Re: [Swprograms] Guardian article on BBCWS

[Daniel Say <say@xxxxxx>]

> The world in our hands
> 
> The BBC World Service has endured some painful changes
> but its director, Nigel Chapman, is on a mission to
> prove they were essential for its survival
> 
> Owen Gibson, Monday May 22, 2006, The Guardian 
> 
> Link(registration required):
> http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1780023,00.html
> 
> or put www.guardian.co.uk into this site I have just
> found and access it without:
> 
> Bugmenot, bypass compulsory registration:
> http://www.bugmenot.com/
> 
> Mike
> _______________________________________________
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The world in our hands

The BBC World Service has endured some painful changes but its
director, Nigel Chapman, is on a mission to prove they were
essential for its survival

Owen Gibson
Monday May 22, 2006 Guardian

There was a time when the BBC World Service, that 70-year-old
beacon of BBC values that Kofi Annan once called "perhaps the
greatest gift to the world during the [last] century", felt
under-appreciated back home. That is no longer the case, as
shown by director general Mark Thompson making the BBC's global
reputation a key plank of his argument for more licence fee
cash, and the recent government white paper that specifically
charged the corporation for the first time with "bringing the UK
to the world and the world to the UK". Yet with increased
profile comes increased scrutiny.

In a shrinking, fast-changing world where the number of media
outlets is multiplying rapidly, World Service director Nigel
Chapman has been vocal about the need for it to change. After an
expansive review last October he unveiled a controversial plan
to axe 10 language services and redirect the money into new
media and the launch of a new Arab satellite TV channel to
challenge al-Jazeera.


Announcing the changes, he seemed uncertain how they would be
received. He faced some criticism both over his negotiating
tactics with the Foreign Office, which funds the World Service
through grant in aid to the tune of #245m a year, and his choice
of services to close down.


More than six months on, Chapman is much more bullish, not least
because the 33 radio language services have just posted record
listening figures. Smashing the previous record of 153 million,
set in 2001, the total last year reached 163 million.


"I think we've handled the transition well. Of course it's been
difficult and painful for the staff involved. Change like that
is difficult to do but in some sense it does energise the
organisation because everyone starts to look up and out to the
world," he says, glancing up at the huge map on his office wall
as he does so.


"Broadly speaking, we won the argument that the World Service
had to change to be as successful in this new century as it had
in the past 70 years." Several factors came together to boost
listening figures, he believes. Firstly, the level of conflict
around the world has led to audiences tending to turn to trusted
news sources. Second, the "realignment" of the English service
to focus more on news and modernising the sound and style of the
services have both paid dividends. And the increase in FM
distribution on local partner stations, making the World Service
available on the sonically superior waveband for one in three
listeners as opposed to its traditionally crackling shortwave
home, has also helped.


Not only that, Chapman believes he has won the argument that the
World Service needs to look forward and, increasingly, will be a
"tri-media" organisation across radio, new media and television.
"Increasingly, in the developing world and the developed world
you need to be offering services not only through radio but
through the internet and maybe through satellite and cable as
well."


Political situation


The Arab television service, its first stab at an international
TV channel since the collapse of a similar joint venture in
1996, will launch in 2007. Chapman quashes claims that the new
channel is too late to the party or will be seen as a tool of
the British government. If the BBC wanted to maintain its
audiences and relevance in the region it was the only way
forward, he argues.


"You're building on a legacy where the Arabic services on radio
have got a very good reputation for impartiality and fairness
going back 70 years," he maintains. "If we're a Foreign Office
tool, how come in every market we measure we're seen as a more
trusted source of information than anybody else? Sorry, the
evidence does not support that thought for one moment."


This confidence has led Chapman and his team to consider further
television channels and video services. A full-scale Persian
channel in Farsi is a serious option, particularly as the
Iranian government will not allow the BBC on to the FM dial and
recently began blocking BBCPersian.com. But Chapman warns that
further expansion into satellite television can only be funded
by extra money, firmly ruling out any further radio closures.
"Your resources can only go so far. If working with them [the
Foreign Office] we think it's strategically important to expand
television in an area then we are going to need some help. You
can't be doing lots of television on the cheap and retain the
brand quality we've built in over 70 years."


He talks about the need to "flex" the various platforms, making
judgments based on a complex range of factors including the
political situation, take-up of satellite TV and the internet,
and maintaining a balance between reach and targeting key
opinion formers.


In Africa, for example, a television channel is low on the list
of priorities but it might make sense to launch mobile services
in countries like Kenya. Meanwhile, he anticipates greater
co-operation and crossover with BBC News and its international
facing web operation and BBC World, the loss- making commercial
international channel. Those three legs collectively come under
the responsibility of Richard Sambrook, the director of global
news.


Chapman has clearly been emboldened by the reaction to his
programme for change, both internally and externally, and the
consequent rise in status it has afforded the World Service. "We
are not seen as the brand caught in aspic stuck in a dusty
corner of Bush House, cut off from the rest of the BBC. We're
seen as a pacesetter, not someone who lags behind at the back of
the class waiting to be prodded."


He points to a period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11
when people even questioned its purpose. That's no longer the
case: "In a world of greater polarisation and conflict impartial
news and information, fair-mindedness, a diversity of views -
that's even more important," he says.


Chapman, a corporation lifer who was the first director of BBC
Online, is unequivocal about his mission and that of the World
Service. Drawing a distinction between other global news
organisations that can be "hot-tempered, intemperate and rushing
to judgment" and the BBC's commitment to "a multi-dimensional
approach that will bring a tone and a style that is about
tolerance and being aware of different points of view", he
maintains that it will be as important to this century as it was
to the last."Running through my veins is that really strong
desire to deliver that journalism of understanding. That's our
job, that's our mission and I don't apologise for it."

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