Broadcasting and the Internet for development and democracy1
More than eighty years after the world's first station was founded, radio is still the most pervasive, accessible, affordable, and flexible mass medium available, especially in the developing world.While the benefits offered by the Internet are many, its dependence on a telecom infrastructure means that they are only available to a few. Radio is much more pervasive, accessible and affordable. Blending the two could be an ideal way of ensuring that the benefits accruing from the Internet have wider reach.
Low production and distribution costs have made it possible for radio to focus on local issues, to interpret the world from local perspectives, and to speak in local languages.3 In Latin America, for example, while most radio is produced locally or nationally, only 30% of television programming comes from the region; with 62% produced in the United States.4 Quechua, a language spoken by some 10 million people in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, is all but absent from the region's television screens, but in Peru alone an estimated 180 radio stations regularly offer programmes in the language.
Radio also has a developed infrastructure that must be the envy of any developing country telecom operator. In Sri Lanka, one person in 500 has access to the Internet, but virtually everyone has access to a radio. Bolivia had fewer than five telephone lines per hundred people in 1996, but more than 57 radio receivers per hundred. In sub-Saharan Africa there are 20 radio receivers for every 100 people, but less than two telephone lines. With per capita GNPs of $800, $970 and $880 respectively, we should not expect that the North American model of individual access to telecommunications will enable a substantial percentage of Bolivians, Sri Lankans and Africans to gain access to the global knowledge infrastructure in the near future.
Radio has a special importance for rural and marginalised urban communities. In addition to being the only accessible mass medium, it also fulfils a role as a "community telephone" with several hours a day reserved for broadcasting personal messages, birth and death announcements, invitations to parties, ordering food and supplies from the store in the next village, calling for emergency medical assistance and even for receiving personal medical advice from the local doctor. In many rural areas radio is the only source of information about market prices for crops, and thus the only defence against speculators. It is used in agricultural extension programmes, is a vehicle for both formal and informal education, and plays an important role in the preservation of local language and culture.
While in some parts of the world we take radio for granted, seeing it as little more than an accessory for an automobile, in others it fulfils a variety of roles: it is the only mass medium that most people have access to; it is a "personal" communication medium fulfilling the function of a community telephone; and it is a school, the community's first point of contact with the global knowledge infrastructure.
The medium offers tremendous potential to promote development and democracy and while many stations have squandered this potential, the contribution that has been made is significant. Relevant, interesting and interactive radio enables neglected communities to be heard and to participate in the democratic process. And having a say in decisions that shape their lives ultimately improves their living standards._________________________
Probably the three most important characteristics contributing to radio’s strength as a medium for development are its pervasiveness, its local nature and its ability to involve communities in an interactive communication process.
The Internet is also characterised by its interactivity, and, technically, its potential in this area is far greater than radio’s. However, if, as many believe, better access to information, education, and knowledge would be the best stimulant for development, the Internet’s primary development potential is as a point of access to the global knowledge infrastructure. The danger, now widely recognised, is that access to knowledge increasingly requires a telecom infrastructure that is inaccessible to the poor. The digital divide is not about technology, it is about the widening gaps between the developed and developing worlds and the info-rich and the info-poor.
The excluded far outnumber the connected and even while the Internet is bringing about profound changes to the world, the vast majority of the world's population has no direct access to it (much less any influence over the nature of the changes it brings with it). Of an estimated 333 million people with access to the Internet (barely 5% of the world's population), more than 75% are in North America or Europe, home to 10% of the world's population. A handful of Asia/Pacific countries account for another 20%. Latin America accounts for less than 5% and Africa less than 1%.5 In most developing countries less than 1% of the population has direct access to the technology that is changing the world. With the growth of the global knowledge economy there is a very real danger that the ever-widening gap between the info-rich and the info-poor may obliterate any chance of a more equitable world order.
Switching our focus back to the media we can see that this sector is also experiencing a series of disturbing changes, many of them brought on by the same set of factors that are behind the rise of telecom – liberalisation, privatisation and technological change. However, the nature of the changes is significantly different. While liberalisation and privatisation have created new opportunities for new players in the telecom sector, for radio the increased competition often simply means a larger number of stations chasing after the same number of potential listeners, and the same slice of the national advertising expenditure pie. There may be new players, but there are no new markets.
Thus, while for telecom operators the solution has been to expand into new markets and offer new services, for broadcasters the only obvious option is to reduce expenses by producing cheaper programming or by sharing production costs over a network, at the expense of local content and alternative perspectives._____________________
In many broadcast markets the drive to reduce or rationalise expenses has led to increased concentration of ownership and control. Seeking to spread production costs over an ever greater number of stations, larger networks buy up independent stations and smaller networks and then use relatively inexpensive digital satellite technologies to link them all together. In the United States, for example, this tendency has been so marked that even the Federal Communications Commission has expressed concern.6
In South America, hundreds of radio stations that began broadcasting when the sector was liberalised in the early years of this decade have since become part of national and even international networks. In Peru, for example, three satellite networks, broadcasting from the capital via repeater stations throughout the country, have more audience share in the provinces than the forty largest provincial stations put together.7 In Argentina and Brazil the national multimedia empires of El Clarin and O Globo have built satellite radio networks that have transformed hundreds of independent local radio stations into repeater stations offering programmes produced in the national capital. The economies of scale enjoyed by these networks mean that the programming is of high technical quality, but the cost is the loss of choice, of local information and of alternative perspectives.
It is ironic that the convergence, liberalisation and privatisation that were expected to open the broadcast spectrum to competition and a greater diversity of voices, are in fact bringing about a broadcast environment increasingly characterised by concentration of ownership and control in fewer hands and the exclusion of local and alternative voices.
At the same time, the benefits offered by the Internet are only available to a few. As valuable as they are, no telecentre or call centre will ever be able to reach so many so easily as radio can. If radio continues its decline, and the Internet continues to rise, the gap between those who have knowledge and information and those who do not will grow.
By way of example, local radio stations in rural communities often broadcast the prices paid in various national markets for agricultural products produced in the community. This enables farmers to grow the crops that will provide them with the best return, to sell them crops in markets that pay well, and to avoid being defrauded by wholesale buyers and speculators. If the local radio station's programming is replaced by network programming from the capital, the need for price information for local crops may be ignored. At the same time, there are a number of well-intentioned donor-supported projects to put this information on the Internet. Since speculators from the city are far more likely to have access to the technology, the end result might be better informed speculators, and more vulnerable farmers.
However, if the local radio station has access to the Internet, and thus to a cheap way of gathering information about prices in national markets, then it will be able to make sure the information gets to the farmers. In this case, radio may the best way of covering the last mile of the telecom infrastructure.
None of this is to take away from the value of the Internet and the necessity of expanding it in whatever way possible – direct connection from home or office, telecentres and commercial call centres offering email access are essential.
Over the past few years a number of experiments have begun to develop ways of blending independent local radio and the Internet. Some of these were presented and discussed at a conference, Converging Responsibility: Broadcasting and the Internet in Developing Countries9, in Kuala Lumpur in September, 1999. Similar experiments, but this time from Latin America and the Caribbean, where broadcasting has developed in a very different way from Asia, will be discussed at a Tampa, Florida meeting in September 2000, Mixed Media/Medios Enteros: Broadcasting and the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean.10
Some of these projects have sought to introduce more diversity and a democratic environment into radio programming by using the Internet as a distribution network among independent broadcasters for news and programmes. Examples of this include: two projects in Indonesia that have played an important role in preparing their society for that country's recent experiments with democracy, Kantor Berita Radio 68H - http://www.isai.or.id, and Local Radio Meeting Point - http://www.un.or.id/unesco/localrad/frontpage.htm; the Panos Institute's Banque de Programmes On Line, located in Mali with correspondents in twenty francophone African countries - http://www.oneworld.org/panos_audio/; Latin America's Agencia Informativa Púlsar- http://www.pulsar.org.ec, and InterWorld Radio, a partnership of the Panos Institute and oneworld.net that provides daily radio features for download and rebroadcast by radio stations - http://www.interworldradio.org/.
Others, such as Sri Lanka's Kotmale Community Radio - http://www.kirana.lk, seek to address the problem of the growing gap between the info-rich and info-poor by providing collective access to the knowledge resources available on the Internet -- using the radio as a sort of people's gateway, making the Internet's vast resources available to rural and marginalised communities.
At the heart of these Next-generation Radio projects is the simple but powerful combination of some of the most important characteristics of radio and the Internet.
Radio reaches more than 90% of households in Latin America and the Caribbean and it does so from local transmitters, with local programs, and in the language and the accent of its community.
The Internet contributes a vast store of knowledge, news and opinion and offers hitherto unimaginable possibilities for affordable and accessible networking.
Next-generation Radiocan do much more than extend the reach of the Internet beyond the less than 1% of the population that currently has access in most developing countries. It also serves a useful role as part search-engine, part librarian, and part journalist, sifting through tetrabytes of information to find what is useful and then interpreting it - making useful information meaningful for their communities.
Like Next-generation Internet, Next-generation Radio isn't about technology. It is about the policies, strategies and tensions that determine how technology is used and whose interests it serves; it is about creative new ways of approaching the problems associated with the digital divide; and it is about the new alliances and networks that are being formed to promote a vision of a knowledge society that favours democracy and development.
Using the above themes as a point of departure, the participants of the Mixed Media/Medios Enteros conference will address a wide variety of questions, such as:
1. Part of this paper was previously published as "Radio Broadcasting and the Internet: Converging for development and democracy", in the journal Voices, Vol. 3, No. 3, December 1999, Bangalore, India.
2. Bruce Girard was organiser and co-chair of the conference Converging Responsibility: Broadcasting and the Internet in Developing Countries, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 1999 and is organising the conference Mixed Media/Medios Enteros: Broadcasting and the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean, Tampa, USA, September 2000.
3. While there is a trend toward centralisation of production in national and regional centres, most radio programming remains local with very little from outside Latin America itself.
4. UNDP Human Development Report 1999, p. 34.
5. Source - NUA Internet Surveys, June 2000 http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html. Estimates of the number of people with access to the Internet vary widely depending on methodology and definitions used. NUA's figures, based on a compilation of dozens of individual surveys, attempt to measure the number of people who accessed the Internet at least once in the previous three months. NUA's methodology is described at http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/methodology.html.
6. In 1999 the FCC introduced a new class of low power FM radio stations (100 watts) and requested comment on the possibility of establishing a "microradio" class (1-10 watts). In its request for comments on the proposal, the FCC wrote, "The Commission's goals are to provide new opportunities for community-oriented radio broadcasting, foster opportunities for new radio broadcast ownership and promote additional diversity in radio voices and program services…" The National Association of Broadcasters responded with what FCC Chairman William Kennard called "a systematic campaign of misinformation and scare tactics" that, as of March 2000, looked as if it would result in a Congressional challenge to the FCC decision.
7. From a survey by the Organización Peruana de Radio (OPERA). It remains to be seen what will happen in the newly liberalisd broadcast sectors of some Asian and African countries, but in at least some cases the tendency appears to be similar to Latin America, with an initial boom followed by consolidation.
8. Next-generation Internet (NGI) is commonly used to refer to the next phase of development of the Internet, a phase that will radically change the Internet and its role in society. It very broadly refers not only to technologies and systems, but also policies, laws, strategies, expectations and uses. For a discussion see "Understanding Next-generation Internet: An overview of developments", Anthony M. Rutkowski, in Telecommunications Policy, Vol. 24, Nos. 6/7, July/August 2000 http://tpeditor.com/contents/2000/rutkowski.htm.
9. See the conference website at http://www.comunica.org/kl/
11. In addition to its Spanish-language news service, Púlsar also offered a service in Quechua, the most important indigenous language in the region. While this service was discontinued after less than a year, it was a valuable experiment in the establishing of a full-audio minority language radio network via the Internet.