BBC World News goes upmarket with move to £1bn London headquarters

BBC World News, the corporation's 24-hour global news channel, began broadcasting from New Broadcasting House on Monday, with an on-screen rebrand and relaunched schedule aiming for higher quality production values.

It will be the first of the BBC's news channels to air from New Broadcasting House, the corporation's central London headquarters extensively refurbished at a cost of £1bn, and will feature new presenters including Jon Sopel in a new show and Afghanistan-born Australian Yalda Hakim.

The relaunch includes an on air rebrand, giving the channel a bright new look and a tighter focus on daily news and specific regions. The strategy behind the revamp is to improve the quality and range of output, as well as win new viewers for BBC World News, which reaches an estimated weekly global audience of 239 million and has around 3 million Facebook followers.

The aim is for the higher-quality programming on the channel to attract more viewers, particularly those attractive to upmarket advertisers and sponsors.

Over the longer term, the strategy is for BBC World News – which unlike its UK sibling the BBC News channel takes advertising – to make enough money so that some can be reinvested in the rest of the BBC News division, at a time when the corporation's finances are under pressure following the flat licence fee settlement.

Richard Porter, controller of English for BBC Global News, and his team have given the channel a better identity and more consistency in programming and presenters. Porter said the relaunch of the station known as BBC World until five years ago, is a "once in a lifetime change".

He added that research showed people trusted BBC World News but the issue was, "described internally as the Bran Flakes challenge, it's good for you but not necessarily something you enjoy".

"A lot of the work we doing is about just making it a more attractive proposition – keeping the same editorial values ... but making it a broader appeal for what we know the audiences will come to us for," Porter said.

Hakim will be presenting and reporting on an expanded version of existing current affairs programme Our World, which Porter hopes "will be visible to UK audiences as well; an example of that investment coming back into the UK". BBC World News also broadcasts BBC1's Panorama.

The channel lineup will also include existing regulars such as BBC1 bulletin newsreaders George Alagiah and Mishal Husain, plus Lyse Doucet, HARDtalk presenter Stephen Sackur and a soon-to-be announced new chief business correspondent.

If one programme represents the aspirations of BBC World News, it is perhaps Changing Fortunes – a documentary airing in February about the new rich, made by independent producer Films of Record and sponsored by upmarket bank Coutts.

From Monday, for the first time it will be obvious where BBC World News is broadcast from, with some output airing against a recorded, panoramic backdrop of London, featuring the capital's distinctive red buses.

The channel is making use of New Broadcasting House's robot cameras and has the use of three studios in its new home, compared with the one small one it had at its old home in Television Centre in west London.

One of these, studio B, is the biggest in New Broadcasting House. It is home to Newsnight in the evenings, but during the day it is shared with a number of BBC World News shows, including GMT with Alagiah and Impact with Hussain.

The BBC says the budget for the channel will increase by a quarter "from a relatively low base" over the next two years.

But the fact that the BBC's UK and international journalism teams are coming together under one roof for the first time at New Broadcasting House – meaning commercial output is now sitting cheek-by-jowl with public service programming and some staff working across both – has caused some concern among those who fear a blurring of the boundaries.

The BBC insists that the budgets are kept separate, carefully regulated and audited. However, there was much consternation last year over an email sent by BBC Global News director Peter Horrocks, which laid out Global News' objectives for 2012/13, two of which were to, "exploit new commercial opportunities; maximise the value we create with our journalism".

Porter said the channel has to adhere to the BBC agreement on commercial services which include "not jeopardis[ing] the good reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brand".

Last autumn BBC World News and bbc.com came together under a single management structure within a new business called BBC Global News Ltd, which could prove crucial to the future of BBC News.

As a result of the 2010 licence fee settlement, the BBC will take on World Service funding from April 2014 and, overall, make annual savings of £700m during 2013-17, including at BBC News.

BBC Global News chief operating officer Jim Egan said when the new limited company was born its aim was not to pursue profit but, "so we can reinvest in BBC News at a time when the licence fee has been frozen".

The relaunch will mean BBC World News will record a loss for the next two years but it will have to cover its costs, Egan told MediaGuardian. He said: "It's the means to the end, it's about being best in class. It's an investment-led loss."

BBC Global News has a small surplus Egan can use. Consolidated post-tax profits last year were £2.1m, plus it has a debt facility with parent company BBC Global Holdings Ltd, "drawing funding ... at variable interest rates".

According to BBC Global News' accounts: "As at 31 March 2012 the main source of debt funding was an unsecured loan with BBC Commercial Holdings Ltd, expiring in July 2013."

Egan said his targets are "the three Rs – reach, revenue and reputation – and of those three, reputation is the most important".

In an increasingly competitive battle for distribution and audiences as media markets globalise, BBC World News is up against rivals such as CNN and al-Jazeera. The latter has just upped the stakes in the US by buying US cable network Current TV and replacing it with a new al-Jazeera America news channel.

Horrocks said: "BBC World News is one of the BBC's and Britain's most important cultural exports. Whenever someone turns on the channel round the world they should see the finest journalism, which inspires respect for the BBC's fairness and independence."