BBC World News

BBC World News (HD) is an English-language television channel of the BBC. It broadcasts a 24-hour programme of international news and documentaries.

Broadcasting began on 11 March 1991 as BBC World Service Television, from 26 October 1995 as BBC World together with the English television station BBC Prime. Since 21 April 2008, the channel operates under the name BBC World News.

BBC World News is distributed digitally via satellite (DVB-S) and can also be received in Germany and Austria in part via analogue cable or as part of programme bouquets. In Berlin, the programme was also broadcast terrestrially between 1995 and March 2007 (analogue until 2003 and via DVB-T until 5 March 2007). Since 12 May 2010, the channel can be received terrestrially via DVB-T in Leipzig.

The European HD offshoot of the programme was launched on the Astra satellite on 1 April 2015 and has been fed into Unitymedia's cable TV network in unencrypted form since 30 June 2015. At the beginning of 2020, HD broadcasting was discontinued at the request of the BBC and the SD channel was switched on instead.

The foreign channel is operated by the BBC on its own account and is not to be financed by licence fees but by advertising revenue, as the British TV licence may only be used for channels that can only be received in the UK. In turn, BBC World News can be received even in the UK if the satellite dish is aligned with the European Astra satellite.

Having previously broadcast from the BBC Television Centre in London, since 14 January 2013 the station has been producing from Broadcasting House (also in London), which houses, among other things, a large newsroom and several television and radio studios.

Overnight (between 01:00 and 4:30 GMT), the first half hour is produced together with the British news channel BBC News, so that the same thing is broadcast on both channels (for studio technical reasons, this BBC News is always produced by BBC World News since April 2008). In the remaining half hour, different programmes are broadcast in each case.

Starting in 2020, a dispute arose between the PRC and the UK over the UK's support for the democracy movement in the Chinese Special Administrative Region and former British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, criticism of its treatment of members of the Uyghur minority, and security concerns about Chinese network equipment supplier Huawei. Britain's Office of Communications revoked the broadcasting license of Chinese broadcaster CGTN on February 4, 2021, for state propaganda. A week later, China's media regulator revoked BBC World News' broadcasting license for the PRC. The reason given was that BBC World News had broadcast "content in violation of the law" and violated guidelines for reporting in China, which state that content must not harm China's "national interests." English-language BBC World News was not included on most TV services in the PRC, but was available in some hotels and residences.