Two years on, what challenges lie ahead for Radio Netherlands Worldwide?

It is exactly two years ago that Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, the Dutch international service, closed down all its Dutch language radio broadcasts. That was shortly followed thereafter by all the other language departments. The organisation suffered a budget cut of 32 million Euro per annum, taking its income from 46 to 14 million Euro a year.

At the time, Radio Netherlands posted the truly superb video of the last 11 minutes of Radio Netherlands Dutch radio service, signing off with pride after 65 years of service. But that has now gone off line.

The "zero hour" moment at 20 hrs UTC on Friday May 11th 2012 was captured by an ANP press photographer and can be still be viewed here. The Dutch text tells you to hold down the left mouse key and then drag to navigate right and left.

ANP Fish Eye Photo 

Two Years Later

But Radio Netherlands Worldwide still exists, albeit housed in a smaller building next door. They've hired out the original plane-shaped broadcast centre to new tenants, the AVRO-TROS.

In order to get insights into the new mission - and the way it is being implemented, the organisation has gradually set up a new domain, rnw.org to answer the questions to those who are curious as to why, how and what Radio Netherlands is doing in the world these days.

It is clear that RNW is more of a co-production house rather than a broadcaster in its own right, relying far more on social media platforms to reach its target audience of young influentials spread across 18 countries.

They have started to post some of the results of their efforts.

Under why. the website lists the reasons for their existence today?

Without freedom of the press there is no freedom of opinion or expression. Media give citizens access to the information they need, to make choices and decisions that are important to their lives and those of others.

Media provide people with a platform to form and share their thoughts, ideas and opinions. They also contribute to increasing transparency and accountability and to combating corruption. They are one of the most effective checks and balances to misuse of government power.Only one in six people live in a country with a free press. The number of people worldwide with free access to independent media is at the lowest level in ten years.



RNW’s mission statement


RNW promotes free speech through independent journalism and the use of new media. We create thought-provoking content for young people around the globe and provide a safe space for them to tell their stories and exchange ideas.

Towards a better why

I believe the challenge RNW now faces is that this "why' statement is not really a powerful enough. It explains a situation and a possible solution. But it doesn't explain why their efforts are needed, and how they will impact peoples lives. 

And in this world where donors (in this case the Dutch government) want facts to justify everything, how will they really measure if they are successful and whether efforts need cutting back or further investment? Where are the targets?

In fact, this problem turns out to be a challenge for many organisations involved in media for development branch.

As part of the journey towards an answer, I think it worth exploring a report called the Media Map project published by Internews and the World bank and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I see a lot of the same conclusions that appeared in a World Bank report called the Right to Tell published ten years earlier in 2002. Except that this new report is far more comprehensive. It presents the evidence as to why there is a need for freedom of expression in a language that politicians understand. A free press benefits citizens. Media Map concluded:

Broad-based economic growth and political stability in Africa seem to be strongly connected to the presence of a free press. Free press countries: 

• Are less dependent on foreign aid 
• Provide a better environment for businesses within the country 
• Are more integrated into world financial markets 
• Are more likely to be democratic than countries without a free press, and have much 
• Stronger democracies overall. 

A free press is associated with higher literacy in Africa, and we found literacy to be a vital factor in maintaining democracy over time, globally. Thus, literacy, a free press, and democracy can create a virtuous cycle that lays the ground for improvements in governance, and in development overall.

I would argue that these conclusions also apply to many parts of Latin America as well. They must be music to the current Dutch government which is increasingly adopting the policy of trade not aid. I share the conclusions of South African media specialist Jeanette Minnie from Zambezi FoX. At a conference in Brussels last year she referred to the same report. Note that she concludes that the challenges apply to all media, new and traditional. “Old and new media development challenges in Africa”. The full presentation can be found here. Media_development_challenges_in_Africa_-_Jeanette_Minnie.pdf



Update: I will put the second part of this post into a new entry. Getting too long.

Insights on Disruptive Innovation 20 Years Ago

Jonathan Marks

It is exactly 20 years ago to the month when, as Programme Director at Radio Netherlands, I worked with interim Director General Bart Gribnau on a drastic re-organisation of Holland's external services.

In today's terminology we would call it a pivot. In those days it was called a re-organisation. I believe the reason it worked against all odds is because it was an example of disruptive innovation. In 2014 I keep seeing other industries who urgently need an impulse of this type if they are not going to go the failed route of Blackberry, Nintendo.

Mission Impossible

Being Programme Director at an international radio station is an impossible job by definition. You're always going to take the wrong decision for someone. Because of your heritage, there is always at least one culture that "you don't understand". I believe the reason the process succeeded is because we saw that risk-taking disruptive innovation was the only way forward. And that in The Netherlands which seems to have the highest number of insurance companies per capita.

Radio Netherlands broadcast centre in Hilversum (in 2000)

In 1992, Radio Netherlands went through a top management crisis. Two directors had completely different visions on the way forward. They stopped talking to each other and the rest of the company. An alarming note appeared on the company noticeboard outside the canteen announcing the problem. It was really a cry for help. The Chairman of the Board of Governors, Hans Hoefnagels, stepped in when he saw this very public disagreement was opening a wide door to the wolves outside just waiting to grab the station's operating budget for other purposes.

He appointed interim director Bart Gribnau to lead the process. He spotted me as someone passionate about effective broadcasting and eager to develop a different path to benefit as many as possible.

Bart Gribnau at Radio Netherlands 1993 (photo Mieke Hoek)

They took an enormous risk. I wasn't a Dutch national. I spoke a form of Dutch that others could understand but my written communication was always in English. No other international broadcaster in the world had a foreigner in charge of content. But I did know how the system worked and I'd made several documentaries investigating the rise of Dutch international broadcasting in the 1960's. I knew the company's strengths and weaknesses from the inside. The weekly Media Network show gave us an overview of what others were doing. But perhaps, most of all, I believed there were enough raw talent still on board to ensure a tipping point. And besides, there wasn't a Plan B. Calling in McKinsey would be like waving a white flag and waiting for the wolves.

Discussion with local station editors in Benin

Deliberately Do Things Differently

What we did was analyse the big picture. What were the other players doing? (They were stations like BBC World Service, Radio France Internationale, VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Beijing (now China Radio International), and Radio Moscow World Service. We mapped out what each were doing into a large table, point by point. And then we made a conscious decision to do completely the reverse.

We took a long hard critical look at the assets we had on board. We assumed the worst case scenario; that we had lost most of our shortwave audience to competing technologies like FM local radio, satellite TV - in-fact anything that took away people's time. So we had an opportunity to reboot under the radar.

I'm grateful that we didn't try to make things "better". Incremental innovation only works to a point. Then others come along and take everything away. Fortunately, we didn't have the resources to make a better product than our colleagues. We were already operating on very thin production budgets. People couldn't do more, faster.

We needed to look well outside our own building for inspiration. We needed to rediscover areas of the world where we could make the biggest difference.

Building relevant media

We found it first in places like Latin America and Francophone Africa. Timing was everything. We anticipated the boom in independent local radio and what it would mean to local communities. We partnered immediately, discovering we had already established a reputation for being different. We weren't like the "big guys" looking for local stations to simply relay their message from a long way away. The Dutch were not the former colonial power in these regions, there were no plans to teach languages or spread a particular way of thinking. Then, back inside the broadcast centre in Hilversum, we looked at how we could do something completely different.

Some found it curious that we were not trying to identify people in the building who "made the best programmes". The truth is, discussions about quality are meaningless unless they involve listeners. I was looking for disruptive thinkers and doers. I found allies by watching them work in their own context.

Soulé Issiaka in Hilversum

Soulé Issiaka was a young influential intellectual from Benin. A radio man through and through, he was creative, chaotic, but razor sharp in knowing how to better the lives of his people. A born networker, he could and did open doors across the African continent. I had every reason to trust him.

Get out of the building and discuss your ideas with others

We could see that other international broadcasters were working in competition with local stations. So was there another way?

Aimé Béhanzin

We talked with hundreds of local FM stations to understand their role in society. One station operator from Northern Benin inspired me in particular. At the time, Aimé Béhanzin was managing Nanto FM, a community station on a hill with a commanding view overlooking Natitingou.
"We've seen horrific use of radio in Rwanda (1994). An estimated 800,000 people have been killed through hatred broadcast by stations like Radio Milles Collines in Kigali. The perpetrators knew exactly how to manipulate the medium. They didn't use bullets. They isolated communities by using FM radio and only local languages. In effect, they put a community into solitary confinement - the worst form of punishment you could think of. Of course people look to violence as a means of escape".

Crafting programmes in West Africa exclusively for women

The station manager then explained their approach was to do exactly the opposite. "We're using radio to build a dialogue. As long as there is conversation between people there is hope that we can live in peace, build businesses and prosper. Community radio crosses political boundaries that we didn't put there - Our FM transmitter can reach people with the same cultural background in Nigeria. This area of Africa has hundreds of languages. Radio is the most effective way of building conversations that bridge societies. We can change more by being relevant than by simply being powerful. You call us "community radio" in the West because of our size. In fact we've discovered that community radio is far more influential than any voice that comes from the capital. It's in a context that people can understand."

Lessons Learned

Radio Netherlands closed French shortwave broadcasts to West and Central Africa in September 1994. It was a tearful farewell. But it liberated resources and new ideas blossomed fast. It took us two years to open a production office in Cotonou, Benin. By that time we'd turned everything around. Hilversum was contributing to a local network of 39 stations. We focused on programmes about women's issues, (cooking, entrepreneurship, social issues). We had a great set of science programmes that had been dramatized. Our goal was simple: we wanted to be a catalyst for a conversation. We cherry-picked relevant resources from Europe and across Africa, and we made it easy for local stations to adapt our content (in French) into far more popular local languages. We didn't need to control - we needed to make more effort in making valuable contributions.

Members of the Radio Netherlands Latin American team on a brainstorming session at the pyramids

It was a similar story for Latin America, who infact had a head start on our African colleagues. They were already feeding several hundred stations across Spanish speaking parts of Latin America. The concept was similar. Understand the audience of the local station. Work out how our work could contribute to a better informed audience. The fact that a foreign broadcaster was interested in how local communities in Latin America were tackling health issues like AIDs often made taboo subjects into discussion points. Always ensure the partnership is a win-win for both sides. We made short series with active partners. We had the most success in live programming. Shortwave was retained for Cuba, but in fact we knew that the reach by working with partners was far more effective that shouting on crackly shortwave wireless.

Working with a community station in La Plata, Argentina

Twenty years later, I see the Voice of America has recently discovered our strategy was right. I would argue today that we were doing an early version of the Lean Startup Methodology, exchanging the word "customers" for "audiences".

This disruptive approach created different jobs and certainly a new meaning in what we were trying to do. Two decades later I see similar processes as being the only way forward for clever tech companies who want to game change a different market. Media platforms are vastly different. But the process is as robust as ever. Want to know more? Then get in touch. There are plenty of insights we can share.

VPRO International - A public international programme service. But for how long?

RNW's purpose built broadcast centre has now been gutted as part of an asbestos removal program

Its coming up to a year since Radio Netherlands closed it's English language radio service. The Dutch government said in June 2011 that it had other ways of getting the story of what's happening here to the outside world. And cut the budget by 70%. Frankly, although shortwave radio should have been replaced by video much faster than it was, the Dutch government hasn't really succeeded in its aims to fill the gaps.

Thanks But No Thanks.

Prime Minister Rutte in June 2011

In a press conference on Friday 17^th June 2011, Prime Minister Rutte basically thanked Radio Netherlands for their efforts so far, but concluded that national image building abroad and calamity services are being done by others already. This form of public-financed publicity is a luxury the Netherlands could no longer afford, partly because it’s so difficult to independently measure its effectiveness. Actually, that's not true.

The challenge facing the Dutch is that no major foreign news network has bureau in either Amsterdam or The Hague. The freelancers and stringers who work for Al Jazeera, BBC, AFP, Russia Today, etc cover the affairs of the International Criminal Court . But they hardly ever cover Dutch political, social and scientific news. I note some BBC programmes like Click! pop over to The Netherlands for a whistle-stop item collection tour and then head back to London asap.

So it's great to discover a little known channel on YouTube, set up by the domestic public broadcaster VPRO, and specifically it's program sequence called BackLight. These are hour-long investigative documentaries which have been narrated and subtitled in English to make them more accessible to an international audience. Ostensibly the versioning has been done to assist sales of these programmes at the International MIP-TV fair in Cannes. But by putting them up on YouTube, they make them directly accessible to the public. 

There are 42 videos posted on the VPRO YouTube channel. Each one is about 50 minutes long, and they are excellent quality. Amongst my favourites are a documentary on Cleantech investments....



and a very topical documentary on Tax evasion by international companies - and the Dutch connection to it all. 



This program, called the Tax Free Tour, also spawned a separate website project called Taxodus.net which we've covered on this blog before. 

Excellent stuff. Wish there was more. But I fear that as a new round of cutbacks hit the Dutch domestic public broadcasters, this service may disappear. VPRO announced on June 3rd  that it was closing its science unit completely, scrapping 81 full time jobs across the company. I have only really associated VPRO with scientific journalism. 

Bit spooky - ghosts of broadcasts past in Hilversum

Radio Netherlands broadcast centre. Completely empty by May 2013

Strange to be wandering through the now empty corridors of Radio Netherlands on the Witte Kruislaan in Hilversum. I was programme director there for 12 years until 2003. And for a large part of the time I was also a programme host and producer of the weekly Media Network programme. I believed in management by example, which is why my office was at the "pilots end" of the 1960's building (shaped, deliberately like an aeroplane) and not in the management wing. There needed to be a healthy separation between editorial and finance. And, I'm pleased to say, that worked.

Editorial was always separate from management

But now, external broadcasting from the Netherlands is taking on a very different form. And the new teams do need to make a clean break with the past. With a 70% budget cut, the strange situation has arisen that they have to move into an extended floor on top of the Radio Netherlands Training Centre building next door and abandon their purpose built main building. That's going to happen at the end of next week.

Radio Netherlands will move into what was the Radio Netherlands Training Centre

The "new" newsroom in the main building will be empty as from next week

The new Radio Netherlands will be based here as from March 15th 2013

So, one last wander through the building. I actually had offices all over the building - moving office every few years as I changed jobs within the organisation or a department moved. The only thing that moved with you was the phone number.

Mission Control

The last office I occupied in the main building was on the first floor, also used for the production of Media Network when I was programme director.

The old office of the Programme Director, from where we also ran Media Network

I see the sign I bought back from Shanghai has survived ten years without me

The cove where the Media Network prep equipment was housed.

Facilities never managed to spell Andy's surname right

The specially sound-proofed studios on studio square are also being abandoned. Where there was once BVN transmissions on TV screens, now that channel showing is Al Jazeera English and BBC World News...at least for a few more weeks.

Studio square. Actually never looked better than now. Used to be an awful colour

Al Jazzera plays on the TV screen outside Studio 4. Packing cases are ready...

The skip in the yard is full of the past. Mainly CD's of long obsolete office software, publicity posters and signs.

I also spotted the movie poster of Hotel Rwanda on the wall of the Broadcast Facilities Nederland office, the organisation that supplied a team of excellent sound engineers. That brings back a particular memory because what we did in March 1995 was used as background material for that film made in 2004. That was the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda. We built a hate-media dossier on the Media Network website and the film website quoted from it. 

We knew that Radio Milles Collines incited genocide in Rwanda in 1994. But in March 1995 when the programme below was made, we didn't know the full extent of the tragedy. That would be revealed several years later at the trials in Arusha, Tanzania. Eric Beachemin did a lot of travelling in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and brought back with him some unique insights into how media could help repair the social damage as well. This was one of the first programmes which featured the voice of Diana Janssen, at that time  Head of Strategy. 

Everyone is curious as to what will happen next

And so, onward to other things.

Thanks for listening to Media Network in 2012

Transmitter masts by the sea. The distant towers of Radio Netherlands Bonaire relay station in 1993.

I have been truly amazed at how many people have downloaded old radio programmes from the Media Network series.  I produced them for Radio Netherlands between August 1980 and October 2000, just over 20 years. I kept  a copy of many of the tapes - so glad I did because many were later wiped so they could re-use the tape. The dynamic range is actually very good because Radio Netherlands recorded their material at 15 ip/s (38 cms/sec) and used Neumann microphones in the studios. 

I know, all this stuff is pure nostalgia about the era of international broadcasting (mainly radio) from 1918-2000. I would argue that many of the issues discussed in these programmes (such as digital broadcasting, jamming, political clandestines, hate media) are still very relevant today. And we have a habit of ignoring the past as being outdated because we're often obsessed by the new and unknown. And as a creative person, my biggest fear is to be trapped by routine. 

My mobile in 1995. That number used to be the DG''s office at RNW

There are more than 120 hours of high quality MP3's on this audio site. All the programmes are free to download since they were made for public distribution over shortwave through the Dutch International Service, Radio Netherlands. I think it is a celebration of listener participation well before Facebook and Twitter were even dreamed of.

The Danish Lyrec editing machine revolutionised production at RNW. Journalists could edit tape themselves!

Please enjoy. I would love to hear your reaction, perhaps you remember hearing the first airing on shortwave? Or you have been asked to do a school project on political broadcasting? You can either put comments in below or go to my switchboard for more details of other blogs and activities that I'm doing at the moment.

The Grundig Yacht Boy 700 - one of the better shortwave portables in the 1990's

Some of you are curious as to who is listening to all this stuff. November 2012 was another good listening month. We had more than 3917 downloads, which I think is pretty amazing since this material is unashamedly specialist. The dismantling of Radio Netherlands Bonaire relay station and the Media Wars series were the toppers this past month. 

Summer Washout- Turning to Warmer Radio Memories

Never seen rain like this in August

The Dutch summer 2012 will be remembered for being cold and damp for most of the time - though there was a glimmer of hope on July 24 and 25th - but that's about it.

Radio Netherlands Signoff in Style

Radio Netherlands Signoff, a photo by Jonathan Marks on Flickr.

Just got back from watching the very last hour of broadcasting in English from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Holland's external broadcasting service which signed off today on shortwave, satellite, and the live audio webstream. Holland has no external broadcasting service as from July 1st 2012. International broadcasting is being taken out of the public mandate, made to create international and national public broadcasting. 

Dheera Sujan presented this final show, which was a farewell and thank you to listeners worldwide. Grabbed a copy from the Dalet machine as it was playing out and put it here. 

Also thought it might be nice to do a couple of interviews and run an audio recorder in the booth while the sign-off happened. So I did. UPDATE: Kai Ludwig in Germany sent me a capture from the satellite on Saturday so I mixed that in too. The results are posted on the Media Network vintage site here. 

Message at the gate of Radio Netherlands tonight

eery empty newsroom

Continuity centre - also empty

Last trasmnission in English is scheduled from the playout system

The RN Madagascar Relay Station calendar. Rather ominous date is ringed

Shortwave radio tuned to a special frequency for Europe (from Germany). Actually not for the last  English broadcast that was 6065 kHz

Let's head for the newsroom

Rob Kievit, producer for the final day in English from Radio Netherlands

Almost the end. 5 minutes to go.

waiting for Dheera Sujan to sign-off before adding a live ending

Jonathan Groubert closes the station for the last time

fader closes for the last time

one quick last toast of champagne

then its scrambling through the empty car park for the last train

RNW earlier this year

The RNW building has come in to land (looks like an aircraft from the air).

I thought they might video the event, but apparently the public relations department didn't think it was worth it. Oh well. There are photos on Flickr instead.