The London-based Persian service of British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC Persian, is gradually losing its audience inside Iran, says an IRIB official in Tehran.

According to the most recent poll, the BBC Persian is less popular now among Iranian viewers than it was eight months ago, said Hassan Abedini, managing director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)'s foreign news department.
The BBC Persian leaped to fame during the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, Abedini said, adding that its fate would be the same as the Persian service of Voice of America (VOA) when it was first launched.
“The VOA TV's flaws and its biased approach to the developments in Iran caused the broadcaster to lose its credibility among the Iranian audience. This was the case for the BBC Persian, because its credibility soon faded and it lost its audience to below 25 percent since 8 months ago according to the polls”, said the IRIB official.
BBC and Britain have a clear record of inciting unrest and provoking different groups against each other in target countries.
BBC Persian TV began broadcasting news and features in mid-January aimed at audiences in the three main Persian-speaking countries -- Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
The UK government pumped funding into the new BBC World Service Farsi TV news service as part of a 70-million-pound budget earmarked for the World Service in three years.
Meanwhile, the US government also earmarked more than $21 million for VOA's Farsi TV and a further $14.7 million for Radio Farda as part of its so-called “soft topple” policy against Iran.
(Source: Press TV)
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