Zvuky Prahy / Sounds of Prague

The BBC World Service began as the BBC Empire Service in 1932 as a shortwave service. On 3 January 1938, the first foreign language service, Arabic, was launched. German programmes commenced shortly before the start of the Second World War and by the end of 1942 broadcasts were being made in all major European languages. The Empire Service was renamed the BBC Overseas Service in November 1939, and a dedicated BBC European Service was added in 1941. These broadcasting services, financed not from the domestic licence fee but from government grant-in-aid, were known administratively as the External Services of the BBC. On 25 October 2005 it was announced that the Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai language radio services would end by March 2006 in order to finance the launch of an Arabic and Persian language TV news channel in 2007.