[2] It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages[3][4] to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM, LW and MW relays.

[18] Former director Peter Horrocks visualised the organisation as fighting an "information war" of soft power against Russian and Chinese international state media, including RT.

In his first Christmas Message (1932), King George V characterised the service as intended for "men and women, so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them".

Programmes in German, Italian and French began broadcasting on 27 September 1938 projecting the British quest for peace in the days prior to the conference on the Munich Agreement.

The 1956 Hungarian uprising held enormous implications for international radio broadcasting as it related to western foreign policy during the Cold War.

[39]: 3 In 1962, the Foreign Office argued that the VOA's philosophy, as presented to it by its then director Henry Loomis, not to broadcast to fully-developed allied countries in their respective languages should be adopted by the BBC.

In August 1985, the service went off-air for the first time when workers went on strike in protest at the British government's decision to ban a documentary featuring an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin.

On 25 October 2005, the BBC announced that broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai would end by March 2006, to finance the launch in 2007 of television news services in Arabic and Persian.

He had been based in London, but often travelled to Kyrgyzstan and used BBC resources to agitate against President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, appearing on a Kyrgyz radio station under a pseudonym with a disguised voice.

[50] This decision reflected the financial situation the Corporation faced following transfer of responsibility for the Service from the Foreign Office, so that it would in future have been funded from within licence-fee income.

News and information is available in these languages on the BBC website, with many having RSS feeds and specific versions for use on mobile devices, and some also offer email notification of stories.

It is also common for BBC programmes to air on Voice of America or ORF transmitters, while their programming is relayed by a station located inside the UK.

There have also been religious programmes, of mostly Anglican celebration and often from the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, weekly drama, English-language lessons, and comedy including Just A Minute.

However, "changing listening habits" led the World Service to end shortwave radio transmission directed to North America and Australasia on 1 July 2001.

It is possible to receive the Western African shortwave radio broadcasts from eastern North America, but the BBC does not guarantee reception in this area.

The largest audiences are in English, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, Bengali, Sinhala, Tamil, Marathi and other major languages of South Asia, where BBC broadcasters are household names.

In Singapore, the BBC World Service in English is essentially treated as a domestic broadcaster, easily available 24/7 through long-term agreement with MediaCorp Radio.

In the Philippines, DZRJ 810 AM and its FM sister station RJFM 100.3 broadcasts the BBC World Service in English from 06:00 to 20:00 PHT from Mondays to Saturdays.

FM relays are also available in Ceske Budjovice, Karlovy Vary, Plzen, Usti nad Labem, Zlin and Prague in the Czech Republic, Pristina, Riga, Tallinn, Tirana and Vilnius.

[115] The World Service employed a medium wave transmitter at Orford Ness to provide English-language coverage to Europe, including on the frequency 648 kHz (which could be heard in parts of the south-east of England during the day and most of the UK after dark).

[116] A second channel (1296 kHz) traditionally broadcast in various Central European languages, but this frequency has also been discontinued and in 2005 it began regular English-language transmissions via the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) format.

It had built up a strong audience during the Cold War, whilst economic restructuring made it difficult for these governments to refuse Western investment.

In the Pacific and New Zealand, the Auckland Radio Trust operates a BBC World Service network as a non-profit donation-funded public broadcaster.

The English service uses a recording of Bow Bells, made in 1926 and used a symbol of hope during the Second World War, only replaced for a brief time during the 1970s with the tune to the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons".

In 1979, the British punk rock band The Clash released the hit song "London Calling",[130] which was partly based on the station identification phrase.

[54] According to the American socialist magazine Monthly Review in 2022, former director Peter Horrocks inferred the World Service's scope to Russian state broadcaster RT as a means of extending international influence and soft power.

It is frightening the extent to which we are losing the information war.”[21] In March 2022, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, the UK government announced additional emergency funding for the World Service to provide "independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state" and to counter "Putin’s lies and exposing his propaganda and fake news".

[135] In the context of the Iranian Revolution, the BBC World Service's Persian-language service has been criticised for its role in promoting the Shah's regime and undermining local norms in favour of British-selected values, with the British Ambassador in Iran, Peter Ramsbotham, stating in reaction to a Service-sponsored poetry contest (in celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Archaemenid empire) that the organisation "seems to be damaging its image by acquiring a reputation for employing and supporting 'old brigade' expatriates.

that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office made a concerted effort to produce favourable coverage of Persia to BBC World Service audiences in order to maintain cordiality with the Shah's regime.

For example, in December 1973, a memo from Ramsbotham details a request from the Iranian Prime Minister for the text of a broadcast about Iran by Peter Avery, lecturer in Persian Studies and Fellow at King's College, Cambridge, which he deemed 'excellent' and wanted to show the Shah.