§ Mr. Hodgsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will give the number of hours of broadcasting in foreign languages undertaken by the BBC Overseas Service broken down by individual language and comparing 1970 with the results for the latest year for which information is available.
§ Mr. LuardThe number of transmission hours per week prescribed for the BBC External Services, including the Overseas and European Services but excluding the World Service and other services in English, was 464¾ at 1st April 1970 and 477 at 1st April 1976.
These totals are made up as follows:
708W
Overseas Service 1970 1976 African Services— Hausa … … … 7 7 Somali … … … 5¼ 5¼ Swahili … … … 7 7 Arabic Service … … … 70 63 Eastern Services— Bengali … … … 4 8 Burmese … … … 5¼ 7 Hindi … … … 9¼ 15¼ Nepali … … … ½ ¾ Persian … … … 6½ 8¾ Sinhala … … … 1 nil Tamil … … … 1½ 1½ Urdu … … … 6½ 8¾
Far Eastern Services— Chinese— Cantonese 3½ 5¼ Kuoyu 10½ 10¾ Indonesian 5¼ 8¾ Japanese 5¼ 7 Malay 1¾ 1¾ Thai 5¼ 7 Vietnamese 5¼ 8¾ Latin American Services— Portuguese 15? 15¾ Spanish 28 28 Overseas Regional Services— French for Canada ¼ ¼ Maltese ½ ½ European Service— French (to Europe and Africa). 40¼ 42 French/German joint programme. nil ¾ German 33¼ 24½ Central European Services— Czech and Slovak 22¼ 21¼ Hungarian 18¾ 18 Polish 22¼ 21¼ Finnish 8½ 8½ East European Services— Bulgarian 14 12¼ Romanian 15¾ 14 Russian 30 32 Yugoslav (Serbo Croat and Slovene). 17 16¼ South European Services— Greek 11¼ 10½ Italian… 5¼ 7 Portuguese 5¼ 8¾ Spanish 8 7 Turkish 7¾ 7 464¾ 477
§ Mr. Hodgsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will give the annual cost of the BBC Overseas Service and the number of staff employed for 1970 and for the latest year for which statistics are available.
§ Mr. LuardThe grant in aid to the BBC to cover the cost of external broadcasting, including the World Service in English, the Overseas and European Services, together with the Monitoring Services, in each of the two years ending 31st March 1970 and 31st March 1976, and the number of staff employed in the same two years were as follows:
Grant in Aid Staff Year ending 31st March 1970 £10,565,000 3,611 Year ending 31st March 1976 £24,592,000 3,320