New world order | 25 February 2012

Not much fuss has been made about it. We might not have realised it was happening if news of the leaving bash with its tales of uninvited guests (former staff members) had not been gossiped about in the press. But from March the BBC World Service will no longer be broadcasting from Bush House, that once very grand but now rather shabby crescent-shaped building at the heart of the Aldwych in central London. Instead, all 27 of the specialist radio teams broadcasting in Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Russian, Urdu, Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin, Tamil and Nepalese…will be moving in to swanky new studios in Portland Place, just north of Oxford Circus, as part of the transformation of Broadcasting House.

It’s hard to imagine the BBC, let alone the World Service, without Bush House. The vast colonnaded portico, the words gilded across the impressive porch, ‘To the friendship of the English-speaking peoples’, the smooth encircling arc of the building are so much part of BBC history as well as London life, dominating the view southwards down Kingsway towards the river and Waterloo.

The simple fact of its existence partly explains how and why the BBC has become an international broadcasting service. Within the corridors of Bush House, for more than 70 years, correspondents from across the globe, with inside, in-depth knowledge of the countries they are reporting on, have come together to swap information, experience, ideas. Just to get a cup of coffee, or visit the loo, you might bump into an Iraqi or an Iranian, a Hutu-speaking Rwandan or a Tutsi from Uganda. In a single building, two sides could be found to every story.

How much, then, will be lost, dissipated, devolved when those 27 language departments are swallowed up in a bigger enterprise — BBC Global News — operating from those smart new headquarters? How different will this new ‘international’ operation be?

Peter Horrocks, director of the World Service since 2009, assures me that the World Service’s ‘ethos’, its ‘editorial values’, will always come first.