BBC takes over World Service funding from British government

Finance minister George Osborne said the BBC would pay for the World Service and the BBC unit monitoring foreign media, plus part-fund the Welsh-language channel S4C.
The moves will save the government 340 million pounds (USD 539 million) a year by 2014-2015.

In return, the BBC licence fee, which every British householder must pay to watch television and listen to radio, will be frozen for six years at 145.50 pounds a year.

Until now, the World Service has been funded by the Foreign Office because of its role as a provider of predominantly radio news in English and 31 languages around the world.
Osborne, who announced the freeze as part of a package of sweeping public spending cuts, said: "This deal helps almost every family and is equivalent to a 16 per cent saving in the BBC budget over the period, similar to the savings in other major cultural institutions."