MUMBAI: Having completed 20 years since being on air, BBC World News is preparing to move into a new state-of-the-art newsroom in 2012.

In 1991, the channel started broadcasting to Europe as BBC World Service Television. By 1995 it was available across all major continents as BBC World. Three years ago, in 2008, the channel re-branded as BBC World News and is today available in close to 300 million households around the world.  
     
  BBC World News is currently preparing to join the rest of the BBC?s newsgathering operation at Broadcasting House in central London in 2012, in what it says will be one of the largest and most technologically advanced news studios in the world.

BBC Global News acting controller of English Richard Porter says, "The changes we?ve witnessed in the past 20 years, in both the way we gather news and the way stories interconnect, have been far-reaching and dramatic. Technological advances have brought real immediacy to global news and people are far more interested and engaged with the rest of the world now - they understand the way the big stories connect us all. The role of channels like BBC World News is now more important than ever in that respect."

Nik Gowing, the longest-serving presenter on the channel, adds: "The world is such a different place to the one we often struggled to cover both editorially and technologically in 1991; the latest upheavals in Egypt, Libya and across the Middle East are the latest examples of the dramatic pace at which huge stories now develop, and the swift impact they have globally. We give our large audience an international.

perspective with the analysis they want. Above all, the new go-anywhere digital technologies and social media have created the exciting ability to bring them the news from almost anywhere and, in most cases, instantaneously."