In September 2022, the World Service had announced the proposed closure of its Arabic radio service as part of a cost-cutting plan, but an online service will remain.[1]
On Friday, 27 January 2023, BBC Arabic's radio broadcasts end at 13:00 UTC. The service had been on air since 1938.[2]
In 1936, the BBC helped the British Colonial Office set up the Palestine Broadcasting ServiceinJerusalem, a medium wave radio broadcast. This was created as a way to broadcast British views to the Arab world. This was partly in response to the Italian Literary Arabic language radio broadcasts that were transmitted by medium wave from Bari, and also in short wave from Rome, beginning in 1934. After the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, these broadcasts became strongly anti-British.[3]
In the years leading up to the 1938 establishment of the BBC Literary Arabic language service, there were plans by the British Foreign Office to set up radio broadcasts based in Cyprus.[4][5] Cyprus at the time was a Crown Colony in the British Empire, and seen as more stable than Palestine, a British Mandate.[6] Also during this time, the BBC was insistent that its established news standards not be compromised in the name of broadcasting Arabic-language British propaganda.[5][7]
The BBC Arabic service started in 1938 as 65-minute broadcasts. In 1940 the broadcasts had grown to 1 hour and 25 minutes, and close to two hours by 1942.[9] By the end of World War II, the Literary Arabic language programme was three hours.[9]
The first broadcasts in 1938 featured one news bulletin. Later, by 1940, a second news bulletin followed the morning reading of the Quran.[9] In 1942 a third news bulletin was broadcast at "midday" at 10:45 GMT, 12:45 local time in the Levant. While the news bulletins were essentially translations of the BBC's English-language Empire Service, BBC London was in direct contact with the Foreign Office's diplomatic posts abroad as a source of local news.[9] In 1943 the Literary Arabic Service established a Cairo Office, enabling direct news gathering in the Middle East.[10]
BBC Arabic radio and television both use the BBC Arabic website as an online news portal. The website facilitates online access to the other two broadcasts.
