system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How exactly is the BBC publicly funded and how can it support its massive international presence with British funds?

The question may be inherently incorrect due to my lack of understanding on the matter.
gpt
Anybody who watches broadcast television (or "almost as-broadcast", e.g. internet via streaming) in the UK has to pay for a television licence (currently £145.50 -- about US $220 -- per year). This applies *regardless of which TV stations they choose to watch*, so even if you never consume anything produced by the BBC you're still required to pay if you own a television. However, approximately 92% of the British public use *some* BBC services each month (that might be TV, radio, and/or online).

The total of all those TV licences comes to about £3.4 billion per year (around US $5 billion), and out of that the BBC funds for UK consumption 8 national television stations (and one regional one), 11 national radio stations (and nearly 30 regional ones), and one of the largest and most respected websites in the world. In return for the British public paying for the BBC in such a way, it is illegal for the BBC to carry advertisements on its domestic output, or to charge the British public in any other way for live TV/radio (although it *can* charge for DVD boxsets etc).

Outside of the UK these rules don't apply -- what's more the British public would feel somewhat upset if their money (which they have no choice but to pay) was being used to provide subsidised or free television to people in other countries. So the BBC also owns a for-profit company which sells BBC content (both entire programmes and intellectual property rights, e.g. for remakes) to other countries around the world. This company, BBC Worldwide Ltd, has global revenues of around £1.2 billion a year (about US $1.8 billion).

So to (finally!) answer your question, the BBC in total has around £4.6 billion income per year, equivalent to nearly US $7 billion. It's restricted in that some of that money *must* be spent in the UK, and some of it *must not*, but as you can imagine a media company with that sort of income is more than capable of supporting a "massive international presence".