Broadcasting from its home at Bush House in London, BBC World Service is considered the world's most successful and widely trusted international radio network. It broadcasts in English and 44 other languages to more than 140 million regular listeners - more than any other international station.

Key aims are to deliver objective information, to help meet the need for education and English language teaching and to give access to the best of world culture and entertainment.

Airs: 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Monday-Thursday nights, 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Friday night and 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. Monday morning on KSTX 89.1 FM
Website: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice

BBC News en español: BBC Mundo

A Short History

The BBC first broadcast programs for listeners overseas in December 1932, when the Empire Service, as it was then called, began transmitting from its recently acquired station in Daventry.

Within days of the service opening, King George V became the first monarch to deliver a Christmas Day message by radio, addressing "men and women so cut off by the snows and the deserts that only voices out of the air can reach them".

Whilst the original intention of overseas broadcasting had been to draw together the peoples of the Empire, events in Europe soon lent the BBC's latest venture a new significance. In the years leading up to the war, the governments in Italy and Germany accompanied their military and diplomatic action with increasingly effective propaganda broadcasts, but the BBC was seen to offer a more realistic picture of the world in response to the output of the Axis powers. The BBC also responded by introducing the Arabic Service and the Latin American Service in 1938.

IIn many ways the BBC World Service owes its present form to changes wrought by the Second World War. At the outbreak of war, the BBC was broadcasting in 7 languages other than English; by the end of hostilities, the BBC had 45 separate language services and a General Overseas Service (formerly the Empire Service) broadcasting in English for 24 hours a day. Having been forced out of Broadcasting House by bomb damage, the External Services began their move in 1941 to their new home in Bush House, their headquarters to this day. Perhaps more importantly, the BBC established during the war a reputation for accuracy and impartiality that reaffirmed their peacetime commitment to independent and unbiased reporting. As Hugh Greene (later to become Director-General) said of broadcasts to occupied Europe: "having heard us talk frankly about our defeats they would believe us when we talked of our victories". This policy gained the BBC a great many friends in countries overrun by the Nazis. Without independent news of their own, people listened to the BBC to hear what they believed would be the truth and to hear exiled leaders such as General de Gaulle urging them to resist the occupying forces.

Since the end of the Second World War, the BBC's pattern of broadcasting overseas has been affected by the Cold War and its editorial independence has been tested by such major world events as the Suez Crisis of 1956. The "transistor revolution" of the following years resulted in a huge increase in the number of radio sets in the world, providing a massive global audience for which the BBC and many other broadcasters compete. Latest estimates put the BBC's global audience at 143 million regular listeners, the largest in the world. Of these, some 35 million listen in English.

The External Services were renamed World Service in 1988, and today the BBC World Service broadcasts radio programs in English and 44 other languages. The inauguration of BBC World Service Television via satellite in 1991 enabled the BBC to reach new audiences around the world. The satellite television services were relaunched in 1995 within BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, but World Service has retained a presence in television output through the BBC World Service Television News which is broadcast on the 24-hour news and information channel BBC WORLD.

IIn 1929, Bush House was declared 'the most expensive building in the world', costing $10,000,000 to build.

In March 1930, during the Bush House excavations in the Strand for the Eastern wing, a marble head was uncovered from a pile of rubble. The head was of an elderly, balding Roman man and was carved from Carrara marble. His finely chiselled face expressed a grim and somewhat irritated expression. The point of his nose had been broken off, and his ears had been damaged. Was the marble head the relic of the Roman civilisation which had once existed at the Bush House site? The mystery still hasn't been solved. The marble head now sits in the Center Block Reception area of Bush House.

There was once a theater in Bush House which could seat 100 people. It was built by Bush House Limited, and in 1932 it was pronounced 'acoustically perfect'. In 1944 a flying bomb damaged one of the figures that was part of Maria Hoffman's statue, completely destroying its' left arm. It remained armless until the middle of the 1970's, when an American visiting his daughter in London, saw the damaged statue. He was employed by the Indiana Limestone Company. On his return to America, he persuaded his employers to send a new arm - and a stonemason to fit it - back to Britain. It was attached successfully in time for the celebrations of Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in 1977.