MUMBAI: For the second year in succession, the BBC's combined international news services attracted a global weekly audience of over 233 million during 2007/8, according to independent surveys.

The global audience figure for the combined services of BBC World Service radio, BBC World News television and the BBC's international online news service bbcnews.com is up 23 million from 211 million two years ago.

BBC World Service's weekly radio audience estimate is 182 million listeners a week across its 33 language services, down a million on last year's record 183 million total. However its English language service attracted 40 million weekly listeners, up two million on last year.

Many people used more than one service. BBC World News - the commercially funded international English language news and information television channel – now has estimated record audiences of 78 million viewers a week, up two million on 2006/7.

The BBC's international-facing online news sites – which include bbcnews.com and the Webby Award-winning bbcworldservice.co.uk - attracted 13 million weekly unique users.

BBC Global News director Richard Sambrook said, "Maintaining the BBC's impact in this fiercely competitive global media marketplace for news services is a huge achievement.

"We are also pleased that the quality of our programmes and services have been recognised this year with four gold Sony Awards for BBC World Service radio programmes; a Webby for our online services and a prestigious Peabody Award for BBC World News.

"This demonstrates that people around the world still turn to the BBC when they need quality news and information that is independent and trusted."