material most suitable for the service in each zone. The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good.Transcribed from recording on World Service 75th Anniversary DVD; full extract transmitted as part of opening program – the Reith Global Debate – of the 'Free to Speak' 75th anniversary season This address was read out five times as the BBC broadcast it live to different parts of the world. On 3 January 1938 the first foreign-language service was launched—in Arabic. Programmes in German, Italian and French started on 27 September 1938, and by the end of 1942, the BBC had started broadcasts in all major European languages. As a result, the Empire Service was renamed the BBC Overseas Service in November 1939, supplemented by the addition of a dedicated BBC European Service from 1941. Funding for these services—known administratively as the External Services of the BBC—came not from the domestic licence fee but from government grant-in-aid (from the Foreign Office budget). The External Services broadcast propaganda during the Second World War of 1939–1945. Its French service also sent coded messages to the French Resistance. George Orwell broadcast many news bulletins on the Eastern Service during the Second World War. By the end of the 1940s the number of broadcast languages had expanded and reception had improved, following the opening of a relay in Malaya and of the Limassol relay in Cyprus in 1957. On 1 May 1965 the service took its current name of BBC World Service. It expanded its reach with the opening of the Ascension Island relay in 1966, serving African audiences with a stronger signal and better reception, and with the later relay on the Island of Masirah in Oman. In August 1985 the service went off-air for the first time when workers went on strike in protest at the British government's decision to ban a documentary featuring an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin. Subsequently, financial pressures decreased the number and the types of services offered by the BBC. Audiences in countries with wide access to Internet services have less need for terrestrial radio. Broadcasts in German ended in March 1999, after research showed that the majority of German listeners tuned into the English-language service. Broadcasts in Dutch, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Malay stopped for similar reasons. Twenty-first century On 25 October 2005, the BBC announced that broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian,