Seven things you may not have known about BBC Arabic on its 77th birthday
Hannah Khalil
Digital Content Producer, About The BBC Blog
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Fairuz visits BBC Arabic in 1961
This month BBC Arabic turns 77, and this will be marked with an event at the BBC Radio Theatre this Sunday 1 February. Here About the BBC Blog's own Hannah Khalil unearths some interesting facts about BBC Arabic.
1. Today BBC Arabic may be a multimedia service, available on TV, radio, online and via mobile handheld devices, but its first incarnation was in 1938 as BBC Arabic Radio. That makes it the oldest of the BBC’s non-English language services and (to put it in perspective) the same age as Kofi Annan (former Secretary General of the UN), Dame Diana Rigg (actress) and Kenny Rogers (musician)
2. The radio service hosted the great and good of the Arab world include legendary Lebanese singer Fairuz (pictured at top in 1961 at Bush House).
3. The website bbcarabic.com launched in 1998 and now serves about 3 to 4 million unique browsers each month (around 15 to 30 million monthly page views). Having trouble remembering 1998? It’s the year that the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Birmingham, the DVD format was first released in the UK and an unknown author called JK Rowling introduced the world to Harry Potter.
4. BBC Arabic TV was launched in 2008 and BBC Arabic has its own correspondents around the world. Programmes are produced from studios in London, Cairo and Lebanon.
5. BBC Arabic is part of the BBC World Service and as such was historically funded by the British Foreign Office, but in 2014 all the funding for the World Service was transferred to the Licence Fee.
6. BBC Arabic makes world class documentaries across its networks; in 2014 it won two prizes from the Association of International Broadcasting awards; the Investigative Radio Documentary award for Forbidden Love and the TV International Investigative Documentary for Saudi’s Secret Uprising.
7. Following the events of the “Arab Spring” across the Arab world in 2011, BBC Arabic cemented its position as the trusted news source in the region, its overall audiences reach has risen up from 21.6 to 36.2 million which is an increase of 68% over the last three years.
Hannah Khalil is Digital Content Producer About the BBC website and blog
- Read also BBC Arabic: Slaves of the Caliphate
- Read a press release about BBC Arabic's 77th anniversary on the BBC Media Centre website
