BBC World Service live

The BBC World Service is the BBC's international broadcaster and one of the most widely heard news services in the world. Across radio, television and online, in English and more than 40 other languages, it reached an average of around 450 million people a week in 2024. It began on 19 December 1932 as the Empire Service, broadcasting on short wave from Daventry. In his first Christmas message King George V described its listeners as people "cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea". For seventy years it broadcast from Bush House on the Strand, a building that became almost a synonym for the service, before moving to Broadcasting House in 2012. This stream is the English-language radio service: rolling international news and analysis in programmes such as Newsday, Newshour and The Newsroom, alongside Outlook, which tells personal stories from around the world, Science in Action and Sportsworld. Its perspective is global rather than British, which makes it a different listen from Radio 4 even when the headlines are the same. The World Service is funded by the licence fee and by a grant from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In the UK it is on DAB, digital television and BBC Sounds, and overnight on Radio 4 frequencies after Radio 4 closes down. Its London medium wave service on 648 kHz ended in 2011.