RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Soviet Union from broadcasting in a number of Soviet languages in addition to Russian . It can easi!y be demonstrated that Ipours of broađcast, strength of transmitter and even choice of language do not guarantee an audience. Taking the top twelve broadcasters in Table 1 it is evident that some аге broadcasting to very few listeners. Listeners to Radio Tirana, Albania, are almost never encountered in surveys . The same is true of the North Korean and East German international services . The internationai services of All Inđia Radio , Cairo and Radio Havana mostly reach regional audiences . Neither Radio Hoscow not Radio Peking achieve significant audiences except in the Indian sub-continent and in very few African countries. WHO LISTENS AND WHY? The research that has been carried out can show the kinđs of people most likely to be listeners to international radio broadcasts . Men tend to outnumber women. in Pakistan, for example , men outnumber women in the audience to the BBC in Urdu by two to one . But the age and educational profile of the BBC Urdu audience matches very closely that of the population as a whoie .Itis a different story with audiences for English . Education is the important factor here . Almost all listeners to the BBC in English in Pakistan and in other parts of the sub-continent have at least some secondary education. A large proportion have reached tertiary level. Seventy-nine percent of the BBC Worid Service (English) audience in Pakistan have higher education. But this seems to be an extreme case . In Nigeria, for example, the auđience for BBC in English is more evenly spread , but there are very few listeners with no education at all. In contrast, sixty-four percent of the BBC's Hausa audience are illiterates . There is a tendency , not f ound everywhere , for listeners to the BBC and other foreign radio stations to be уоипдег than the population as a whole . Over half the regular listeners to the BBC in Arabic in Egypt are in the age group fifteen to twenty-nine, a significantly higher proportion than in the adult population as a whole . There are some interesting variations in the demographic prof iles of listeners to dif f erent broadcasters . In Кепуа , all broadcasters have predominantly male listenership (eighty to nmety percent) but the BBC's audience is more urbanized , olđer and better educated than, for example , Deutsche Welle's .

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