The recently developed BBG Impact Model provides a basis for setting strategy and gauging success. It examines short and long term impact across the networks’ audience, as well as media and governments, and it evaluates U.S. international media’s success at informing, engaging and connecting the audience and being influential.
The networks attracted an all-time high measured audience of 215 million people each week, including significant audiences in countries of strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy.
Growing Impact
The recently developed BBG Impact Model provides a basis for setting strategy and gauging success. It examines short and long term impact across the networks’ audience, as well as media and governments, and it evaluates U.S. international media’s success at informing, engaging and connecting the audience and being influential.
The networks attracted an all-time high measured audience of 215 million people each week, including significant audiences in countries of strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy.
Strategy and Distribution
Strategic investments in innovative technologies and new distribution platforms helped the BBG networks grow their audience.
Researcher in the field takes notes and he interviews a woman about her media consumption habits. BBG
BBG measures impact through audience research surveys conducted by Gallup, a world-class research firm, supplemented with internally collected quantitative, qualitative and anecdotal data. The model helps advance the administration’s focus on using data to improve government performance.
To measure impact, the BBG examines several indicators, including:
VOA Ukrainian news airs on affiliate stations throughout the country.
BBG partners with 2,500 media affiliates worldwide who bring more than half of its measured global audience.
One important placement strategy is the “U.S. Bureau” approach, which provides select, high-value partners with interactive reports from BBG network bureaus and reporters. This strategy benefits BBG networks and their media affiliates and has seen tremendous success worldwide increasing audience sizes and strengthening programming in local markets. BBG networks expanded this concept by partnering with affiliates in content and newsgathering as well as capitalizing on other learning and professional exchange opportunities.
For example, Channels TV in Nigeria puts VOA’s content into prime time on a regular basis. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), VOA and TopCongo Radio have recently formed a partnership that includes professional and content exchanges.
In Latin America, this strategy led to VOA’s audience growth of around 20 million people. VOA’s Latin America Division accounts for the most downloads on BBG Direct, the online content service for affiliates. Affiliates include Chile’s leading TV network (TV Nacional), the 24-hour Nicaraguan news channel Cana 15, Argentina’s Artear TV, TeleAmazonas in Ecuador, the Colombian news channel Cablenoticias that reaches 14 countries, and numerous radio stations in Venezuela.
Growing Audience: Innovative Distribution
Strategic investments in innovative technologies and new distribution platforms helped the BBG networks grow their audience.
A new mobile application for Radio Sawa, available in Apple iTunes and Google Play stores, offers seven custom, continuous audio streams in Arabic, on-demand episodes of Radio Sawa’s most popular programs, easy access to the hourly newscast and an interactive Sawa Chat feature. Released in June 2014, it ranked in the top three for music in five countries in the Middle East and hit the top 30 rankings in more than 25 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Photo: Lilvio Fernandez Luis checks out the DVD duplication equipment during a recent visit to OCB. He has been arrested for distributing Martí content in Cuba and his camera, computer and flash drives have been confiscated. OCB.
The Martís provide sharable content on 4,000 flash drives and DVDs sent weekly to 85 distribution centers, 18 reception centers and six dubbing centers inside Cuba. Same day FTP distribution of newscasts and special programs as well as email and SMS news updates are sent to hundreds of thousands of Cubans each month. The Martís draw from the largest—if not the only— network of independent journalists on the Island. Content produced inside Cuba is then curated and airs daily across all Martí media platforms. One such program focused on the problems faced in Cuba by black cuentapropistas (small business owners) and was hosted on Radio Martí by opposition figure Manuel Cuesta Morua.
Inform: Provide Unique, High-Quality Journalism
Providing value in the media marketplace with unique reporting that is trusted and credible is one of the many ways BBG networks have impact.
Former SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum speaks to reporters after a South Sudanese judge released him and three others who were detained more than four months ago for allegedly attempting a coup. Photo: Charloton Doki
Part of growing impact is capacity building with local media organizations, particularly for places in conflict. When violence erupted in South Sudan, VOA increased its broadcasting to the region, adding 10 on-the-scene reporters in strife-torn locations around the country. VOA developed and launched a custom FM stream in Juba that carries news about South Sudan, interactive daily segments on a variety of topics, public service announcements, and other specialized news and entertainment. Meanwhile, MBN’s highly acclaimed radio broadcast, Aida Darfur, continued providing important information and news to the Sudanese refugees and internally displaced Darfurian people. In addition, VOA conducted comprehensive technical and editorial training for reporters in South Sudan.
Ubah Mohammed Abdule, right, the mother of the 15 year old Somali boy who stowed away on a flight from California to Hawaii, is interviewed at a refugee camp in Ethiopia. AP Photo/Elias Asmare
CNN, NBC, Washington Post, AP, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, ABC, USA Today and New York Magazine and others picked up VOA’s exclusive interview with the divorced parents of the Somali boy who stowed away on a flight from California to Hawaii. Journalists from many media outlets had tracked down the stowaway’s father and tried to interview him. But the father refused, with one exception: he gave an interview to Mohamed Olad from VOA’s Somali Service. Following up on this exclusive interview, the Somali Service got an exclusive interview with his mother in a refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia. Her account to VOA, about her son’s desire to reunite with her, provided unique insights on this story that gained national and international attention.
Throughout 2014, RFA’s Uyghur Service reported on attacks and security crackdowns in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) amid tensions between the mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. RFA also reported on the jailing and sentencing to life in prison of Beijing-based economics professor Ilham Tohti on separatism charges. In January, RFA published an interview with Tohti to be released in the event of his detention, in which he spoke as an informed, moderate critic who has never advocated Uyghur independence and said that any confession obtained by him in custody should be viewed with suspicion. RFA has been at the forefront of breaking news from inside XUAR, garnering frequent media pickups from the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, and numerous media in Asia.
In addition, VOA saw a weekly audience increase in China of over two million people. With television programs reaching audiences via satellite combined with social media engagement, VOA brought unique coverage of U.S. and world news on issues of interest to the audience, including economics, health, business, and learning English.
Engaging Key Audiences: Using Interactive Programming and Social Media
BBG networks create content that engages audiences, draws from their contributions, inspires them to share what they hear, see or read, and builds audience loyalty. All this adds up to increased impact.
A sampling of some of the historic family photographs collected for “My Ukraine.”
RFE/RL traveled across Ukraine to talk to people about old family photographs as a reflection of personal and national identity in a special report entitled “My Ukraine: Memory & Identity.” Ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Hungarians were interviewed, providing RFE/RL with rich documentary evidence of the country’s difficult but vibrant history. Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, and English versions of the project allowed audiences across the region to engage with the region’s history while discussing its future.
Modibo Dembélé (L), Kadiatou Traoré, and Mohamed Toure, hosts of An ba fɔ!
A year after launching its first Bambara-language radio program for audiences in Mali, VOA has added a dynamic new call-in program We’ll Say It (Anba Fo). The hour-long weekly show airs on VOA’s own FM station in Bamako, as well as online. Each episode addresses critical topics, such as security, education, women’s rights, and youth unemployment.
(l-r) Alhurra’s Bassel Sabri, Lara Ali and Nabila Kilani meet with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel at MBN studios in Dubai.
Alhurra’s flagship program Al Youm is a magazine-style news program that originates from Dubai, Cairo, Beirut and Jerusalem. Al Youm focuses on humanitarian stories that resonate with viewers, and its daily social media segment, B.Link, showcases the most viral stories online and incorporates viewer comments. Al Youm’s Facebook following has skyrocketed to 1.5 million “likes.”
Be Influential: Increase Understanding, Attention from Local Officials
BBG networks are influential by increasing audiences’ understanding on a range of topics, including current events and U.S. policy, as well as by getting the attention of local officials on issues of importance to their communities.
An Iraqi family fleeing violence in the northern city of Tal Afar walks through the Khazer camp near the Kurdish checkpoint of Aski Kalak, 40 km from the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. AFP Photo/Safin Hamed
Alhurra-Iraq focuses coverage of local and national issues that impact Iraq and the region. The daily evening program Iraq Today is considered by many to be the country’s newscast of record. Watched by Iraqi citizens and government officials, Alhurra-Iraq’s coverage of under-reported humanitarian stories has triggered government reaction and changes.
For example, while distress calls to government officials had gone unanswered, within days of an Alhurra-Iraq exposé on the deteriorating conditions at an orphanage serving as a makeshift refugee camp for the Tal Afar displaced people, members of the city council visited to see the living conditions for themselves. The members said they had not been aware of the situation until the Alhurra-Iraq report and promised to improve services, health care and living conditions for the displaced people.
Similarly, immediately after an Alhurra-Iraq report on an ongoing power outage in the village of Albu Hilala, the Northern Nasreriya Electricity Directorate fixed the problem and the village finally had electricity.
RFA’s Khmer Service interviews a local land rights investigator in the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear in 2014. RFA’s coverage of land grabs and forced evictions in Cambodia has brought attention to an issue affecting hundreds of thousands. RFA
RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Mumin Shakirov interviewing civil activist Serge Sharov-Delone during the March for Freedom in Moscow, October 2014. RFE/RL
RFE/RL Kazakh Service journalists (l-r) Asylkhan Bakir, Kenzhebek Tynybayev and Madi Bekmagambet returning to their bureau after covering a protest in downtown Almaty. RFE/RL
