BBC’s global reach grows

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

The BBC has reached a new milestone in its global reach.

• According to its latest global audience measure, BBC has reached a new high of 426 million a week, which is an increased of 50 million, or 13% year over year.
• The global audience measure is an annual update of how many people are consuming the BBC weekly for all services in all countries across all platforms, including television, radio, website and social media.
• The figure includes “de-duplication” to ensure a person who consumes multiple BBC services or platforms or on multiple devices is not counted many times in the top level totals.
• BBC News, meanwhile, has an audience of 394 million globally, a rise of 47 million.
• The BBC World Service in English, and 42 languages, account for 319 million of that figure — with an increase of 41 million.
• Three countries — India, Kenya and the USA — have seen the most impressive gains since 2018.
• India, where BBC News now operates in nine languages, has seen a rise of 20 million to 50 million to become the top overseas market for BBC News.
• The USA becomes the third largest market overall with 38 million, up 5 million.
• The audience in Kenya has increased from 6 million to 15 million in the last year reaching 50 percent of the population. In Afghanistan, the BBC reaches 59% of the population.
• BBC News websites have increased their combined reach by 6m to 51m globally, bucking wider trends for news sites.
• Over the past two years new BBC News bureaus were opened in India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Korea, and 12 new language services were launched as part the largest expansion of the BBC World Service since the 1940s, funded by the UK government.
• The expansion has taken place against a background of rapid growth of rival international news services from Russia, China and the Middle East.