BBC’s global audience holds firm despite increased competition

The BBC has announced its Global Audience Measurement (GAM) for 2024, revealing an international audience of 450m people on average every week. The annual reach figure, which includes the total reach for BBC News, BBC World Service and BBC Studios, remains resilient in the face of increased investment and fierce competition from other news providers, including state-funded news companies. The weekly average global reach was recorded at 447m in 2023.

The BBC retains pole position for trust and is also ranked first for reliability and independence amongst international news providers. The BBC World Service, operating across the 42 language services, saw audiences of 320m (318m in 2023).

Audience figures held firm as people turned to the BBC for trusted, impartial and accurate news of big stories including the Israel-Gaza war. The BBC’s second largest language service, BBC News Arabic, saw a 9% increase in audiences reaching 35m people weekly and the BBC’s emergency radio service in Gaza, which launched in November 2023 in response to the conflict for those living in the region, also contributed to the overall figure.

World Service English grew its audience by 3m listeners to reach 84m people each week. This includes new audiences reported from Taiwan and the Philippines for the first time. This year’s robust results come as the overall downward trend in media consumption in TV and radio continues and as social media companies deprioritise news on their platforms. Meanwhile, the relaunched BBC News channel has had a highly successful first year in operation with 112m people viewing programmes across the week outside of the UK.

Jonathan Munro, Deputy CEO, BBC News, proudly referred to the relevance and growth of the network: “The BBC’s global reach remains resilient following a year of big news events and audiences coming to the BBC for trusted news. I am immensely proud of what our international teams have delivered over the past year, and the outstanding journalism they have produced for audiences around the world. Whilst we have challenges ahead of us in the BBC World Service, we meet them from a position of strength. In the meantime, we will continue to serve audiences with the fearless and fair reporting we’re renowned for.” stated.

Finally, BBC News Hindi remains the BBC language service with the largest audience reach, followed by BBC News Arabic and then BBC News Swahili which increases its audience reach by 16% to 29.7m weekly.