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IN CONVERSATION
|
THE CHANNEL
THE CHANNEL
|
JANUARY08
|
15
I am
an optimist
but I don't
think that
success is
going to
be quick
“
anh Tran is less
than one year into
his post at the
head of
Australia’s
international
radio broadcaster.
He’s had a busy few months, but
was pleased to talk to
The Channel
about the station and his plans.
What's been happening at Radio
Australia since you took over?
Internally we have a lot of
housekeeping to do. Basically I changed
the way we produce our content to
make sure everyone talks to everyone
else, get a bit of cross-fertilisation going
and the two-way traffic flow between
English, which is the backbone of
content, and our six other languages.
Externally, we have to maintain our
relationshipwith rebroadcasters –we
have got a couple of newones - andwe
had to look at expansion into audiences
we haven't been able to reach before,
like in India, Korea, Burma.
What are your priorities for
Radio Australia?
Expansion without additional
resources, that's a real challenge.
Also coping with a market that is
changing so fast, and trying to serve
two sets of audiences. We are
dealing with a loyal core audience
who is still listening to short wave
but we are trying to recruit new
audiences who use mainly the
internet. We are focused on Asia-
Pacific. The Pacific mainly relies on
our SW broadcasts, internet is not
very reliable. In Asia we have on the
one hand Vietnam with one of the
highest internet uptakes in South-
East Asia, and then countries that
are still very fragmented in terms of
platforms like Cambodia, Indonesia,
and to some extent China. So we
have to cope with a wide spectrum
of access to the new media.
Vietnam is a test case for Radio
Australia - it was the first
language dropped for direct
broadcasts andmoved to theweb.
What has the response been?
Our loyal listeners who are now
mostly in their sixties and have still
got their short wave radios
complain bitterly of course, as do
people who live in the countryside
and don't have access to the
internet. But regrettably, this is no
longer our target audience. We
want urban educated aspirational
audiences and we hope that by
serving this group the benefit will
trickle down once they become
leaders and opinion formers. The
Vietnamese service had to drop the
short wave because we can't do the
internet very well if we have to
spread our resources to
transmissions at the same time. It
was a hard choice in the beginning
but in the end it became the only
choice for us. In a sense Vietnam
provides a template – I think
eventually in countries like
Cambodia, Indonesia, China, the
young will take the internet and
leave SW radio behind. The signs
are there. Even where the short
wave radio is available it is not the
medium of choice because people
are too mobile now, they want
things to be portable, to be
downloadable.
So broadcasters have to adapt
to the way people are living
their lives, rather than the
other way round.
That's right. From my experience it
seems that broadcasters change
rather more slowly than our
audiences. That is a problem and a
challenge to manage this.
What does this new audience
expect?
People are not terribly worried
about political struggle any more,
they aim for a better life, for more
affluence, and they look to learning
English, to a gateway to studying
overseas to better their own lives.
They are very worldly in terms of
how to handle information pouring
H
NOTPLAYING ITSAFE
in from western broadcasters like
ourselves. So in that kind of
environment we have to compete
pretty hard to give them something
that they can't find elsewhere. So
we have to tailor our English
lessons and aim at people who
want to come and study in Australia.
Can Radio Australia’s
pioneering work serve as a
blueprint for other
international broadcasters?
There are lessons that we can learn
from everyone else operating in this
market. I am not sure whether we
are leading in any area but I am
sure that in Vietnam in terms of
internet service to young audiences
we have broken new ground. But I
don't want to feel that the task is
done because it is like hitting a
moving target – once you think you
have got something tied down it
starts to move again. Right now we
realise that the web site we
designed barely twelve months ago
needs updating because people
want blogging, they want to
express themselves, they want to
interact a lot more. And there is not
only the availability of resources,
we are also coping with a work-
force that is ageing and that is not
amenable to change, not very
adaptable at all. I try to be modest
and I am an optimist but I don't
think that success is going to be quick.
What can you offer audiences
that other broadcasters can't?
We have proximity which works to
our advantage, we pride ourselves
on being very adaptable and finely
tuned to the needs of audiences, on
having local knowledge. Because
we can't compete with well
resourced broadcasters like the BBC
we have to find niche markets
which means that we have to be
very sharp in reading the market
and be prepared to make hard
decisions to do a very limited
number of things and not playing
safe. It's a risky strategy but if
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