British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is Britain's public broadcaster and one of the oldest and best-known global media corporations (GMCs). It possesses one of the world's largest news-gathering networks; reaches a wide global audience via radio, television, and its website; and is a key actor in the globalization of media. The international popularity of its programming is said to enhance Britain's cultural “soft power.” The BBC has also played a key role in debates over British national identity.

The term British Broadcasting Corporation refers to a number of legally distinct but closely related organizations. The BBC began as a private commercial radio broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Company, in 1922. However, policymakers shared the view of the first director-general, John (later Lord) Reith, that radio's social and cultural impact was potentially so great that the medium should not be left to market forces. In 1927, the company was reformed by Royal Charter into a nonprofit public corporation. It is required to serve the public interest and is funded primarily by license fees levied on all U.K. owners of television sets. Parliament must periodically reapprove the Royal Charter, but it does not control the budget directly, a fact that is said to give the BBC a relatively high degree of editorial independence from political influence as well as from advertisers or corporate sponsors.

The BBC World Service is a separate legal entity launched in 1932 as the Empire Service to unite far-flung British expatriates and imperial subjects. In the postimperial era, the World Service targets a non-British audience, currently broadcasting in 33 different languages to an estimated 280 million households worldwide. It is often cited as a valuable source of relatively objective news for citizens in regimes practicing censorship. The World Service is funded directly by the U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The BBC is particularly relevant to two major debates in the literature on media globalization. First, the cultural imperialism hypothesis suggests that as wealthy Western media organizations globalize, local media and cultural traditions in poorer countries will be undermined. This is predicted to have a homogenizing effect on media content and ultimately on the norms and values of non-Western audiences; the so-called McDonaldization of culture. Critics of this thesis note that the World Service did not succeed in its original task of holding the empire together. Further, the BBC has found it desirable to tailor specific programming to specific audiences, using local languages, relying on local staff, and, most recently, encouraging user-generated content for the online services, a process sometimes known as the “glocalization” of broadcasting.

Second, many scholars see media globalization as the result of neoliberal deregulation of national markets, leading to a concentration of power in a small handful of GMCs such as CNN (Cable News Network) and News Corporation. Commercial pressures are said to be causing GMCs to de-emphasize their democratic responsibilities to educate and inform in favor of more profitable entertainment. For example, U.S. television networks have cut back on international news reporting. Some see the BBC, with its public service ethos and relative freedom from commercial pressures, as uniquely placed to resist the trend toward dumbing down. Others argue either that the BBC's news content is no better than those of commercial GMCs or that it will ultimately be unable to afford extensive global operations.

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