BBC’s Russian service: worth doing properly

The initial goal of postponing the closure of the Russian Features Department has not been achieved. But a review of where the WS is taking its broadcasting may yet become the subject of full debate outside the BBC.  This would allow a debate which has been the exclusive preserve of WS management to be extended to many who know well the countries to which WS still broadcasts.

Nigel Chapman, Director of the World Service until recently, has shown himself very good at this kind of management. Once persuaded of the rightness of a particular course of action, he has been comfortable pressing ahead despite the fact that a ‘one size fits all' policy is peculiarly inappropriate for the complex world in which we live.

Chapman's background in new media, an exciting area which has grown enormously in recent years, has predisposed him to favour the internet over traditional forms of broadcasting, and his ‘internet or nothing' approach has the advantage of creating a simple business model which is economical to run - all the WS websites follow the same pattern and many of the materials are centrally provided and translated.  He has, however, no real vision for what international broadcasting is about.

It is when this model meets the real world that the problems start. This brings us back to the protests over the Russian Service.  Ms Borusyak correctly analyses the appeal to the young of the internet as a means of obtaining information. She appreciates the difficulty of obtaining broadband connections outside Moscow and St Petersburg and a few other large cities, and indeed within those cities.  She might also have pointed out that the BBC is using very optimistic projections for the development of internet use in Russia. These may well prove quite wrong in the current economic climate. 

The speed with which news can appear on the website is of obvious appeal during a crisis such as the Russo-Georgian war in August last year.  However, the dramatic increase in hits was not sustained once the crisis was over, and this is a universal problem for 24/7 news delivery.

Most people are not that interested in the minutiae of evolving news stories with maximum 3-4 minute analytical materials. They prefer more thoughtful analysis a little later which might answer some of the deeper questions related to the story.  This is the reason for the success of programmes in the UK such as the BBC's ‘Panorama', C4's ‘Dispatches' and others on television and numerous similar programmes on radio, which discuss a single topic for 30 minutes or longer.

In Russia, there is not much of a tradition of the balanced, analytical current affairs programme. What there was has been lost to state control of the media, especially in television.  With the honourable exceptions of Ren-TV and Ekho Moskvy radio station, which will run long discussions of difficult topics, most stations avoid anything which might risk unpleasant repercussions. 

Creating a compelling feature programme requires more than lengthy discussion, however.  It is a craft and a skill to weave together in an interesting way an account of the events under analysis and a variety of opinions about it.  It requires expertise on the part of the producer as well as creativity to hold an audience, and therefore requires more time to produce than short, up-to-the-minute items with a few sound bites from all sides.  Russian Service features were popular with rebroadcasters because they did not have the resources to make them themselves and because they covered a wide range of topics of interest to their listeners. 

Ms Borusyak is wrong to characterise them as just about life in Britain - their range was much greater.  But it is true that to some extent they reflected a British approach to the topics, inasmuch as British experts would be used, and if necessary translated into Russian.  For example, a programme based on a new history of Russia with an interview with the author and a debate with critics might be viewed as part of life in Britain. But it is also of intense interest to listeners in Russia.

Broadcasting to Russia since the removal of jamming in 1987-8 has been a thrilling period for the broadcasters. I remember one of the first BBC feature programmes to be broadcast in the clear was a four-part series on the legacy of Stalin and Stalinism.  We were able to recruit locally-based correspondents for the first time to support news reporting.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 suddenly it was possible to hire transmitters, form partnerships and open offices in Moscow, and listening figures soared, if the audience research is to be believed.  Unfortunately there are many question marks still about audience research in Russia, and in any case polling is an inexact art as our elections have shown more than once.

The 1990s were the high point for foreign broadcasters, when relations with the Russian authorities were cordial and when state broadcasting was trying to turn itself into a public service broadcaster, aiming to be balanced, fair and independent of the government of the day. 

The war in Chechnya and the accession of Putin to the presidency transformed the situation.  Since then ever-changing media legislation has restricted broadcasters, Russian and foreign alike. Television, the dominant medium by far, has been brought under total state control.  The foreign broadcasters were increasingly squeezed by an official policy depriving them of access to FM frequencies and to partnerships with local Russian stations.  Ms Borusyak agrees that the internet, while open now, is not immune from closure in the future, and she might have included the information that some sites have already suffered the sanction of temporary closure and the Chechen opposition site has never been allowed access in Russia.

The weakness of the BBC management's position lies in its conviction that one solution is the way forward, and in the failure to recognise the inadequacy of its broadcasting efforts.  In itself developing the internet offer is a good idea. But Ms Borusyak has identified the nub of the problem: the BBC has not consulted its audiences properly.  The internet will reach only a particular part of the potential audience in Russia. Beyond the few cities well served by the internet are vast numbers living in nine time zones. There is no attempt to reach even those nearest to European Russia. 

This decision assumes that only a relatively young audience in a few cities is ‘worth' seeking out.  Certainly, broadcasting to the others is not easy, or cheap.  Short wave is popular mainly with those who have always listened that way. Attracting new audiences requires experiments with satellite delivery and digital short and medium wave by encouraging the production of appropriate cheap radio sets,  as well as, for the time being, medium wave transmitter hires in neighbouring countries.  Digitisation of broadcasting is planned for 2015 and it is reported that no more analogue licences are being sold.  The legislation has not yet been passed and how this will impact on foreign broadcasters is unknown.

There are political implications as well as cost.  The BBC has so far avoided the discussion of why the British taxpayer should pay for the new model of international broadcasting at all.  Russia is not an enemy, but there are clearly vast areas of misunderstanding.  The broadcasters themselves and friends of WS believe that the purpose of broadcasting is to support peaceful, good-neighbourly relations by being open about oneself and balanced and fair about the world around one, thereby increasing knowledge and understanding as widely as possible. If this is the case, then an internet news service with its limited reach, even with audio and video clips, is not enough.  This applies around the world where WS is moving more and more staff out of London ‘closer to audiences'. 

A presence in the local area is essential. But the main focus should still be London, due to  the dual problems of vulnerability to pressure (a fact, not imaginary) and the loss of ‘BBC feel' because of the effect of being sucked into the local journalistic environment with its assumptions, attitudes and styles.  The eastern Europeans whose services have all been closed would point out that they were first moved out, then shut down. 

If it is considered strategically necessary to broadcast to Russia, it should be done properly.  The Middle East is considered worthy of radio, including radio features, and television broadcasts. Iran and neighbouring Farsi speakers, as Nigel Chapman himself has proclaimed with pride, are offered the full range of radio genres - news, current affairs, features with serious content and entertainment, and television in Farsi.  Why, one wonders, should Russia have less?