- This article is an overview article about the British Broadcasting Corporation formed in 1927. For other meanings of "BBC", see BBC
(disambiguation).
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national publicly-funded broadcaster of the United
Kingdom, and produces and broadcasts on television, radio and the Internet. Flagship services include the television
channels BBC One and BBC Two, the news
channel BBC News 24, and on radio the BBC World Service, Radio 1 and Radio 4.
The BBC is an autonomous corporation run by a board of governors appointed by the incumbent government for a term of four years
(formerly five years). General management of the organisation is in the hands of a Director-General appointed by the governors. It is funded by levying television licence fees on owners of televisions.
History
Main article: Timeline of the BBC
The British Broadcasting Company
was founded in 1922 by various private firms, to broadcast experimental radio services. The
first transmission was on November 14.
The BBC took on its current form in 1927 when it was granted a Royal Charter of incorporation. It started experimental television broadcasting
in 1932, becoming a regular service (known as the BBC Television Service) in 1936. Television broadcasting
was suspended during the Second World War.
Competition to the BBC was introduced for the first time in 1955 with the commercially
and independently-operated ITV. The BBC introduced a second TV channel (BBC Two), in 1964, renaming the existing channel to
BBC One. BBC Two was broadcast in colour from 1967, and was joined by BBC One in 1969.
Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the
1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the
advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television and digital television
services.
The Corporation
Funding
The principal means of funding the BBC is through revenue generated from television licences. Such a licence is required to operate a broadcast television receiver within the UK.
A similar licencing system used to exist for radios, but was abolished in 1971. These
licences were originally issued by the British General Post
Office (GPO) in its then position as the regulator of public communications within the UK. For a more detailed historical
explanation see British Broadcasting
Company.
In the case of the elderly and hardship, these licenses are funded by the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport. Licence fees are set by the government but collected by Capita and AMV who are independent contractors.
Because government regulation controls the BBC's funding it can provide domestic public service broadcasting to educate, inform and entertain, free of commercial
advertising. However, the BBC does engage in commercial advertising in its publications and some broadcasting activities. In
theory the BBC is answerable only to the licence payer. World
Service external broadcasting is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The BBC has the largest budget of any UK broadcaster. Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its
catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years. Its annual budget is approximately $10 billion (€7.5
billion, £5 billion) [1] (http://www.circom-regional.org/crdocs/report-regpubTV-2003.pdf), and it rivals that of
NASA. It is greater than the gross domestic product of more than half the world's nations
and ranks behind the budgets of only the twelve governments of the wealthiest nations on the planet.
Revenue Sources
The 2003 Annual
report (http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/report2003/) gave revenue sources in millions
of:
- £2,659m licence fees collected from consumers.
- £147m from BBC Commercial Holdings Ltd.
- £223.7m from the World Service, of which £201m is from grants (primarily funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office),
£16.1m from subscriptions and £6.6m from other sources.
- Assorted additional sources such as property and interest.
Licence fee expenditure
The BBC gives (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4309325.stm) the following figures for
expenditure of licence fee income:
- 50% - BBC One and BBC Two
- 15% - local TV and radio
- 12% - network radio
- 10% - digital (BBC Three, Four, News 24, BBC Parliament, CBBC, CBeebies)
- 10% - transmission costs and licence fee collection
- 3% - BBC Online
Management
The BBC is a nominally autonomous corporation, independent from direct government intervention. It is run by an appointed
Board of Governors. General management of
the organisation is in the hands of a Director-General appointed by the governors.
The current governors, as of 19 January 2005, are:
The current Director-General is Mark Thompson. On his first day in the
role he announced a shake-up of senior management, including the replacement of the Executive Committee, formed by directors of
divisions within the BBC, with a streamlined nine-member Executive Board consisting of:
Current review of Royal Charter
Main article: BBC review
The BBC's Royal Charter is currently under review. Although the
Charter is widely expected to be renewed in 2006, some proposals have suggested dramatic changes.
On March 2, 2005 the Culture Secretary Tessa
Jowell published a green paper setting out her proposals for the future
of the BBC. The main points of this are:
- Maintainance of the licence fee system until at least 2016
- Abolition of the BBC Governors, to be replaced a "BBC Trust"
- Increasing outsourcing of production (a process already started by Mark Thompson)
- Reduced emphasis on "ratings for ratings' sake" and copycat programmes (e.g reality television).
Political and commercial independence
Main article: BBC controversy
The BBC motto is Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation and many have claimed that it is the most respected broadcaster
in the world. Quite often domestic audiences have affectionately referred to the BBC as the Beeb or Auntie because
in theory the BBC is free from both political and commercial influence and only answers to its viewers and listeners. However,
the BBC is regularly accused by the government of the day of bias in favour of the opposition and, by the opposition, of bias in
favour of the government. Political influence may manifest itself via appointments to its Board of Governors and by threats to
change the level of the licence fee. Commercial competition has influenced BBC programming on both radio and television
throughout its history. In spite of these criticisms, the BBC is widely regarded by the British public as a trusted and
politically neutral news source.
BBC Services
Among its many services are domestic radio (see BBC Radio) and television (see
BBC Television) stations. The BBC also operates a number of
non-broadcasting commercial ventures within the United Kingdom and both satellite and cable broadcasting 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
British Foreign Office. The BBC is a multinational corporation.
Before the introduction of Independent Television in 1955 and subsequently Independent Radio in 1973, it held a monopoly on broadcasting. More recent de-regulation 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 award winning internet service, bbc.co.uk, itself indicative of the corporation's continued ability to move with the times.
BBC News
Main article: BBC News
BBC News claims to be the largest broadcast news gathering operation in the world, providing news through BBC network
television and radio as well as BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, BBC World, BBCi and Ceefax. BBC News is based at the News Centre at Television Centre
but operates regional centres across the UK and bureaux around the world. Political coverage is based at Millbank Studios in Westminster. The News Centre brought radio and TV news operations together for the first
time and produces almost 100 hours of output every day.
UK BBC News faces stiff competition from Sky News and ITN; however, research has shown that viewers turn to the BBC for coverage of major events, such as the Iraq War and
the September 11th attacks. Despite that, it has its critics. (See: BBC controversy)
On July 5 2004 the BBC celebrated 50 years of television news, the first bulletin was broadcast in 1954.
Radio
Main article: BBC Radio
The BBC has five major national stations, Radio 1 (pop music), Radio 2 (music aimed at an older audience), Radio 3 (specialist-interest music such as classical and jazz), Radio 4 (current affairs, drama and comedy), and Radio 5 Live (sports and talk). There are many local stations as well as several minor national ones.
For a world-wide audience, the BBC produces the BBC World
Service, which is broadcast on shortwave radio and can be received in many
places across the globe. It is a major source of news and information programming, and is funded by the British Foreign Office.
It broadcasts in dozens of languages, including English. This has recently become available in the UK as well, with transmission
on the BBC's digital radio multiplex, and also
the Internet.
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.
Television
Main article: 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, though they are only available on digital television. The BBC also runs BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, and two children's
channels, CBBC and CBeebies.
The BBC also has an interest in UKTV, and provides various channels for overseas markets,
such as BBC World, BBC
America and BBC Prime.
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 their favourite programmes from home.
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 System stations in the
United States, as do reruns of BBC programmes from Lionheart TV.
BBC Worldwide also maintain the publishing arm of the BBC and they are the 3rd largest publisher of consumer magazines in the
United Kingdom [2] (http://www.bbcworldwide.com/aboutus/corpinfo/annualreps/review2001/Documents/Magazines.pdf).
BBC Magazines, formerly known as BBC Publications, publish 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 magazine arm of the Orion publishing group in 2004.
Internet
The bbc.co.uk website, formerly
BBCi (and before that BBC Online), includes a comprehensive news
website and archive. 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 see and hear many of the BBC's television and radio services using streaming media. According to Alexa's TrafficRank
system, in February 2005 bbc.co.uk was the 27th most popular English
Language website in the world. (References: Global Top 500 Sites (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none) - Top English Language Sites (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=en))
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.
Interactive
BBCi is the brand name for the BBC's interactive digital television
services, which are available through Freeview (digital terrestrial) as well as satellite and cable. Unlike Ceefax, BBCi is able to display full colour graphics, photographs and video, as well as allow
the viewer to interact with the programme, but without sending any information. Recent examples include the interactive sports
coverage for football and rugby football matches 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.
Unencrypted satellite transmissions
In March 2003 the BBC announced that from the
end of May 2003 (subsequently deferred to July 14) it intended to transmit all eight of its
domestic television channels (including the 15 regional variations of BBC One) unencrypted from the Astra 2D satellite. This move was estimated to save the BBC £85 million over the next 5 years.
While the "footprint" of the Astra 2D satellite was smaller than that of Astra 2A, from which it was previously broadcast
encrypted, it meant that viewers with appropriate equipment were able to receive BBC channels "free-to-air" over much of Western
Europe. Consequently, some rights issues have needed to be resolved with programme providers such as Hollywood studios and sporting organisations,
who have expressed concern about the unencrypted signal leaking out. This has led to some broadcasts being made unavailable on
the Sky Digital platform, such as Scottish Premier League and Scottish
Cup football, while viewers watching on other platforms
can see the broadcasts without issue.
References
- Pressure Group - by Wilson, H.H. - Rutgers University Press, 1961. - History of the political fight to introduce commercial
television into the United Kingdom.
- Radio: The Great Years - by Parker, Derek. - David & Charles, 1977. ISBN 0-7153-7430-3 - History of BBC radio
programmes from the beginning until the date of publication.
- Louis MacNeice in the BBC - Coulton, Barbara. - Faber and Faber, 1980. ISBN 0-571-11537-3 - Writer and producer from
1941 to 1961 in the Features Department of BBC radio.
- The BBC - The First Fifty Years - by Briggs, Asa. - Oxford Universtity Press, 1985. ISBN 0-19-212971-6 - Condensed version of the
multi-part encyclopedia by the same author.
- The memoirs of a British broadcaster - by Milne, Alasdair. - Coronet, 1989. - ISBN 0-34-049750-5 - History of the Zicron spy
satellite affair, written by a former Director General of the BBC. A series of BBC radio programmes called "The Secret
Society" led to a raid by police in both England and Scotland to seize documents as part of a government censorship
campaign.
- Churchill at War 1940 to 1945 - The Memoirs of Churchill's Doctor by Moran, Lord. - Carroll & Graf, 2002. Reissue
ISBN 0-78-671041-1 with an introduction
by (Lord Moran's son, John, the present Lord Moran. This diary paints an intimate portrait of Churchill by Sir Charles Watson,
his personal physician (Lord Moran), who spent the war years with the Prime Minister. In his diary, Moran recorded insights into
Churchill's character, and moments when he let his guard down, including his views about the BBC being riddled with
communists.
- Mass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA, by Gilder PhD., Eric. - "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu
Press, Romania. 2003. ISBN
973-651-596-6 - Historical background relating to the British Broadcasting Company, Ltd., its founding companies; their
transatlantic connections; General Post Office licensing system; commercial competitors from Europe prior to World War II and
offshore during the 1960s.
External links
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