[custom_adv] Baran Abbasi is a BBC Persian TV reporter and presenter. She started working for BBC Persian in 2014 as a journalist and has been presenting since 2017. [custom_adv] She is also a regular contributor to BBC World TV and BBC World Service radio programmes. She previously worked as a journalist for BBC Monitoring and also Press TV. [custom_adv] The channel broadcasts live from studio 44D, a green screen studio in BBC Broadcasting House, London, for nine hours every day (13:30-22:30 GMT, 17:00-02:00 Tehran time). Studio 54D, BBC Persian's home since its launch, is currently being refurbished to enable HD programming and automation of studio equipment. [custom_adv] Repeats of news and entertainment programmes, plus visualised radio bulletins, fill the remaining 15 hours.Programmes cover a variety of genres including current affairs, documentaries, light entertainment, culture, science, business and the arts. Entertainment programmes such as BBC Sound, Sherlock, Glastonbury Festival and Top Gear are broadcast with Persian dubbing. [custom_adv] BBC Persian returned to a different frequency on Hot Bird 6 on 26 May 2010, after a period of test transmissions. After a new jamming in February 2011 on Hotbird, BBC Persian showed for some months only a test card along with the audio of their service. Since February 2012, BBC Persian has resumed broadcasting on Hotbird again. [custom_adv] Due to the ban on foreign reporters in Iran, the news service currently relies on a significant amount of user-generated content, often taken with mobile phones. [custom_adv] In 2017, Iranian authorities seized the Iranian assets of 152 contributors to BBC Persian, while in 2016 they detained former BBC World Service Trust employee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
