Recommendation 14

Performance varied widely across services. Language services that became digital-only in 2022–23 saw overall audiences fall by 63% and their digital audiences by 39%, while services that closed either radio or TV but retained the other declined by less. Within the digital-only group, declines were concentrated in Nigerian language services, which the BBC told us reflected Facebook’s deprioritisation of news in its algorithm. Over the same period, the World Service’s Facebook reach globally fell by 17% to 46 million. The BBC did not analyse why performance varied across services, nor evaluate common factors behind stronger or weaker results, and it has not analysed the extent to which the savings programmes and digital strategy affected digital-only services.31