The Future for Radio Veritas

It is good to be here with you, to meet old friends and to make new ones. I have had a long relationship with Radio Veritas. I first visited Manila in 1987 and over the years have kept in regular contact with Father Tai and others at the station. I was at their conference last August when I spoke about what audience research tells us about the audiences. I am very pleased now to be able to continue this relationship.

When Father Steegmann invited me, he posed these four questions:

But, I wonder whether these are the right questions. If they are, are they the first questions we need to ask? Other questions may come first.

And then I have to ask: Can I answer all these questions? And the answer has to be No! You have to decide what you want to achieve. What I do know is that you do need to be ambitious for the Church and its mission. But you also need to be realistic and use data from the areas into which you seek to communicate.

What I can attempt to answer are as follows:

I need to make another point, and one that I hope you will readily understand. I am often asked this question "Will people going on listening to shortwave. It is not really the right question. People listen to radio and they watch TV. Nobody listens to shortwave. Just as they don't listen to FM, or AM, of UHF or digital. People listen to radio programmes and they watch TV programmes. The delivery system is a means to an end. It is not the end itself.

Well, OK you may say but will they still use shortwave? This question about shortwave is often asked. It is assumed by many that shortwave is old fashioned and that in the age of satellite, digitization, the Internet and other new technologies, it must be in decline. This assumption is based on supposition. The evidence is mixed. And seems to point in different directions.

Let us look first at the strengths and weaknesses of the medium or means of delivery.

Shortwave: Strengths

My former boss at the BBC World Service John Tusa once said that if shortwave had been invented today, its great strengths would be noticed a little bit more.

Shortwave: Weaknesses

Shortwave: The Future

Some Facts

It is the time for strategies in communications to and in the region. If the church needs to communicate effectively in the region it certainly needs to consider television. And the steady deregulation of broadcasting is opening many great opportunities for the church-even in "closed" countries both in radio and TV. Radio Veritas like all international broadcasters needs to develop different and appropriate strategies for each market. They are all different.

Should the church pull out of radio? I don't think that this would be sensible. In some areas, radio may not be the best way to reach people. But the strength of TV in Asia does not mean that the role for radio has ended. There is no evidence that the need for services like Radio Veritas is any less than it was, say, ten or twenty years ago. But international radio needs to adapt and change.

Evidence from Audience Research

What do we know from audience research? In Asia, there has been a steady decline in radio listening throughout the nineties in most countries. But the interesting and encouraging thing to note is that international radio that has adapted and developed appropriate strategies has enjoyed continued audience attachment and even growth. The BBC, for example, has many more listeners in Asia than it had ten years ago. The international radio stations that have lost listeners seem to have done so for two reasons. They have cut back on shortwave delivery without finding successful alternatives, and their programmes have not adapted to changing circumstances. Radio Veritas has lost listeners in some areas where it was formerly successful. This must have reasons that have to do with content as well as means of delivery.

Radio as a medium has gone into a steady decline in all Asia countries. TV now reaches more people, even in most rural areas. Some international radios on shortwave have lost audience. But some have not and where there may have been a decline in shortwave used, this has been more than made up by gains through local rebroadcasting. Rebroadcasting via local stations has maintained or increased some stations' audiences in some countries. Some believe that the Internet provides a new way of reaching people. But remember, the Internet still reaches less than 1% almost everywhere. Moreover, remember the crucial weakness of the Internet. The more users you have, the more it will cost you! If you have more than a few thousand trying to listen to you in the Internet, then your problems really start!

Some Data From Recent Surveys in the Region

I have taken some recent surveys done in the region for the BBC World Service. These are all from representation sample surveys of the adult (age 15+) populations.

 

 

 

The messages provided by these data are quite clear.

Radio has declined everywhere relative to TV
There are still audiences however for international radio and in some cases there can
be growth, even on radio.


How Many Have Access to Shortwave?

In the next chart I taken data form recent surveys to show the level of access to shortwave in the region. These figures show the percentage of radio household that have at least one shortwave radio set. The figures do not show the percentage of households that have a shortwave radio. In some countries radio ownership is quite low - in India for example it is less than 50%. But in Indian Households with at least one radio, most are capable of receiving shortwave signals.

Asia and Australia	% age of radio households with shortwave
Bangladesh	83
India (Urban)	98
India (Bihar)	99
India (Haryana)	86
India (HP)	96
India (MP)	86
India (Maharashra)	76
India (Punjab)	81
India (TamilNadu)	93
India (UP & Delhi)	95
Indonesia	74
Malaysia	23
Pakistan	38
Sri Lanka	85
Vietnam	11
Australia	32

The next chart shows the data in a different way - comparing household access to shortwave across all regions of the world:

	Average Household penetration of shortwave
	%
Asia	36
Australia & Pacific	34
Former Soviet Union	50
Sub-Saharan Africa	63
North Africa and Middle East	55
North America and Caribbean	11
Central and South America	26
Europe	56

But who listens to international radio on shortwave? The next chart summarises the data for the whole world, showing the very different levels of use of shortwave for listening to any international radio on shortwave.

Very Low Less than1%	Low Between 1 and 5%	Moderate Between 5 And 10%	High Between 10 and 30%	Very High Over 30%
Jamaica	Zimbabwe	Slovakia	Ethiopia	Cameroon (U)
USA	Egypt	Barbados	Ivory Coast (U)	Kenya
China	Jordan	Ecuador	Ghana	Nigeria
Japan	Bulgaria	Azerbaijan	Mozambique	Sudan
Australia	Macedonia	Belarus	Senegal	Tanzania
Malaysia	Poland	India	Zambia
Thailand	Romania	Sri Lanka	Albania
Singapore	Turkey	Vietnam	Serbia & Montenegro
Philippines	Mexico		Guyana
Korea	Peru		Georgia
Japan	Trinidad		Bangladesh
Taiwan	Estonia		Pakistan
	Kyrghyzstan		Nepal
	Latvia
	Lithuania
	Ukraine
	Uzbekistan
	Russia
	Indonesia

Broadcasting Trends

There are three major trends in broadcasting that we all need to take account of. They are all about equally important. They are:

Each interacts with the other. None of them is dominant as an influence. The importance of new technology needs no emphasis from me. My problem is always to get people to realize and remember that new technologies never guarantee whether people will adopt them. Consumer behaviour is vital to watch and understand. And we can easily forget the enormous importance of changes in regulation. Only a few years ago the media of the region were dominated by state monopolies. These still exist in many countries, but they are gradually giving way to more or less liberal regimes whereby private radio and TV stations are being licensed to operate.

Future Strategies

There is less need now to tune to international shortwave radio. The future may increasingly lie in local broadcasting through:

Shortwave's role will continue, especially for "closed" countries, and for areas not reached by other means.

Summary of Options for International Broadcasting

I end with a list of the main choices of delivery which are now available. I have not covered all of these, but I think that they all well-known to people in the broadcasting business. Each has its own qualities and merits. A combination of these may well be essential in the future if audiences are to be reached. What is probably certain is that no single means is likely to be sufficient.