Outlet profile

BBC Science Focus

UK popular-science magazine (non-partisan, science-focused)

Owned byPublished by Our Media, a Bristol-based specialist publisher formed in 2023 from titles Immediate Media sold off. The BBC brand name is used under licence. Immediate Media, which is owned by Germany's Hubert Burda Media, previously published it. Searches did not confirm Our Media's exact ownership structure. It is described as run by former Origin Publishing management.

FundingCommercial: magazine subscriptions and newsstand sales, advertising, digital revenue (including Apple News), and events. It does not receive licence-fee money.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The magazine began as Focus, first published in December 1992 by Gruner + Jahr, and was later handled by Nat Mags. BBC Magazines took it over in mid-2005 and renamed it BBC Focus. BBC Magazines later became Immediate Media, which Hubert Burda Media bought in 2017 for about £270 million. The title was rebranded BBC Science Focus to make its subject clearer. In 2023 Immediate Media sold several smaller titles, including this one, to the newly formed Our Media, which now publishes it from Bristol. It is a mainstream UK popular-science magazine that explains research, health, technology, space and the environment for general readers. Its tone follows mainstream scientific consensus, which can read as critical when administration policy conflicts with that consensus, but it is not a political outlet. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it as a credible, low-bias source. I did not find a record of notable controversies or of sustained coverage of the second Trump administration. The administration-stance label is therefore an inference from its science-only editorial focus, not from a review of its recent articles.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-11-02; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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