Many people think that the BBC news programs are better than those on other channels because the BBC is not a commercial company. It pays for its programs from the television license money which everyone must pay if they have a television. The BBC, which is often known as "Auntie", is the biggest news collecting operation in the world. It has the world's largest network of foreign correspondents (;). Ten percent of the BBC's annual budget is spent on news collecting, reporting and presenting. More than 1,700 people work for the BBC news service. The BBC produces more than 214 hours of news and current affairs programs for radio and television each week. Each television news program costs about PS78,000 per hour and each radio news program costs approximately PS4,800 per hour. In the UK, about 19 million people -- almost 35% of the total population, watch the BBC television news progams every day. Developments in technology are improving news collection and presentation every year. The BBC now uses special cameras in the TV news studios to film the news presenters, and captions-- the words and sentences at the bottom of the screen, are now produced automatically by computer. We can infer from the passage that the UK has a population of about    _   .
54 million 19 million 5.4 million 6.6 million