BBC World is the BBC's international news and current affairs television channel. It has the biggest audience of any BBC channel. Founded in 1991 as BBC World Service Television (the name was changed in 1995), BBC World broadcasts for 24 hours with programming including BBC News bulletins, documentaries, lifestyle programmes and interviews. Its main global competitor is CNN International, though it also competes with other major news broadcasting companies. It is considered to be the most watched news channel, ahead of CNN.
The channel is transmitted by Red Bee Media from their network centre at the Broadcast Centre, part of the BBC Media Village, part of the BBC White City, in White City, west London. All news output originates from the nearby Television Centre where BBC World has a newsroom and studio separate from the rest of BBC News. This newsroom provides output from 0500-0030 British Time each weekday and from 0600-0030 each weekend. The news output from 0100-0500 is from the studio of the UK domestic channel BBC News 24.
Although the BBC World News studio produces output in 16:9 SDTV in line with the rest of BBC News, the channel is transmitted in 4:3. The news output is converted into a 14:9 frame for both digital and analogue broadcasting, resulting in black bands at the top and bottom of the screen.
BBC World was named Best International News Channel at the Association for International Broadcasting Awards in November 2006.
