Mumbai: India continues to be the biggest market among the BBC’s international audiences, with a weekly audience of 72 million adults, said the British broadcaster in its latest annual Global Audience Measure (GAM) report.
This includes BBC News’ Indian languages, BBC.com and BBC Studios’ international channels, and is an increase of nine million from last year (63m in 2020). The GAM report records the total weekly number of adults accessing the BBC around the world.
For 2020/21, the BBC achieved record figures globally with an average audience of 489 million adults every week, an increase of over 20 million from the previous year. This brings the BBC’s global audience close to the 500 million people target for 2022, it said in its report.
According to the report, BBC’s international news services also reached record levels with 456 million adults using them each week (an increase of 18m). This includes audiences for World Service languages, World Service English, World News TV, BBC.com and BBC Media Action.
BBC director-general Tim Davie said, the organisation is well on target to hit half a billion people by its centenary next year. “The fact that our audience has more than doubled in the last decade shows how trusted and increasingly valued BBC services are right around the world,” he said.
According to the report, the languages division drove the largest share of total BBC growth, up 20m. The language services now reach 313 million adults weekly. BBC News Hindi attracted an additional four million people. Both BBC News Gujarati and BBC News Punjabi service recorded a growth of more than 75 per cent, said the British broadcaster.
BBC Indian Languages head Rupa Jha said, BBC has continued to reach a wider audience in India. “This growth comes from the impartial, accurate and courageous journalism that is helping audiences better analyse and understand current events in a growing era of polarisation and global disinformation,” she added.
BBC Studios’ international channels reached 65 million adults, an increase of 16 million.
