“If you look at our program on any given night you get a really rich sense of the rest of the planet.”  Matt Frei.

Launched in October and hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as “…calm, measured and light years more journalistically sophisticated and informative than its domestically bred competition” BBC World News America has already won a coveted Peabody Award for White Horse Village, a fascinating series of films exploring the effects of urbanization on a rural Chinese village. World leaders and news makers have become a regular feature of the program with President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Benazir Bhutto and the Dalai Lama among guests interviewed by Matt Frei.

With access to the BBC’s unrivalled international newsgathering operation of more than 50 international television news bureaus, BBC World News America draws on the expertise of some 250 correspondents and 2000 journalists for analysis of world events and first hand reports of breaking news stories.  In recent months the newscast has featured extensive reports from journalists on the ground at major events including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, cyclone Nargis in Burma (Myanmar), the destruction wreaked by the earthquake in the Sichuan region of China and the political turmoil surrounding elections in Zimbabwe.  

“We've covered natural disasters in China, and man-made disasters in Pakistan, with the bravery and accuracy that are hallmarks of BBC correspondents around the world,” comments Executive Producer, Rome Hartman.  “Being able to draw on the services of great reporters who are actually based in these countries and live and breathe the stories they cover enables us to produce a global newscast like no other outlet in the U.S. can.”  

On the domestic front, BBC World News America has offered a new and distinctive voice in the coverage of the presidential nomination race.  Matt Frei has anchored the program from key locations including Iowa and New Hampshire with Washington Correspondent Katty Kay providing expert analysis throughout the campaign. The program has also featured insight and opinion from some of America’s top political journalists including veteran newsman Ted Koppel who has provided his personal thoughts at key points in the race.  And BBC correspondents around the globe have given the coverage a distinctive international flavor by providing reaction from countries that will be directly impacted by the decision America takes in the Fall.  

In addition to world renowned news coverage, special films offer a unique insight into places and stories all around the world. BBC World News America has already presented a fascinating series examining the political and environmental issues surrounding the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage (normally ice bound at some locations throughout the year), and special reports from a correspondent on board a Greenpeace ship as it tracked a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean.  

BBC World News America also reveals personal stories behind the news headlines in moving first person pieces such as a film in which James Blake Miller, the soldier whose iconic battle-weary face in the Marlboro Marine Man photograph, shared his thoughts on the Iraq war.  And, on the anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, two sanitation workers who took part in the strike that King had addressed the day before he was killed, remembered the events of that day and talked about what has changed – and what hasn’t – in the 40 years since his death.  

Rome Hartman adds “After nine months on the air, we’re very proud of what we've accomplished at BBC World News America, even as we’re also very aware of how much more we must do to realize our potential. We’ve built an effective platform to showcase the terrific work of BBC journalists all around the world, and we’ve brought a distinctive BBC ‘accent’ and perspective to important stories here in America. Matt Frei and Katty Kay and our production teams both in D.C. and in London have done wonderful work from day one, but I honestly think we’re only part of the way toward where we want to be creatively… and that's an exciting place to be!”

* Note to editors: on Fridays at 10:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT, BBC America airs Newsnight a hard-hitting weekly news program featuring some of the toughest interviewers in journalism. Newsnight comes from the same team that produces Britain’s long-running nightly program of the same name.