BBC World News celebrates 25 years

The award-winning 24-hour TV channel BBC World News is celebrating its 25th birthday this month and will mark its silver anniversary with a special on-screen look.
The English language channel originally launched with a half hour news bulletin as World Service Television (WSTV) on Monday 11 March 1991, when it replaced BBC TV Europe. At the time, it inherited 700,000 subscribers but nowadays the channel is available in 433 million households across the world.

Eight months later, WSTV became a 24-hour news operation and launched in Asia – the start of its rapid growth which would eventually see it become available in more than 200 countries and territories.

In 1995, it relaunched as BBC World before changing its name to BBC World News in 2008 and moving to a new 24/7 multi-platform building dubbed ‘the world’s news room’ in 2013.

The original news team comprised six journalists from the World Service team and six from television news. Today, BBC World News has access to the expertise of thousands of journalists based in over a hundred cities and state-of-the-art studios across the world.

Speaking about the anniversary, BBC Global News Ltd CEO Jim Egan said: “The world has changed dramatically for all of us in the past 25 years and so has the way we get news from the field to our viewers. But our commitment to providing accurate, impartial news of the highest quality to international audiences is unwavering. We’re proud that, in a world of great uncertainty and in a news industry which is every bit as volatile, BBC World News continues to grow and is the most trusted source of global television news available anywhere.”