The BBC has continued to take global audiences by storm, as the UK public broadcaster announced recently that they had reached a new milestone in growing their worldwide audience.
The BBC have managed to grow their worldwide audience by 11 per cent over 2019, pulling in 486.32 million viewers a week. This is a new global record for the broadcaster, with outgoing director general Tony Hall previously making reference to “unleashing the full global potential of the BBC.”
With 438.4 million of these weekly views being attributable to BBC News, the platform has seen a growth of 13 per cent over 2019. With a further 151 million of these viewers accessing BBC News online, it is clear that digital platforms are instrumental in BBC’s continuing success – with the number of viewers accessing BBC News online reportedly being up by 53 per cent.
India was named as the country with the biggest audience for BBC News, with 60.4 million people tuning in weekly. The second-largest audience came from the US with 49.5 million whilst Nigeria rounded off the top three with 37.2 million weekly viewers.
As well as having the second-highest viewership in 2019, America’s engagement with the BBC World News Channel is reported to have grown by 50 per cent. This means that the channel has an international reach of 112 million.
Meanwhile, BBC World Services saw languages rise by 13 per cent to 292.1 million.
Commenting on these record-breaking figures, Hall had this to say:
“We are without question one of Britain’s strongest and best-known brands, synonymous with quality and accuracy worldwide […] Our international news services rank first for trust and reliability and the World Service remains a beacon of democratic values. Independent research shows that there is an exceptionally high correlation between places where people are aware of the BBC and places where people think positively about the U.K. More than that, the BBC helps U.K. trade. […] This has perhaps never been more important. The U.K. will forge a new relationship with the world in the decade ahead, built on an ambitious vision of ‘Global Britain’. Success will mean drawing on all our considerable international assets, and that means unleashing the full global potential of the BBC.”
Words by Charlotte Colombo
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