BBC World News from New Broadcasting House

Love the new ads for BBC World News's 25th Anniversary. They just aired a promo saying 'This is BBC World Service Television' followed by their idents and brief stings from each package.

But wasn't BBC World Service TV a different type of network that carried news but also a lot of entertainment programs towards Europe?

Yes, I saw that too. Nice memories. Showing brief excerpts from the channels theme music and visual look from various eras during the last 25 years.

And I remember them all.........

World Service Television was the name given to two distinctly different channels: one aimed at Europe showing a mix of programmes from BBC 1 and 2, some shown at the same time as in the UK and one aimed at Asia showing mainly news and current affairs. They were both branded on air as "BBC World Service Television", though the channel DOG said "BBC Asia"



There was also (briefly) an Arabic language channel, which shared some branding elements with WSTV. It was run in conjunction with Orbit Communications but was pulled off the air after a clash with Orbit over editorial independence.

In January 1995, these channels were rebranded at BBC Prime and BBC World respectively.

I'm told the schedules for WSTV Europe led to some exciting shifts (!) for the presentation directors who had to often get out of live programmes running on BBC1 and join a live programme starting on BBC 2. Given the way the BBC schedules didn't (and still don't) run to fixed transmission times and durations, this often lead to some heartstopping junctions where they were filling as they went along.

I guess the directors at BFBS could have had similar "fun" junctions?

To go back to the original point, BBC World also showed entertainment programmes (or certainly edutainment) before it morphed into World News.

Yup, BBC World concentrated on documentaries and factual programmes in the main, but did show Top Gear (old Top Gear anyway), and Holiday. Other less newsy programmes like Click (which was originally called Click Online) and Talking Movies survive on the channel and weekend longer-form documentaries still air. There were originally transmitted under stranded back half hours, with titles like World Living (factual entertainment) and World Focus (documentaries) I seem to remember...

Now was World Service Television funded by the license fee given the name?

No, it was and still is funded by advertising, sponsorship and carriage deals (and therefore subscription in some territories, particularly for Prime, World was mostly free to air).

BBC World Service radio was funded purely by foreign office grant rather than license fee until relatively recently.

No - and it's important to remember that historically BBC World Service Radio hasn't been funded by the TV Licence Fee either. It is only very recently (last couple of years) that the TV licence has been used to fund World Service Radio. Prior to this it was directly funded via 'Grant in Aid' funding by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (i.e. directly funded by the government but the 'Grant in Aid' route means it preserved independence editorially, though the FCO and the BBC discussed which areas of the world and language services should be operated). If anything, the 'World Service' name would imply it wasn't licence see funded. (Was that what you were getting at?)

However WSTV was very different to World Service Radio too. WSTV wasn't funded via the same route as World Service Radio, and was always aimed to be commercially sustained.

That's what I was getting at. Couldn't remember which office funded World Service until the BBC was forced to self funded under the FCO funded World Service.

I don't think this link has been shared yet (I apologise if it has). BBC World News is celebrating its 25th anniversary on Friday and has already started airing special idents. There are some nice clips on this page with some stand out moments for some of the presenters.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-35667698

Absolutely love the transitioning BBC World logo throughout the ages, incorporating different looks and feels. Superb.

Thanks. I looked at BBC.com/worldnews and saw nothing.