[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[Swprograms] Jonathan Marks on : BBC World Service Beyond Nigel Chapman
Though I just got a quiz about
BBCWS weekend's SportsWorld which
assumes we listen only on shortwave.
Subject: Critical Distance Weblog: BBC World Service Beyond Chapman
X-URL:
http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com/2009/01/bbc-world-service-beyond-chapman.html
[7]Critical Distance Weblog
Playing Devil's Advocate in the Orchestra of Change
Thursday, January 22, 2009
[8]BBC World Service Beyond Chapman
I think we're witnessing an end of an era with the departure of
[9]Nigel Chapman as Director of BBC World Service. He's been there at
WS since 2000 and will probably be best known for his renewal plan for
the world's largest international broadcaster, shift resources away
from radio and putting them into more cross-platform offering. He
brought focus by trimming the number of languages and reducing services
that had little or no audience - or had outstayed their original
purposes. You cannot run a network on nostalgia.
Chapman succeeded in writing and implementing his [10]plan for renewing
the BBC World Service, so I guess that now the mission laid out in the
document is accomplished, it is a good time to move on. It's also a
golden opportunity for the BBC World Service to make a break in
tradition. It would be refreshing if the opening speech from the next
director was from someone with a British-Commonwealth heritage and that
she could build the next stage of the World Service strategy. Time for
change at the Beeb too.
The Chapman [11]strategy starts to expire in 2010, by which time a lot
of purely radio thinking will already be severely marginalised to a
point where the "broadcast" over-the-air distribution model is too
expensive. Biting the bullet, we can conclude that digital radio DRM
has failed after 13 years of struggle - no receivers, no serious
interest from the commercial radio sector and so no point in going it
alone. The DRM experiment on 1296 kHz generates more heat than
listeners.
Audiences of 180 million who listen once a week sounds huge. But that
means 6.6 billion people do not listen to the BBC World Service, so
there's still a long way to go. International broadcast, being a niche
sector, is evolving from public broadcast into a public access model.
The BBC creates a wealth of content and offers a selection of it for
people to access via the web, IP devices, mobile, etc. In areas of the
world where there is limited access, for politicial or technical
reasons, there is still a role for the BBC to compile selections of
this content and broadcast them directly to audiences using any
relevant technology, including analogue AM in some cases.
I recently discovered some 30-25 year old tapes of BBC World Service
from the days when it was a full service network, rather than the world
news service that it has become. The presentation sounds slow by
comparison these days, but it was right for its day. They ran comedy
shows like Just a Minute - even special versions of Weekending (a
topical parody on the week's news - like rolling the NewsQuiz and Dead
Ringers into one). Continuity added comments about the weather in
London - and it was a shared experience with listeners everywhere.
Especially since 9/11, the smile has gone from World Service radio in
English, it is the serious person's information network. Which is why I
can only take so much death and disaster in small doses. Thank goodness
for the BBC i-Player or wi-fi radio and the access these bring to the
much broader range of features from BBC domestic networks - including
brilliant comedy, debate, and music. The Mac has a great program called
Radiocast which allows you build your own "World Service" mixing and
mashing radio shows broadcast from anywhere in the world and recording
it to a hard-disk for listening later on demand. I know my way around
the sites, it's shame BBC WS doesn't guide others.
World Service radio news shows themselves are in danger in being
eclipsed in many markets by BBC World News TV which adds things that
are useful while travelling. There's never any weather or travel info
on BBC WS Radio. And the radios in hotels were a myth in most cases.
Show me the businessman/woman who listens to the radio rather than
watch TV in a foreign hotel.
BBC World News TV is still in denial - that one day they will make a
real commercial business out of it. No chance at all, especially when
the ad market for those kind of networks in miniscule. BBC Arabic has
an advantage because its a three platform offering. BBC WS Radio is
hampered by restrictions on cross-promotion which could be fatal in a
cross-media world. Now that the BBC News international site is ad
funded, WS radio is becoming an island, surrounded by a sea of on-line
and video offering, none of which can be connected because of funding
rules from a bygone era.
So the next WS Director will have to move from a cross-platform
strategy to a cross-media strategy, or great audio/radio that WS is
currently making will simply disappear in the media background noise.
It is not being labelled, so it will not be found. Try and find
something that has been broadcast on the World Today or Newshour
earlier in the week. It would be a shame if some features were buried
because some World Service programmes, like Digital Planet or several
BBC WS Science shows, should also be on Radio 4 or other intelligent
speech feeds. If it works for In Business, then it works for other
genres.
On the TV front, I hope BBC World News will review its on-line
programme line-up, allowing on-line access to BBC domestic news
productions like Newsnight and Panorama. I can understand restrictions
on drama and comedy series, not on news programmes. Find a way to cross
promote with WS Radio breaking the current information apartheid. That
means building channels in the iPlayer for non-UK residents - and
experimenting with subscription models.
The procedure for Chapman's replacement has been muddled, crazy at a
time when BBC has had serious management issues at the top and cannot
seem to react fast enough to simple transparency issues. The Daily
Telegraph [12]picked up the rumour about the post not being advertised
externally. Then there was the [13]letter from (ex)-BBC staffers -
including former Director John Tusa - demanding that the job be thrown
open to external candidates. In the end it was - but the window of
opportunity is so short, I suppose they already know who they want. The
[14]job description is strange reading in many countries, since
editorial responsibility is mixed with financial and strategic
responsibility towards government - in short the job is becoming a
mission impossible. And there seems to be huge overlap with the
responsibilities of Richard Sambrook, to whom the WS Director has to
report. To restore credibility, the function needs to create the
workspace and platform for a world class cross-media news network - but
the editorial responsibility should rest with Sambrook - a bit like the
DG and Deputy DG roles they created domestically for Mark Thompson and
Mark Byford.
Applications close for the DG post on January 25th. I wonder if the
board will find the right woman for the job? Now that really would be
World News.
Posted by Jonathan Marks at [15]1/22/2009 08:13:00 AM
Labels: [16]"BBC World Service" "Nigel Chapman" "Richard Sambrook" "
Director World Service"
0 comments:
[17]Post a Comment
References
Visible links
9. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/worldservice/nigelchapman.shtml
10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/2010/docs/051025_fullspeech.pdf
11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/2010/docs/051025_fullspeech.pdf
12. http://tinyurl.com/crh53o
13. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3902501/Letters-British-manufacturing-and-the-recession.html
14. http://tinyurl.com/apoopc
15. http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com/2009/01/bbc-world-service-beyond-chapman.html
16. http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com/search/label/%22BBC%20World%20Service%22%20%22Nigel%20Chapman%22%20%22Richard%20Sambrook%22%20%22%20Director%20World%20Service%22
17. https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5972592&postID=332932029418520592
_______________________________________________
Swprograms mailing list
Swprograms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms
To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to swprograms-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.