National Audit Office: BBC World Service achieved savings but sees a fall in audiences

• Since 2022, the BBC World Service has made savings of £46.8 million, following reductions to the BBC's licence fee income
• These savings have mainly been made through TV and radio closures, which has inevitably contributed to audience numbers falling by 52 million
• The BBC will need to learn lessons from the gaps in its approach to planning and implementing its savings programmes, as future savings could be necessary

While the BBC World Service has achieved savings primarily through closing TV and radio platforms, it has experienced a fall in audience numbers and it has not yet achieved its aim to switch audiences to its digital content, says a new report from the National Audit Office (NAO).   

The NAO has assessed the Service's progress with implementing its savings programmes and the consequent impact on its performance. It did not provide an assessment of the value for money of the World Service overall.  

The BBC World Service commenced its savings programmes in 2022, aiming to reduce its expenditure by £54.2 million cumulatively between 2021-22 and 2025-26. It implemented these savings in three phases and has achieved most of its planned savings in the first two phases, worth £41.8 million in total. But it is behind schedule with its third phase, realising savings of £5.0 million against a target £11.1 million by October 2025.   

The savings so far have been made primarily through workforce reductions and closures to TV and radio platforms – in 2022-23, it closed radio outputs in 13 languages and TV outputs in six languages. 

This has inevitably had an impact on audience numbers which have fallen by 14%, or 52 million – in 2024-25, the Service reached a global audience of 313 million, compared to 365 million in 2021-22. The BBC attributes 30 million of the reduction to its platform closures with the rest being due to wider market factors. This includes the decline from the peak levels of news consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In line with wider BBC strategy, the World Service has aimed to switch audiences to digital outputs, such as websites and social media, following TV and radio closures. But audiences for the Service's digital content have fallen by 11% since 2021, indicating that it is yet to achieve this aim. 

Overall, there were weaknesses in the Service's approach to setting up and implementing its savings programmes, which are likely to have contributed to the delays, including business cases which contained some inaccuracies and poorly developed risk assessments. 

The Service also did not clearly document its decision-making process for which TV and radio stations to close, so it cannot evidence a clear and consistent rationale. 

As part of its savings programmes, the Service restructured its language services as part of its aim to acquire new digital audiences. But the NAO's report found that this did not achieve all of the BBC's intended outcomes and presented challenges which undermined the delivery of strategic objectives. 

This restructuring has subsequently been superseded by a new regional international model for BBC News. The BBC expects that this new model will allow for greater collaboration across staff in each of its regions, as well as enhanced regional leadership and accountability. 

The Service has already learned lessons from, and begun acting on, some of the issues with the management of its savings programmes, although its process for making improvements where issues were identified is not well developed. 

Despite the savings and falls in audiences, the Service continued to be perceived globally as the most reliable, trustworthy and independent international news provider, maintaining first position in all categories in the BBC's 2024-25 global audience survey. 

The Service's long-term future funding will be considered as part of the government review of the BBC's Royal Charter in 2027. But it is likely that the Service will continue to operate with a degree of uncertainty over its funding, which means that future savings programmes could be necessary.  

The National Audit Office report recommends that the BBC World Service should consider how it can make better use of its extensive data on audience reach, ensure it has clear non-financial metrics from the outset that are tracked throughout, and update its cost and monitoring systems to support a more granular picture of value for money across the World Service portfolio.