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PAPER FOR DISCUSSION I
FCO FUTURE BROADCASTING PRIORITIES
Various attempts have been made to list the BBC External Services in order of FCO priority. The conclusions of the most recent attempts (attached at Annex A) shows considerable differences depending on the purpose for which they were prepared. In order to be able to recommend whether or not an external service should be increased or reduced, it would clearly be useful to try to reach an agreed list of priorities for the services. Such a list would also help us formulate more accurately our priorities for improvements in reception under the BBC's long-term capital development programme.
In Information Department's view, the ranking of priorities of the external services in terms of importance to the FCO and the FCO information effort is as follows:
High Priority
World Service in English
Russian
Polish
Hungarian
Romanian
Bulgarian
Czech/Slovak
Medium Priority
French for Africa
Spanish for Latin America
Portuguese for Brazil
Persian
Indonesian/Malay
German GDR
Low Priority
French for Europe
German for Europe
Turkish
Arabic
Hindi
Mandarin
Cantonese
Pashto
Swahili
Hausa
Tamil
Urdu
Bengali
Nepali
Greek
Thai
Burmese
Somali
Finnish
Vietnamese
Serbo-Croat/Slovene
Japanese Portuguese
This listing does not preclude the examination of services even of high priority in an attempt to identify where savings might be made to fund increases or the introduction of new services (it could be argued for example that the size of the Arabic Service is not justified in relative terms at 63 hours per week or even German at 22 hrs 45 mins per week compared to an average output for the vernacular services of just over 13 hours per week).
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