BBC World Service

Position 15 of 466 in the United Kingdom. The ordering is a click count and nothing more, but at this depth it still separates stations meaningfully, which stops being true further down the same list.

At 45 recorded opens, BBC World Service is one of the streams that people actually reach through the public directory rather than through a station's own app. The count is the whole basis of the ranking on this site, and it is worth knowing that it measures directory traffic specifically.

BBC World Service is the only station in the United Kingdom whose first tag is bbc, out of 466 with pages here. Tags come from the broadcasters themselves, so this says the station describes itself in a way no other entry in the United Kingdom does, which is a narrower and more honest claim than saying it is the country's only bbc station.

BBC World Service streams at 56 kbps against the United Kingdom's median of 128, which is less than half the local norm. On a dial where 69% of stations reach 128 kbps, a rate this low stands out, and it usually means either a speech station that never needed more or an encoder that has not been touched in years.