Re: [Swprograms] What does it mean to be a public service international broadcaster?

[jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Staying on the unicycle....

----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Cuff <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:15 am
Subject: Re: [Swprograms] What does it mean to be a public service international broadcaster?

> Likewise interspersing...
> 
> 
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:42:39 -0500, John Figliozzi
> <jfiglio1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > The difficulty in all this--and the overwhelming pressure 
> brought to
> > bear by the social bias favoring the commercial sector in 
> general--is
> > amply demonstrated by the slow drift toward commercialism 
> [including]  the pursuit of
> > programming on the basis (increasingly) of larger general audiences
> > rather than specific constituencies.
> 
> Is this pursuit of larger general audiences wrong?  After all, it
> could be argued that those audiences are attractive targets because
> they, too, have been abandoned or underserved by commercial
> broadcasters...or that the pursuit of larger general audiences
> reflects better stewardship of public resources.

No and I didn't mean to insinuate that it was.  But there's this tendency to look at this as an "either/or" thing.  The two approaches are not mutually exclusive as long as the service isn't structured that way.

> 
> Can we extend the line of thinking to public service international
> broadcasting?  Many here (myself included) believe the BBCWS has "gone
> off the tracks" -- that it is making decisions incompatible with its
> public service status.
> 
> The BBCWS in English serves two audiences -- the expat audience and
> the global non-British English-speaking audience.  Do the differing
> needs of these two audiences warrant different strategies?

Well, personally, I think the WS has largely abandoned any sort of special services for its expat communities (maybe with the exceptions of the Falklands and Caribbean services.  You don't hear much British news anymore, though some programs like People and Politics probably have that orientation to some degree.

I think where they've gone off the rails primarily is in their distribution strategy.  They think it's ok that most of the 5 million in NA only hear a newscast now and then.  A newscast does not a service make.  If you want impact (IMHO), you want the listener that stays with the service for hours on end (an exaggeration I make for effect)--not the casual run-in.

We can talk about their recent penchant to give...say...the Michael Jackson trial and stories like it more attention than they deserve; but that's a nit compared to the distribution issue.
 
> Aside from coming across as inconvenienced shortwave radio enthusiasts
> and nostalgia buffs, how do we convince those who oversee the BBCWS
> that their train has gone off the tracks?

I don't think we can.  I know that's defeatist, but it would take a wholesale change in their leadership in my estimation.  This train seems determined to transform itself into a competitor in the commercial broadcast environment.  If the employees inside can't muster enough effective opposition (or a mutiny) to force change, what chance do longtime listeners have?  It's not like the effort hasn't been there.  And--truly--I think BBC management's characterization of us is disingenuous.  They know the complainers are more than just hobbyists or traditionalists.  But it suits their purposes to frame us that way.
> 
> > 
> > In other words, if you believe (and can get the larger society to
> > believe) that commercial broadcasting can and will produce 
> everything> that public broadcasting traditionally has and still 
> to some extent
> > does now (whether that belief is supportable by fact or not), 
> then what
> > reason is there for public broadcasting to exist?
> 
> Maybe what we can do is point out that the major media choices --
> reflecting commercial standards and policies -- have resulted in
> distortions as to what is reported -- in fact, making society less
> "world-aware".
> 
> How do we take some of these principles -- which are based on the
> structure of the USA radio marketplace -- and apply these back to the
> BBCWS (and others) to help them see the errors of their ways?

I'll have to come back to this.  Got to mull it over a bit more.
> 

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