforms including Five Live Sports Extra (a companion to Five Live for additional events coverage), 1Xtra (for black, urban and gospel music), 6 Music (less mainstream genres of music), BBC Radio 7 (comedy, drama & children's programming) and BBC Asian Network(British South Asian talk, music and news in English and in many South Asian languages), a station which had evolved from BBC Local Radio origins in the 1970s and still is broadcast on Medium Wave frequencies in some parts of England. In addition the BBC World Service is now also broadcast nationally in the UK on DAB.
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 (Nations' radio) 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 also provides separate local radio services for the Channel Islands of Guernsey- BBC Guernsey and Jersey- BBC Radio Jersey, with local TV news coverage from BBC Channel Islands. These services are provided as a convenience, since strictly the Channel Islands are not part of the United Kingdom so the funding for the Guernsey and Jersey broadcasts comes largely from locally collected license fees.
The BBC does not offer separate local services for the Isle of Man, partly because the island has long been served by the independent commercial radio station Manx Radio.
For a worldwide audience, the BBC produces the BBC World Service funded by the Foreign Office, which is broadcast worldwide on shortwave radio, and on DAB Digital Radio in the UK. The World Service is a major source of news and information programming and can be received in 150 capital cities worldwide, with a weekly audience estimate of 163 million listeners worldwide. As of 2005, the Service was broadcasting in 33 languages and dialects (including English), though not all languages are broadcast in all areas.
In 2005, the BBC announced that it would substantially reduce its radio broadcasting in Thai language (closed in 2006) and Eastern European languages and divert resources instead to a new Arabic language satellite TV broadcasting station (including radio and online content) in the Middle East to be launched in 2007.
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, local, and regional BBC radio stations, as well as the BBC World Service, are available over the Internet in the RealAudio streaming format. In April 2005, the BBC began trials offering a limited number of radio program as podcasts.
Historically, the BBC was the only (legal) radio broadcaster based in the UK mainland until 1967, when University Radio York (URY), then under the name Radio York, was launched as the first (and now oldest) legal independent radio station in the country. However, the BBC did not enjoy a complete monopoly before this as several Continental stations (such as Radio Luxembourg) broadcast program in English to Britain since the 1930s and the Isle of Man based Manx Radio began in 1964.
BBC Radio 1 is carried in the United States and Canada on XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
The BBC is a patron of The Radio Academy.
