Big digital leap in India’s BBC News audience impact

According to the figures, India at 60,400,000 held on to its position as the biggest BBC News global audience, with the US (49,500,000), Nigeria (37,200,000), Kenya (14,600,000) and Tanzania (14,000,000) completing the top five. Growth in digital content consumption trends in India is behind a major leap in the number of people in India accessing BBC News content digitally, including online and social media content of BBC World Service Indian language services like BBC News Hindi, the GAM said.


PTI | London | Updated: 23-07-2020 16:56 IST | Created: 23-07-2020 16:20 IST
Big digital leap in India’s BBC News audience impact
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The latest figures released here on Thursday show BBC News' Indian audience has risen to over 60 million people per week following significant digital growth of 186 percent in the last year, particularly reflective of the popularity of its Hindi language offering. The Global Audience Measure (GAM), an annual update of how many people are consuming the BBC weekly for all services in all countries across all platforms television, radio, website, and social media, found that BBC News Hindi language service reported the largest increase (175 percent) 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. According to the figures, India at 60,400,000 held on to its position as the biggest BBC News global audience, with the US (49,500,000), Nigeria (37,200,000), Kenya (14,600,000), and Tanzania (14,000,000) completing the top five.

Growth in digital content consumption trends in India is behind a major leap in the number of people in India accessing BBC News content digitally, including online and social media content of BBC World Service Indian language services like BBC News Hindi, the GAM 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," said Rupa Jha, BBC's Head of Indian Languages. "We are proud of the trust and reliability we have built with Indian audiences that has accelerated our growth in India in two years in a row. It has been particularly rewarding to see how audiences have reposed their trust in the BBC's credible and impartial journalism at a time of misinformation," she said.

BBC Global News, which runs the English language TV channel BBC World News and BBC.com also saw an increase in the Indian audience in the last year, taking its total up to 11.1 million people per week. The figures also reveal that the BBC's overall global reach increased to 468.2 million a week the highest number ever and is an 11 percent increase from last year.

"The UK will forge a new relationship with the world in the decade ahead, built on an ambitious vision of 'Global Britain',” said Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC. "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," he said.

In late March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread and trusted sources of information were in demand, BBC News claims to have recorded the highest reach of any international media organization in the world with 310 million people accessing coverage across 42 languages. The UK-based media organization believes that digital platforms are central to its global success, with an increase of 53 percent in BBC News users and a total of 151 million users now accessing BBC News digitally.

The total figure includes audiences for all BBC News services outside the UK and branded entertainment content on TV, BBC websites and social media pages for BBC Studios.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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