BBC World Service gears up to celebrate 80th birthday

February 16, 2012 10:14 pm0 commentsViews:
Audiences
are to be given unprecedented behind the scenes access as part of a
special day of live programming on February 29, to mark the BBC World
Service’s 80th birthday.


Highlights from the day will include a
special global audience with Sir David Attenborough and The Strand - the
WS global arts programme - will be edited by guest artist and music
producer William Orbit.


Audiences will be able to join a special
debate about what they want from the World Service, both on air, online
and across social media forums. (#bbcws80)


The day will give
audiences around the world a unique insight into production of their
favourite programmes and multilingual videos will be produced of all the
broadcasts throughout the day online at bbc.co.uk/worldservice.


For
the first time audiences will be invited to watch and participate in
over 12 hours of programmes in English and across more than 12 different
languages. The day will be hosted by BBC Persian’s Pooneh Ghoddoosi and
BBC World Service presenter Ros Atkins.


BBC World Service’s
daily morning editorial meeting, which normally takes place behind the
doors of Bush House, will be opened up and broadcast live for the first
time. In this meeting - a daily part of life in the building - the
newsroom’s editors discuss and agree the big stories and developments
and decide on which stories will shape the day’s news agenda.


The
open courtyard of Bush House will host many of the programmes that day.
Flagship programmes such as Newshour and World Have Your Say will
invite audiences to join a conversation about international broadcasting
and the future priorities of the BBC World Service.


Listeners
around the world - and the audience at Bush House - will have the chance
to shape the news agenda and debate by making suggestions from the
floor, or through Twitter, Facebook and Skype.


Peter Horrocks,
Director of BBC Global News, said: “The 80th birthday and departure from
Bush House means these are historic and changing times for the BBC
World Service. We want our audiences to be at the heart of both the
commemoration of the past and conversation about the future.”


BBC
World Service Commissioning Editor, Steve Titherington, said: “We are
turning Bush House inside out showing who we are and what we do to our
audiences and asking what the world wants next from the BBC World
Service.”


On February 29, BBC World Service is also launching a
new series of programmes on the human body. Linked to the Olympics, The
Human Race will invite the public to take part in a ‘healthcheck
special’ featuring leading international scientists and sportspeople.


Not
only celebrating 80 years of broadcasting, this special day of
programming marks the start of the BBC World Service’s move from Bush
House, its iconic London home for over 70 years, to a new state of the
art broadcasting centre in Oxford Circus.


The move will see all
of the BBC’s news services - UK and international - based together for
the first time. The aim is to create ‘the world’s newsroom’ - enhancing
the BBC’s global newsgathering and creating a forum for the best
journalism in the world.

Leave a Reply