August 2012
Part I: The BBC（United Kingdom）
Masayuki Saito
Circumstances surrounding international broadcasting are remarkably transforming all around the world. The advent of new media rapidly changed the form of transmitting information, and start-up international broadcasters keep entering into the business, and meanwhile traditional international broadcasters in Europe and North America are faced with financial difficulties.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of the United Kingdom and Deutsche Welle of Germany, two of the most influential broadcasters in the world, are no exception.
This article features the BBC that started a drastic change in services and programming in April 2011. The change focused on the downscaling of radio broadcasts including shortwave broadcasting, and when it comes to languages, a larger number of language services are available on the Internet than on radio now. At the same time, there are a number of services in languages used in Muslim countries in Asia and Africa, indicating that Islamic region has become a huge target of the BBC.
The BBC’s international broadcasting service, the BBC World Service, has been funded by government subsidy, but this system is to be abolished in 2014, and the licence fee paid by the general public will be its revenue source. With this, how to secure the revenue source will become a big issue, but the BBC is trying to overcome the funding problems, changes in the media landscape, and international competition by new approaches including “the digital four screens strategy,” as well as diversifying financial source and constructing efficient operations.
How the relationship between the BBC World Service and the government will change after the transition of the financial source from the government subsidy to the licence fee and how it will affect the BBC’s international broadcasts deserve attention.