Lessons in media change from top BBC manRichard Porter, the head of BBC global news, was in South Africa recently to attend a conference on broadcasting. Porter, whose division includes the BBC World Service (in English), BBC World News satellite TV channel and the international BBC News international website, told Bizcommunity.com how his people are adopting new platforms, integrating radio, TV and online plus responding to audience demands for more breaking news - and why he's more concerned about BBC World News being the most-trusted broadcaster on the planet, rather than the most-watched. Richard Porter, head of BBC global news We all know the BBC World News Service as the great post-war radio service that covered Africa so comprehensively, and many South Africans listened to it on short wave during the apartheid years to get accurate information about our own country. But where is the World Service today? The BBC has been broadcasting to Africa for nearly 80 years but we don't think of ourselves as a heritage brand. We think that the things that made us relevant and important in people's lives over a long period are still as relevant today, so the issues for us of trust and having broadcasts which are impartial and accurate and fair and trying to the best they possibly can be - those are values that are as relevant today as they were many, many years ago. And [they] still make us relevant to a market where there is exploding choice and competition and where people are looking to who they can trust and who they can turn to to produce high-quality services of the kind that we do. So I think the basis of what we do is the same as it always has been but what we have to actually do is different. We have to adapt to changing technology, obviously. We have to be where the audience is and, increasingly, the audience is in different places to where we've been used to. You mentioned short wave - that's a much smaller proportion of our broadcasting in radio than it has been. And obviously we're expanding rapidly on digital platforms... Radio is still a very significant platform for us... With the World Service (English) globally, we've had an extremely good year. Audiences are up more than 10% for the year and some of our biggest audiences do come from the African market. And TV and online are similarly expanding, so the evidence is that there is more demand. So how does one get the World Service these days - not purely on short wave? So what is the audience in Africa - millions of people? Why are your audiences up around the world, do you think? So obviously, the advent of Al Jazeera hasn't dented the audience for BBC World News [satellite TV] channel. There's obviously room for a lot of natural growth. They say, themselves, that they're bringing the voice of the south to the north... We aim to bring a global perspective. We don't represent any national interest or any commercial interest - and I think we bring all those years of learning and experience that enable us to do the job as well as we do do it. The measures we look for - more than audience size - are reputation and trust. I'm more concerned about being the most-trusted broadcaster than being the most-watched broadcaster. So, looking at the BBC World News channel, what do you think you have done well over the past year in terms of journalism? The other thing we've done in the last 18 months is to modernise the channels, to make them look more contemporary, to make them more accessible - in response to audiences saying that that was one of our weaker points. I think it [all] feels fresher and brighter and better-presented. What have been the main challenges, would you say? I would imagine so, considering the size of the BBC. Breaking all that content down into the different channels must be tricky. I really like the BBC breaking news Twitter feed (@BBCBreaking), where it really only does updates on big, breaking international stories. How many reporters do you have out there? Hundreds of people? So would the BBC World News people also work for the World Service? OK, South Africa's [public] broadcaster brought TV and radio news people together a while ago and now a key thing is to converge with online. Is this also a big thing for you? But we've certainly gone down a route of more integration in production [at the BBC] and will continue to do that even more. So when we move to our new news headquarters building next year in central London, that will bring together people from different platforms and all the language services, as well as the English services. It will give us opportunities to collaborate and demonstrate what the BBC is capable of in ways that we haven't been able to do before. For more:
About Gill Moodie: @grubstreetSAGill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) is a freelance journalist, media commentator and the publisher of Grubstreet (www.grubstreet.co.za). She worked in the print industry in South Africa for titles such as the Sunday Times and Business Day, and in the UK for Guinness Publishing, before striking out on her own. Email Gill at gill@grubstreet.co.za and follow her on Twitter at @grubstreetSA.
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