I read this, and then read through the thoughtful comments. However I wonder -- how many of those commenting are part of the audience the BBCWS is trying to reach?
Both the VOA and BBC have decided that Africa is their most important target for English language services. Further, whereas the BBC used to target an expat British audience when shortwave was the only way to get the BBC abroad, now that audience can simply tune into Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live whenever they want. Broadcasters have become much more clever (for better or worse) in identifying the target audiences they wish to serve, how they want to reach them, and what they want to say to them. And, yes, part of what we hear is a consequence of the "more productivity with less resources" movement necessitated by the UK's sharp funding cuts for the World Service. Alas, the BBC World Service of, say, 1975 or even 1990, and the BBC World Service of 2013 are equivalent in name only. And that's too bad for those of us who remember the good old days... Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:38 PM, Art Preis <[email protected]> wrote: > > Found this discussion on the mediauk website: > > http://www.mediauk.com/radio/discussions/radio-chatter/bbc-world-service-why-the-dramatic-slip-in-quality > > Glad to see that some of our sentiments are more widely shared. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
