'A giant': what other countries make of the BBC and how their media compare

France

The BBC is widely admired in France and frequently cited by politicians as a model of public service broadcasting. News of its director general’s early departure was reported with concern.

Le Monde said Tony Hall’s announcement came at an awkward time: the BBC was losing viewers to Netflix and other commercial streaming services, under attack “from all sides” for its Brexit coverage and had heard the prime minister publicly question the continued existence of its licence fee.

“The corporation’s central role in British life is being eroded,” the paper said. “It is becoming harder to defending a licence fee paid by all. Of course, the BBC remains a giant. Some phenomenal successes still bring the nation together. But Hall’s successor must prepare for a serious fight.”

France’s public TV and radio are being reformed to create what Emmanuel Macron in his 2017 election campaign called “une BBC à la française” – essentially, bundling all the country’s public TV and radio stations into one group in search of professional synergies and financial savings.

More than 80% of public broadcasting costs in France are covered by the redevance, or TV licence, which costs €138 a year, with the rest coming from advertising and some direct state funding. Only households with a TV set have to pay the redevance, but this is set to change in 2020 to reflect modern viewing habits, possibly by the introduction of a lower but universal fee. Jon Henley

Italy

Italians generally see the BBC as a model to be imitated, but it is a judgment based on reputation rather than on any real knowledge of British TV programmes. Italy has one of the lowest levels of English-language fluency in Europe and while some BBC programmes are visible on Italian satellite televisions, they are watched by only a small part of the population.

The Italian equivalent of the BBC is the broadcaster Rai, which is owned by the finance ministry. In the years after the second world war, RAI’s early programming was influenced by the Reithian values of the BBC and its educational approach. It aired travel programmes for people who could not afford to travel abroad and it proposed the BBC model of an independent public broadcaster for itself.

However, Rai has often been at the centre of controversies over its political independence owing to its proximity to the government. Most recently, in 2018, the coalition government of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and far-right League oversaw the appointment of a Eurosceptic journalist known for anti-gay, anti-immigration, anti-vaccine and pro-Russia views as Rai’s president.

Marcello Foa remains in the role despite the fall of the government in August last year, and this week one of Rai’s most popular political shows, Porta a Porta, sparked criticism after giving the League leader, Matteo Salvini, a solo slot during the half-time break in a Juventus-Roma Italian Cup football match for him to pitch to voters why they should back his party in key regional elections in Emilia Romagna on Sunday. Lorenzo Tondo

US

Most Americans who know the BBC know it through its shows, consumed via BBC America or according to what Netflix and Amazon buy in. Costume dramas are forever huge, The Great British Bake-Off inspires serious coverage, and devotees of Veep can quote Malcolm Tucker verbatim.

But most will not be aware of rising concern in Britain over the fate of the BBC itself. The notion of a powerful state broadcaster – anguish about Fox News under Donald Trump aside – remains distinctly alien.

There is a BBC equivalent in the US. Not C-Span, a nonprofit that provides barebones politics coverage, but the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, established under Lyndon Johnson in 1967, together serving the young, the less well-off and liberals, most of them ageing, on the coasts and in college towns between.

Programming – think Sesame Street or Ken Burns on Vietnam – is authoritative, rigorous and vital. PBS and NPR score highly in surveys about public trust. But they do sometimes find themselves under fire and usually it’s because of money. PBS and NPR rely on donations as well as federal cash but during the 2012 election, for example, Mitt Romney said he would stop PBS’s subsidy. “I like PBS,” the Republican said. “I love Big Bird … but I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

Romney lost the White House race to Barack Obama, his threat to a beloved PBS character a big yellow albatross around his neck. Such threats – from Trump too – prompt reliable outcry. But funding remains inadequate and in 2015 even Sesame Street decamped, to be made by HBO. Martin Pengelly

Australia

Australians are well aware they adopted the public broadcasting model of the BBC to form the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a much-loved institution that plays a vital role in the political and cultural life of the nation.

ABC viewers still enjoy BBC productions such as Call the Midwife and Doctor Who, but over the years the BBC content from the UK has shifted to the commercial broadcasters due to rising costs and shrinking budgets.

Formed in 1932 with the launch of a single radio service, the ABC is now a multi-platform media operation with television, radio, digital, international and emergency broadcasting functions, that latter of which has received overwhelming praise during the recent bushfire emergency.

The ABC charter is set down by parliament and requires the corporation to provide informative, entertaining and educational services that reflect the breadth of the nation. What that encompasses is frequently disputed, especially by the Murdoch press.

Australians have not one but two publicly funded broadcasters. A multicultural broadcaster, SBS, has only one-tenth of the ABC’s budget and has been allowed to receive some revenue from limited advertising since 2005.

The difference between the BBC and the ABC is in the funding model. Since 1989, the ABC has been wholly funded by a three-year budget commitment known as the triennial funding system. This cycle has provided $3.16bn.

However, the ABC has been historically subjected to budget cuts, mainly from conservative governments, and it is trying to manage cuts of $84m over three years imposed by the Coalition.

The ABC serves a population one-third the size of the UK and does it with a budget one-eighth that of the BBC. Amanda Meade

Russia

The longstanding editor-in-chief of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, likes to compare her channel to the BBC, suggesting that the BBC’s global mission is to project British soft power, while her own channel naturally boosts the Kremlin’s line. When RT was censured by Ofcom for impartiality violations, the Russian government announced similar checks on the BBC.

There is a tiny kernel of truth in this comparison: in 2015, a government defence review boosted funding to the BBC’s Russian operations as part of an overarching plan “to promote our values and interests”. But the “soft power” mission of the BBC is very different to the blunt use of Russia Today and other Russian state outlets, which are obliged to follow the Kremlin line on issues such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. Whatever problems the BBC may have, any neutral observer who spends time comparing the two outlets will see how disingenuous the comparison is.

The BBC’s well-staffed Russian-language service is one of a few remaining large-scale independent news outlets in Russia, which often irritates the authorities. This week, when a BBC Russian reporter asked the speaker of Russia’s Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, a tricky question about whether planned constitutional changes were democratic, Volodin responded with a semi-coherent monologue in which he repeatedly mentioned that the reporter was working for a foreign state. Shaun Walker