MUMBAI: The necessity of adapting to India’s innumerable languages has even brought a broadcaster like the BBC out of its reverie. To cater to this growing demand, BBC News Marathi has launched BBC’s first ever news bulletin for a mobile audience in India as part of a 24/7 video stream on the Reliance Jio TV app. Titled BBC Vishwa, the bulletin will broadcast live from 7-7.20 pm from 17 September 2018. The partnership with Jio enables BBC News Marathi to engage with the largest 4G network in India.
BBC Vishwa is an innovative, fast-paced digital bulletin with specially created content that will include enriching analysis. It will draw on the full reach of BBC news reporters in India and around the world to deliver engaging stories and features to Marathi speakers.
Talking to Indiantelevision.com, BBC World service director Jamie Angus said, “India has got a fantastically vibrant and exciting news market which I love to consume just as a visiting consumer. But there are some deficiencies in the national news market where BBC can make a real difference. We want to bring the best international news offer for the English audience and the multiple Indian languages. We will push to reach underserved audiences like women and young consumers.”
The launch is part of the BBC World Service expansion, which has seen 12 new language services launched around the world over the last 12 months. New language services launched with websites and TV programmes in India include Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu in addition to Hindi and Tamil.
On the regional expansion, Angus stated, “We are very proud to be broadcasting in eight Indian languages in total which gives us a unique understanding of Indian news universe. We have been broadcasting for many decades in languages like Hindi, Bengali and others. We have added four new languages in which we see potential for growth and we think this is completely distinct for an international broadcaster.” The biggest audience comes from Telugu market apart from Hindi, according to him.
BBC News Marathi head Ashish Dikshit said, “Young people in Maharashtra prefer to watch the news on digital mobile platforms and we are excited to offer the first digital bulletin in Marathi. The globalised youth will now get to watch top stories across the world and the best features produced by the BBC.”
“We run a commercial news business. It turns over $100 million in revenue every year globally. Our English platforms like online and world news channels are quite heavily commercialised. Digital contributes to the majority of advertising revenue. TV advertising is structurally declined relative to digital advertising,” Angus added.
The BBC is the only international broadcaster on the Jio TV app offering a 24/7 mobile video stream in a regional Indian language. This will be a first for BBC World Service and will feature a mix of trending topics, politics, youth, sport, entertainment, business, health and education updated on a regular basis.
Reliance Industries head of IT Jyotindra Thacker said, “We have always believed in disrupting the way content is consumed in today’s world. The next big growth in digital content consumption will be driven by giving access to the vernacular content to the masses. BBC Vishwa on JioTV is our yet another digital endeavour aimed at empowering India’s youth with high quality digital news at their fingertips. There is nothing better than serving millions of Marathi speaking Jio users with news in a language they associate with the most.”
This forms part of a significant BBC investment in India, including an expanded news bureau in Delhi with two new TV studios. The Delhi bureau is the BBC’s second largest outside the UK and is the TV and digital content production hub for the whole of South Asia.
Angus’ mission is to reach to 500 million audiences globally every week by 2022 which is currently 379 million.
BBC takes fake news seriously. Angus said, “We think fake news is a global priority this year and we have commissioned a significant piece of academic research looking at behaviours around sharing fake news or motivating the audience to consume it. We are also working on outreach programmes in schools. So we are developing a training project around digital media literacy which we want to roll-out in India with a partner. We will be holding a series of public events in November to hash out some more solutions for the problem.”
