BBC

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This article is about the British Broadcasting Corporation. For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation).

Parts of this article (those related to the governing structure) need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (April 2017)

British Broadcasting Corporation

Type	Statutory corporation with a Royal charter
Industry	Mass media
Predecessor	British Broadcasting Company
Founded	18 October 1922; 94 years ago
Founder	John Reith
Headquarters	Broadcasting House Portland Place, London, United Kingdom
Area served	International
Key people	Sir David Clementi (Chairman) Lord Hall of Birkenhead (Director-General) Anne Bulford (Deputy Director-General)
Products	Broadcasting Radio Web portals
Services	Television Radio Online
Revenue	£5.166 billion (2013/14)[1]
Owner	British public
Number of employees	20,951 (2014/15)[2]
Website	bbc.co.uk

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London. The BBC is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation^[3] and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting.^{[2][4][5][6][7]} The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included.^[8]
The BBC is established under a Royal Charter^[9] and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.^[10] Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee^[11] which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts.^[12] The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament,^[13] and used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic, and Persian.
Around a quarter of BBC revenues come from its commercial arm BBC Worldwide Ltd, which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC World News, and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd.