According to the latest figures of Global Audience Measure (GAM) released on Thursday, Indian audience of BBC News has increased by a whopping 186% in the last year and India remains to be the top global market for the BBC with the biggest BBC News global audience of 60 million people per week.
The new figures also show that the BBC’s overall global reach has boosted to 468.2 million a week which is the highest number ever with an 11% increase from last year.
| Country | BBC News Audience |
|---|---|
| India | 60,400,000 |
| United States | 49,500,000 |
| Nigeria | 37,200,000 |
| Kenya | 14,600,000 |
| Tanzania | 14,000,000 |
| Bangladesh | 11,900,000 |
| Afghanistan | 11,400,000 |
| Iran | 11,300,000 |
| Canada | 9,700,000 |
| Pakistan | 9,700,000 |
According to the figures, India at 60,400,000 held on to its position as the biggest BBC News global audience, with the US at 49,500,000, Nigeria at 37,200,000, Kenya at 14,600,000 and Tanzania at 14,000,000 in the top five.
The BBC News Hindi language service has also reported the largest increase of 175% in the digital audience of all the BBC’s global language services taking its weekly online reach up to 13.3 million people per week. This accounts for more than half of BBC News Hindi’s audience, which now stands at 24.9 million people per week, making it the BBC’s most popular Indian language news service.
Rupa Jha, BBC’s Head of Indian Languages said, ‘‘It is so exciting to see the impact and massive digital growth that BBC News Indian languages have seen in a market which is not only noisy and busy but it’s a market that demands clear, objective, imaginative output. We are proud of the trust and reliability we have built with Indian audiences that has accelerated our growth in India two years in a row. It has been particularly rewarding to see how audiences have reposed their trust on the BBC’S credible and impartial journalism at a time of misinformation”.
BBC Global News, which runs the English language TV channel BBC World News and BBC.com also saw an increase in Indian audience in the last year, taking its total up to 11.1 million people per week.
Commenting on the global figures, Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC said: “The UK will forge a new relationship with the world in the decade ahead, built on an ambitious vision of ‘Global Britain’. To succeed we will need to draw on all our considerable international assets, and that means unleashing the full global potential of the BBC. Today the BBC is one of Britain’s strongest and best-known brands, synonymous with quality and fairness worldwide”.
As the Covid-19 virus spread and trusted sources of information were in demand in late March 2020, the BBC News recorded the highest reach of any international media organisation in the world with 310 million people accessing coverage across 42 languages.
BBC global content is more popular on global platforms like YouTube with a 129% increase in audiences to 47 million a week – overtaking Facebook with a 31% increase to 43 million. BBC Global reach on Twitter has doubled to 6 million and Instagram also reaches 6 million weekly.
Digital platforms recorded an increase of 53% in BBC News users making it key to the BBC’s global success. According to the annual Global Audience Measure (GAM) which measures audiences in key markets, a total of 151 million users now access BBC News digitally.
