Page 26 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 1 2013

THE CHANNEL | FOCUS
services are not available in China
at all because of traditional
jamming of short wave and regular
targeted interference with BBC
World News. Whenever there is a
story which may be of some
political sensitivity in China the
signal gets cut and even though the
BBC has a bureau in Beijing our
Chinese language services, the
Mandarin and Cantonese teams,
cannot get access to Beijing. These
are all outrageous restrictions on
free speech and something which a
Chinese government that wants to
have a proper open relationship
with the world should reconsider.
Weʹll just continue making those
points and to be vociferous about it.
Looking at North America, is there
room for the BBC's news service?
We have got a new distribution
arrangement with American Public
Media who are getting BBC World
Service in English to audiences in
public radio stations across the US
and there is huge affection and
consumption of our programming.
The distribution for BBC World
News has increased substantially,
from around 3‐4m a year or two
ago to over 12m homes at present.
We are confident numbers will
grow even further and that should
herald some significant increase in
commercial activities. Thatʹs
obviously niche in comparison to
the audiences or distribution that
CNN or Fox have, but as an
international news service the BBC
is by far the strongest distribution
in the US. And the BBC website is
very widely consumed, especially
amongst audiences who believe
that the focus on international news
amongst domestic news channels in
the US has fallen away
dramatically. When Bin Laden was
killed in Pakistan, many of the US
networks were covering that story
from London – as if that was
anywhere remotely near the scene.
The BBC not only had its own team
in Islamabad, it had people who
knew the town of Abbottabad where
Bin Laden was killed and had
people on the scene within hours.
Why was Global News Ltd set up?
It is best to be as joined together
and as strategic as possible.
Previously the TV business was run
by the news operation but the news
website was run by BBC
Worldwide so we had different
teams driving commercial and
editorial strategy for those two
platforms. We have now brought
these two commercial platforms,
TV and online, together and we
think there are huge opportunities
that can flow from a coherent
editorial and commercial strategy.
All of the combined revenue for
Global News Ltd goes back into
improving the editorial products,
so every pound that we make in
commercial activity goes back into
editorial investment –
improvements to HD studios in
New Broadcasting House,
investment in new presenter and
correspondent roles on BBC World
News and so on. In terms of how
the BBC is seen and understood by
audiences around the world, itʹs
news that is its strongest asset, and
itʹs because of the strength of the
BBC news brand around the world
that the BBC gets significant
revenues from its commercial news
activity and we think thatʹs the
right thing to do. That commercial
activity feeds back into a stronger
editorial product which all BBC
audiences benefit from.
What impact has your move to the
new building had?
There was a lot of anxiety about the
move in advance, but we are now
in New Broadcasting House and
the level of innovation and
creativity across the organization is
definitely on the up. NBH has been
designed for collaboration ‐
because the world is an inter‐
connected and networked place
your organisation needs to be an
interconnected and networked
organisation. What we are trying to
do in the microcosm within the
BBC is to create something which is
a little bit like the world around us
‐ changing fast, unafraid of change,
ready to innovate, ready to connect
and talk to everyone.
Peter Horrocks, thank you.
BBC Global News
The division is responsible for the
delivery of news services to all the
BBC's international audiences -
through the World Service (in
English and 27 other languages, on
radio and on digital), BBC World
News (24/7 TV channel) and
bbc.com/news (the news part of
the BBC's international website in
English). The division also
comprises BBC Media Action
(media development charity) and
BBC Monitoring, the open source
news and information at
Caversham.
There
are huge
opportu-
nities that
can flow
from a
coherent
editorial
and com-
mercial
strategy
“
”
▼ New
Broadcasting
House in central
London
www.bbc.co.uk