Audience research at the BBC External Services during the Cold War: A view from the inside

Abstract

The author worked in BBC External Services/World Service during the last three decades of the Cold War, latterly as Head of Audience Research. In the article he outlines the difficulties and the solutions to obtaining reliable information about audiences in communist parts of Europe during that period and in the previous years before he was responsible. He shows how the internal political outlook and atmosphere at Bush House coloured the approaches that were taken. He shows how audience research for all the BBC's external broadcasting was developed from the early days and what was done after the Second World War when Soviet control over large areas of Central and Eastern Europe effectively closed many target area countries to any internal research. There was heavy reliance on anecdotal evidence, the few listeners' letters that were received and interviews with refugees leaving communist countries. But then new methods were developed, principally by the US government funded broadcasters, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. They developed an extensive approach which contacted travellers from communist countries when they were travelling outside the communist areas and these produced a wealth of information about listening to western broadcasters. There was close cooperation between the audience research department at the BBC and the respective departments at RL and RFE. When the Berlin Wall came down and communist rule ended in all of Europe, research inside the country became possible. Some was actually possible and conducted even earlier in Poland and Yugoslavia. The surveys in country at the end of communism showed that earlier estimates based on interviewing travellers had been remarkably accurate.

Notes

Graham Mytton, formerly Head of Audience Research at the BBC World Service, is an expert in audience and market research. He is the author of a major training manual on TV and radio audience research, now available in several languages: Handbook on Radio and Television Audience Research (London: BBC World Service Training Trust, UNICEF and UNESCO 1999). He also authored several monographs on mass communications in Africa, such as Africa's Media Today and in the Future (York: African Studies Association, 1984); Listening, Looking and Learning: Report on a National Mass Media Audience Survey in Zambia (1970–73) (Lusaka: Institute for African Studies, University of Zambia, 1974); Mass Communication in Africa (London: E. Arnold, 1983), and many others. He edited a book on audience research at the BBC World Service: Global Audiences: Research for Worldwide Broadcasting (London: J. Libbey, 1993). Today he specialises in communications research, especially audience measurement, training in research methods, and research for development and the relief of poverty.

 [1] Very little has been written on audience research for international broadcasting. However, in some books on international broadcasting during the Cold War period reference is made to what was known about the audiences. See Mansell, Let Truth Be Told; Nelson, War of the Black Heavens; Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy; Short, Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain. There was also a special issue of The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Volume 28, No. 4, October 2008 with several relevant articles, especially Pinkerton, ‘A New Kind of Imperialism?’, and Webb, ‘Constitutional Niceties’.

 [2] Silvey, Who's Listening?, 41–2. Silvey was appointed to the post in 1936.

 [3] Bush House has been the headquarters of the BBC World Service since the Second World War, when services for Europe moved there to be followed by all the others. Its name because synonymous with the very name World Service, or the broadcast announcement in many languages, ‘This is London’. But at the time of writing, the BBC is gradually moving out to join other parts of BBC Radio at the now greatly expanded Broadcasting House in Portland Place, about one mile to the west.

 [4] BBC External Services as a whole were renamed as the BBC World Service in 1988.

 [5] There is evidence in various files at the BBC Written Archives (hereafter referred to as WAC) showing that some questionnaires were sent to listeners to the Empire Service soon after it began broadcasting in 1932. WAC E4/37. Moreover, Gerard Mansell observes that research of a similar kind was done during the preparatory experimental broadcasts that preceded the first official broadcasts. Mansell, Let Truth Be Told, 1982, 10–11.

 [6] Both these quotations were in an article on domestic BBC audience research published in Intermedia (Meneer, ‘Broadcasting Research: Necessity or Nicety?’). Peter Menneer who wrote this article was the third head of domestic audience research at the BBC from 1979 to 1992. He succeeded Brian Emmett who held this post after Robert Silvey's retirement in 1968.

 [7] Mytton, Handbook on Radio and Television Audience Research, esp. 15–17 and 69. The first audience survey in the US I have been able to trace was in 1927.

 [8] At its peak during the early 1980s letters to the World Service averaged between 400,000 and 600,000 per year. Today they are no longer counted but I believe that the total annual figure is less than 20,000.

 [9] There are several references in BBC files that show this. In a memo from Asher Lee (undated but probably 1947) Lee wrote: ‘during most of the war there was an intelligence department at Bush House numbering some sixty people. At the beginning of 1945 the department was broken up and the personnel considerably reduced, the remaining staff of about two dozen being distributed amongst the regional output departments’. WAC E30/70 and also E44/40.

[10] WAC, BBC Staff List 1945.

[11] WAC, BBC Staff List 1947.

[12] WAC, E3/1168/1.

[13] WAC, E3/1168/1

[14] WAC E3/32.

[15] WAC E3/574/1.

[16] WAC E3/574/1

[17] WAC E3/154/1.

[18] WAC E3/154/1

[19] Both RFE and RL are funded by the US government. Unlike the Voice of America, they are not government departments. Initially the idea was that each would be operated at ‘arm's length’ and to start with they tried to appear as if they were really independent stations. It was soon evident that they were being financed by the US government and for many years now this has been an acknowledged fact. All US government-funded international broadcasting now comes under the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the BBG, based in Washington and with strong links to the State Department, Despite being Cold War products, both RL and RFE continue to broadcast – but for the most part only to those areas or countries not yet deemed to be fully democratic with free and independent media.

[20] WAC E3/154/1.

[21] There was continuing cooperation between the audience research department at the BBC and the research division at the USIS (later USIA). This was based not on any formal agreement but on personal contacts between the officers involved. The aims were to share information, sometimes to share costs, and to keep each other informed about experiences and activities in challenging if not often extremely difficult arenas of research. Cooperation in audience research matters between international broadcasters has been widespread for many years. From 1985 onwards it became more formalised with annual conferences and eventually an organisation – the Conference of International Broadcasters' Audience Research (CIBAR) – with a working committee and website: http://www.cibar.org.

[22] WAC E3/154/1.

[23] WAC E3/154/1

[24] WAC E3/154/1

[25] WAC E3/899/1.

[26] Jim Critchlow worked in research at RL but after these early days not in audience research. He went on to be an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and wrote Radio Hole-in-the-Head.

[27] I attended the annual CIBAR conference in November 2009 in Bonn at which the direct successors to Asher Lee and Max Ralis, made a joint presentation of recent research in Indonesia at an international broadcasting audience research conference. RFE and RL had separate research departments until 1992 when they were amalgamated. When their Munich offices closed in the mid-1990s, broadcasting moved to Prague and the audience research unit went to Washington DC. It later became a private not-for-profit research institute, InterMedia, which has the contract to run all or most of the audience research for all US government-funded international broadcasting, which includes RFE and RL as well as Voice of America and others. The presentation was made by the research manager for the BBC World Service, Jeremy Nye, and Mark Rhodes, President of InterMedia.

[28] WAC E3/899/1.

[29] Klensin, Parta, and de Sola Pool, ‘The Shortwave Audience in the USSR’.

[30] WAC E3/899/1.

[31] WAC E3/899/1 It is worth noting that RL's research department did not use standard face-to-face pencil-and-paper questionnaires. Early experience with this method had evidently shown that Soviet travellers baulked at such an approach. Instead, interviewers memorised the questions and engaged travellers in conversations at popular venues in Paris and other cities around Western Europe. They would talk generally about all kinds of things and put in questions about media use in general and radio listening in particular during the course of the conversation. The answers were memorised and a questionnaire for each contact would be filled in as soon as possible afterwards.

[32] WAC E3/899/1

[33] WAC E3/131.

[34] WAC E3/285. One reason that Soviet citizens could buy shortwave and listen to western broadcasts was the fact that Soviet domestic radio services, entirely under communist state control, relied on shortwave for full national coverage of a vast country. The USSR was the first country to make widespread and thorough use of shortwave as a domestic means of transmission, a fact that western broadcasters were able to exploit to build large audiences as ownership of shortwave-capable sets grew, especially during the period from 1950 onwards.

[35] WAC E3/285. One reason that Soviet citizens could buy shortwave and listen to western broadcasts was the fact that Soviet domestic radio services, entirely under communist state control, relied on shortwave for full national coverage of a vast country. The USSR was the first country to make widespread and thorough use of shortwave as a domestic means of transmission, a fact that western broadcasters were able to exploit to build large audiences as ownership of shortwave-capable sets grew, especially during the period from 1950 onwards

[36] WAC E3/285. One reason that Soviet citizens could buy shortwave and listen to western broadcasts was the fact that Soviet domestic radio services, entirely under communist state control, relied on shortwave for full national coverage of a vast country. The USSR was the first country to make widespread and thorough use of shortwave as a domestic means of transmission, a fact that western broadcasters were able to exploit to build large audiences as ownership of shortwave-capable sets grew, especially during the period from 1950 onwards

[37] WAC E3/285. One reason that Soviet citizens could buy shortwave and listen to western broadcasts was the fact that Soviet domestic radio services, entirely under communist state control, relied on shortwave for full national coverage of a vast country. The USSR was the first country to make widespread and thorough use of shortwave as a domestic means of transmission, a fact that western broadcasters were able to exploit to build large audiences as ownership of shortwave-capable sets grew, especially during the period from 1950 onwards

[38] WAC E3/154/1.

[39] I made contact myself with the audience research department of Český Rozhlas in 1984 when an international communications research conference took place in Prague. I went to see the then head of audience research there, Jaroslav Košt'ál. He had presented a paper at the conference which contained the apparently correct political references and ideological signposts. I visited him after the conference at his offices at the CR headquarters. We had a rather strained and not very informative conversation with little real content of importance. The main thing I learned was that the department had been set up some years earlier and had been heavily influenced by Robert Silvey's book on audience research at the BBC. When it was time for me to go, Košt'ál got up and offered to accompany me downstairs. I said this was not necessary; I could make my own way out. But he insisted and came out into the street and walked with me to the metro station. As soon as we had left the building he visibly relaxed, and said ‘Now we can talk freely’. We did so. But aside from occasional postcards sent when he was on holiday we had little real contact again until the Velvet Revolution when, in the middle of the collapse of communism, he phoned me from Prague announcing in a gleeful voice ‘It is all over! I can phone you.’ Košt'ál and I have kept in touch ever since. He now works for a commercial market research company in Prague.

[40] I made contact myself with the audience research department of Český Rozhlas in 1984 when an international communications research conference took place in Prague. I went to see the then head of audience research there, Jaroslav Košťál. He had presented a paper at the conference which contained the apparently correct political references and ideological signposts. I visited him after the conference at his offices at the CR headquarters. We had a rather strained and not very informative conversation with little real content of importance. The main thing I learned was that the department had been set up some years earlier and had been heavily influenced by Robert Silvey's book on audience research at the BBC. When it was time for me to go, Košťál got up and offered to accompany me downstairs. I said this was not necessary; I could make my own way out. But he insisted and came out into the street and walked with me to the metro station. As soon as we had left the building he visibly relaxed, and said ‘Now we can talk freely’. We did so. But aside from occasional postcards sent when he was on holiday we had little real contact again until the Velvet Revolution when, in the middle of the collapse of communism, he phoned me from Prague announcing in a gleeful voice ‘It is all over! I can phone you.’ Košťál and I have kept in touch ever since. He now works for a commercial market research company in Prague

[41] Mytton and Forrester, ‘Audiences for International Radio Broadcasts’, 458. A major and indispensible source of information about all international broadcasting has always been the BBC's Monitoring Service at Caversham on which the compilation of information and statistics on all other broadcasters depended.

[42] Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 91. SAAOR (Soviet Area Audience and Opinion Research) was the name used by RL's research department. Note that Parta's estimates are actually lower than internal ones. But note also that the universes for each of the compared studies were not exactly the same. One internal survey by Institute for Sociology of the Academy of Sciences (ISAN) was of only selected cities, while one by All Union Institute for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM) was wider but only in Russia, while SAAOR's research covered the entire Soviet Union, albeit based on partial evidence from travellers.

[43] Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 91. SAAOR (Soviet Area Audience and Opinion Research) was the name used by RL's research department. Note that Parta's estimates are actually lower than internal ones. But note also that the universes for each of the compared studies were not exactly the same. One internal survey by ISAN was of only selected cities, while one by VCIOM was wider but only in Russia, while SAAOR's research covered the entire Soviet Union, albeit based on partial evidence from travellers., 88.

[44] Some of the research that was done by the BBC after the end of communism was published in 1993 in Mytton, Global Audiences.