BBC World Service Dot What?

I've blogged before that there seems to be an uneasy relationship between BBC sites that are publicly funded like www.bbc.co.uk and international facing operations like BBC America or BBC World News. The latter site, and the TV channel it refers to has recently been rebranded from the old BBC World to the new BBC World News, although I see that the website simply points to the old bbcworld.com domain for the time being.

This morning came news that 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.

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.

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.

Hang on. Even the BBC World Service seems confused. It hasn't won any awards for www.bbcworldservice.co.uk because that site no longer exists. It is http://www.BBCWorldservice.com as we are reminded on air at least twice an hour. Since this site is not commercial, I wonder how many people type in .co.uk and are surprised to get nothing. I am sure that the promo dept doesn't want to shout "dot.co.uk" but I do think they should at least link it through. Update: It is registered and now linked (see comments).