Alison Woodhams FCMA Chief operating officer, BBC World Service.

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The BBC World Service is going through the biggest shake-up in its 70-year history. At what point did you enter proceedings?

It all started in 2004 when the service proposed to expand and set up an Arabic TV channel. Unfortunately, no extra government money was available for this at the time. When I joined in January 2005 my task was to look at how we could fund the project from our existing budget. This required a strategic review of the entire World Service portfolio. A lot had been changing in terms of technology, deregulation and global competition, so it was an ideal time to update and reprioritise our services.

What was the review's conclusion?

One of its main findings was that we should continue to focus on our vernacular language services as well as the English network--few people outside the BBC realise that we provide radio services in 42 languages. It also stressed that we should concentrate on regions where the media marketplace is less developed and where audiences have more need for independent sources of news and information, such as the Middle East, Africa, Russia, China and parts of southern Asia.

Why were you so keen to set up the Arabic TV channel?

We've had a presence in the Middle East for a long time the Arabic radio station was our first foreign language service. It's one of the most important regions politically and we think that this situation will continue for the foreseeable future. We have to offer a service that will not only provide independent reporting to the Arab world but will also give it a perspective on what's happening globally. We already have a web service for Arabic-speaking countries, so providing TV would be our first venture into tri-media delivery. Most of our competitors, such as Aljazeera and Voice of America, have a bi-media presence. We would be the only one offering radio, web and TV.

Did you consider a partnership or sponsorship deal for the project?

The BBC had tried that in the past, but it didn't work out. It launched a commercially funded Arabic subscription channel in 1994 but closed it two years later. There was an editorial disagreement with the Saudi-backed distributor and the service's integrity was being compromised. The one thing by which the World Service lives and dies is its editorial independence. We knew that, whatever we were going to do, we had to fund it through the traditional grant-in-aid route. Our reputation is based on the fact that we will not be swayed editorially...

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