The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week. In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. Since 2019, the station controller has been Mohit Bakaya. He replaced Gwyneth Williams, who had been the station controller since 2010.
BBC Radio 6 Music is a British digital radio station owned and operated by the BBC, specialising primarily in alternative music. In 2002 it was the first national music radio station to be launched by the BBC in 32 years. It is available only on digital media: DAB radio, BBC Sounds, digital television, and throughout northern and western Europe through the Astra 2B satellite.
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian. He is the editor and presenter of The South Bank Show, and the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Our Time.
Richard Matthew Bannister is a British media executive and broadcaster.
Pauline Jane Tranter is an English television executive who was the executive vice-president of programming and production at BBC Worldwide's Los Angeles base from 2009 until 2015. From 2006 to 2008, she was the BBC's controller of fiction; in this capacity she oversaw the corporation's output in drama and comedy, as well as films and programmes acquired from overseas, across all BBC TV channels. Critics were concerned that the BBC had invested too much creative power in one person, and following Tranter's move to the United States, the position of controller of fiction was abolished and the responsibilities divided up among four other executives.
Samira Ahmed is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster at the BBC, where she presents Front Row on Radio 4 and Newswatch on the BBC News channel and BBC One during BBC Breakfast, and regularly presents radio documentaries. She was named British Broadcasting Press Guild audio presenter of the year in March 2020. Her recent documentaries include Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse. She has presented Radio 3's Night Waves and Radio 4's PM, The World Tonight, Today, Sunday and has presented the Proms for BBC Four.
Michael Wayne Rosen is a British children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who is a professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has written over 200 books for children and adults. Select books include We're Going on a Bear Hunt (1989) and Sad Book (2004). He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He won the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize, awarded by English PEN, for his "fearless" body of work.
Mark David Damazer, CBE, is a former Master of St Peter's College, Oxford, and a former controller of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra in the United Kingdom.
Lesley Douglas is a British former radio executive. She was the Controller of BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music from early 2004 until her resignation in October 2008 over The Russell Brand Show prank calls.
Victoria Antoinette Derbyshire is a British journalist, newsreader and broadcaster. Her eponymous current affairs and debate programme was broadcast on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel from 2015 until March 2020. She has also presented Newsnight and BBC Panorama. She was one of eight women to appear in ITV's The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night – an entertainment documentary to raise awareness of breast cancer. She previously presented the morning news, current affairs and interview programme on BBC Radio 5 Live between 10 am and 12 noon each weekday. She left at the same time as fellow 5 Live broadcasters Richard Bacon and Shelagh Fogarty.
Stuart Neil Luke Murphy was the Chief Executive of the English National Opera (2018-2023). He was educated at St Mary's School, Menston and Clare College, Cambridge.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Gwyneth Williams is a former controller of BBC Radio 4. She grew up in South Africa and attended St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Ceri Thomas is a British journalist and communications professional, currently at Tortoise Media. Previously, he also worked as the director of public affairs and communication at Oxford University. A former radio news producer and media executive, he is a former editor of the BBC Radio 4's Today programme and BBC One's Panorama.
Amol Rajan is an Indian-born British journalist, broadcaster and writer. Rajan is a former adviser to Lord (Evgeny) Lebedev, and was appointed the editor of his newspaper The Independent in 2013. When The Independent announced it was dropping the print edition in February 2016, and continuing as only an online operation, he was retained for a period as "editor-at-large". He was the media editor of BBC News from December 2016 to January 2023, and has been a presenter on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 since 2021. He replaced Jeremy Paxman as the host of University Challenge on 17 July 2023.
Charlotte Alexandra Moore is a British television executive who is the BBC's Chief Content Officer. She was appointed to this role in September 2020, having been Director of Content since early 2016 when she assumed responsibility for all of the BBC's television channels after the controller posts were abolished. Moore was Controller of BBC One from 2013 to 2016, in the position of which she was reported to be in charge of a budget of more than £1 billion.
Jenny Naomi Kleeman is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. She presents programmes on BBC Radio 4 and has reported for Channel 4's foreign affairs series Unreported World and BBC One's Panorama,. She regularly writes for The Guardian and The Sunday Times Magazine.
A timeline of notable events relating to BBC Radio 4, a British national radio station which began broadcasting in September 1967.
Samir Shah, CBE, is an Indian–British television and radio executive. He has worked for London Weekend Television, the BBC, and is the chief executive of Juniper TV, a British company. In 2021, he co-authored the UK government's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report.
