Â鶹Éç

The Trust is the governing body of the Â鶹Éç. Its role is to get the best out of the Â鶹Éç for licence fee payers.

From 1 April 2014, the Â鶹Éç World Service will be directly funded from the licence fee, alongside the Â鶹Éç’s UK output. The Â鶹Éç Trust will have responsibility for governing the World Service and will do so in a similar way to the approach we take for the Â鶹Éç’s UK public services. The Agreement we have with the UK Government provides that the Trust will establish an Operating Licence for the WS which will complement the Service licences we have in place for each of the UK public services.

The World Service Operating Licence will be the primary governing mechanism for the World Service. It will set out the remit, objectives and budget for the service and explain how the World Service will contribute to delivering the Â鶹Éç’s public purposes. It will also set out the framework by which the Trust will assess performance each year.

The Trust issued a Â鶹Éç World Service draft Operating Licence for consultation between 25 June and 20 September 2013 and invited responses from stakeholder organisations, industry bodies and other interested parties, including members of the public.Ìý

The purpose of the consultation was to gather views on two matters:

Whether the Operating Licence adequately described the characteristics and other features of the Â鶹Éç World Service as it is currently provided; and

Whether the content of the Operating Licence was appropriate to allow the Trust to govern the Â鶹Éç’s World Service.

The Trust was not consulting on the validity of the stated remit, scope and contribution to the delivery of the public purposes for Â鶹Éç World Service. Once the governance framework is established, the Trust will begin to seek views of the audience on the definition and performance of the service as part of its rolling five year programme of service reviews.

Seven organisations and 11 individuals responded to the consultation. All responses were analysed by the Â鶹Éç Trust.

The responses were broadly positive, though largely focusing on the broader issues of protecting the World Service within the Licence Fee funded Â鶹Éç, rather than making specific comments on whether the Operating Licence is an accurate reflection of the World Service as it is currently delivered.

Some respondents requested more specific detail regarding the expected ratio of news to non-news programming. To protect the Â鶹Éç’s commitment that the core of the global offer is news, we have now included a condition for news, current affairs and information programming on Â鶹Éç World Service to represent at least three quarters of output each year (including factual content on topics such as business, technology, sports, health, arts and culture, religion and science). Â鶹Éç Persian television is an accepted caveat to the condition, requiring that it delivers at least 50% news and current affairs output as they do not currently have the capability to produce 75% news and current affairs schedule. This condition would be measured at a programme or bulletin level, rather than proportion of output within each programme or bulletin. Any proposals to increase the proportion of non-news content beyond 25% in any language service would need Trust approval. The following clarifications have also been agreed with the Â鶹Éç Executive:

This condition does not apply to digital services, or the digital component of multiplatform services, which are deemed to consist solely of news and information (including those covering the topics such as business, technology, sports, health, arts and culture, religion and science).

The condition applies only to content on Â鶹Éç-owned and branded platforms and services, and not to content syndicated to third parties or distributed via social media.

It will be the Executive’s responsibility to ensure this objective is met and to report to the Trust no more than annually. Assessments of performance against this requirement can be based on a sample of content (e.g. a week), as long as the period covered is not atypical in the mix of content in the schedules.

Some respondents asked for more clarity on third party funding of the World Service. In addition to the statement in section 3 of the licence that ‘In addition to its licence fee budget, Â鶹Éç World Service should seek non-licence fee sources of funding (including commercial funding) where appropriate and within regulatory requirements’, we will include a policy statement on Alternative Finance as an annex to the licence. This policy is currently in the process of being agreed with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and will be published in due course.

In response to specific consultation responses, the Trust has also decided to make the following revisions to the draft licence:

A footnote within section 2 has been added to provide a link to a list of approved World Service English partners and notes that lists of other language service partners can be found on their respective websites.

In section 3, it has been made clearer that the 10% budget margin is annual.

The culture and creativity purpose has been added to section 4 to reflect that output from the arts, including sport is also broadcast on Â鶹Éç World Service

English language teaching has been referenced alongside other topics in section 4.3, Promoting Education and Learning.

In agreement with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the objectives and priorities in annex 1 have been reordered so that ‘to provide an accurate, impartial and independent news service…’ comes before ‘to be the most trusted international news provider in the world’.

Annex III, performance measurement has been strengthened slightly to make it clearer about the tools the Trust will use to assess performance during the five year service reviews.

The operating licence will take effect from 1 April 2014.