BBC World Service - Presentation

Presentation

The World Service uses several tunes and sounds to represent the station. The current signature tune of the station is a five note motif, composed by David Arnold and which comprises a variety of voices declaim "This is the BBC in..." before going on to name various cities (e.g. Kampala, Milan, Delhi, Johannesburg), followed by the stations slogan and the Greenwich Time Signal. This is heard throughout the network with a few variations - in the UK the full service name is spoken whereas just the name of the BBC is used outside the UK. The phrase "This is London" was used previously in place of the station slogan.

The tune Lillibullero is another well known signature tune of the network following its broadcast previously as part of the top-of-the-hour sequence. This piece of music is still heard before certain bulletins and as a shortened version elsewhere, but it is used less often than previously. The use of the tune has gained some controversy because of its background as a Protestant marching song in Northern Ireland.

In addition to these tunes, the BBC World Service also uses several interval signals. The English service uses a recording of the Bow Bells, made in 1926 and used a symbol of hope during the Second World War, only replaced for a brief time during the 1970s with the tune to the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons. The morse code of the letter "V" has also been used as a signal and was introduced in January 1941 and had several variations including timpani, the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (which coincide with the letter "V"), and electronic tones which until recently remained in use for some Western European services. In other languages, the interval signal is three notes, pitched B-B-C. However, these symbols have been used less frequently.

The network operates using GMT, regardless of the time zone and time of year, and is announced on the hour on the English service as "13 hours Greenwich Mean Time" (1300 GMT) or "Midnight Greenwich Mean Time" (0000 GMT). At the start of the new year, as part of an annual tradition, the BBC World Service broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben in London.