26-03-2023, 11:24 AM
(26-03-2023, 02:10 AM)Stuart Wrote:The Foreign Office does still provide some funding for the World Service, but it was massively cut by George Osborne, meaning the license fee has to pick up the majority of the funding for WS now. Same for free over 75 TV licenses, which the government no longer funds and now comes out of the license fee (again, thanks to George Osborne).(26-03-2023, 01:37 AM)oscillon Wrote: World Service, unlike World News (and now, by extension, joint service), is not commercial and is funded by either licence fee or the Foreign Office grant (it was surely the latter back in the day, but I have a memory that it had changed), so it does not have to cater to US audience.The FCDO do still provide some funding from the Overseas Aid Budget towards the BBC World Service. I think that's an important contribution as the UK (through the BBC) is respected as an international provider of news, especially in parts of the world where impartiality is rare.
Along with the license fee being frozen when inflation is sky rocketing, this all contributes to why we're seeing the cuts were now seeing.