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Corporation's estimates show that international coverage grew 7% in past year, driven in part by aftermath of the Arab spring
The BBC's global news audience grew to a record quarter of a billion people last year, according to the corporation's estimates.
The number of people tuning into the BBC's international news coverage grew 7% in the past year to a record 256 million people a week – driven in part by the aftermath of the Arab spring.
The BBC's Arabic-language audiences in Egypt have increased by 6.5 million people compared to 2011, having quadrupled during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak's government.
Peter Horrocks, the BBC's director of global news, described the figures as a "milestone" for the corporation. Horrocks said he was particularly proud that its Persian-language service had grown "despite censorship, deliberate jamming of satellites and the continued harassment of BBC journalists and their families".
According to the BBC's annual Global Audience Estimate (GAE) figures, more than 41.5 million watch its Persian and Arabic-language World Service TV coverage – up from 28.7 million in 2011-12.
Horrocks said: "Today's figures shows there is a growing worldwide audience for impartial, trustworthy journalism. This is an enormous achievement and cements our position as one of Britain's most successful and influential global brands."
The BBC World Service now has a weekly audience of 192 million, a rise of 11.8 million on 2011-12.
The World Service's audience growth comes despite ongoing budget cuts imposed by the Foreign Office. Only two weeks ago William Hague's department announced a budget cut of £1.7m, on top of the £42m savings announced in 2010 ahead of its funding switching to the licence fee next year.
Horrocks said: "The BBC World Service is emerging from a difficult period of funding cuts and the closure of services. Today's record audience figures come despite this, thanks to the quality of our journalism and the decisions we have made to invest in new offers, such as TV programmes in a number of our languages."
Across the whole of global news – which includes the World Service, the World News TV channel and the BBC News website– its TV audience increased by 10.7 million compared to last year. The BBC's digital audience grew by 7.8 million, as radio listeners dropped by about 300,000.
In Libya, the BBC found that it reaches an average of 1.9 million people (a 42% reach) each week, after measuring its audience there for the first time. In Darfur, the BBC had an audience of 800,000 (a 23% reach). Nigeria is the BBC's biggest driver of mobile traffic, with visitors to its mobile sites rocketing by 250% compared to 2011-12.
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