Damaged historical audio tape before restauration

For the keepers of these archives, it’s a challenge to catalog sound material so that it’s easily accessible to journalists. And if the material is on tape or analogue disks, the archive workers also have to find ways to restore and digitize the carriers. Tapes deteriorate easily – especially in tropical climates.

These are key issues that Heidrun Speckmann and Nguyen Pham Hoa Binh (free media consultant in Vietnam) discussed with an international audience at the German Embassy in Hanoi on May 8th, 2012. Heidrun Speckmann has been working as CIM integrated expert and DW Akademie’s Media Archive Developing Consultant at Radio The Voice of Vietnam (VOV) since September 2009.

At the German Embassy, the two archive experts presented their long-term consulting projects aimed at modernizing the sound archives of Asian broadcasters. These projects are financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Easier for journalists to find archive material

In their presentation, Heidrun and Binh showed how VOV’s analog audio archive has been modernized and how VOV journalists can now easily use archive material for their productions.

Heidrun Speckmann (left) and Nguyen Pham Hoa Binh

“What used to be a time-consuming search for material with a card catalog has now turned into a browser-based research database, in which journalists can listen to the audio clips at their workplace before producing a new piece,“ said Heidrun Speckmann.

“Thanks to the modernization of the archives, more pieces of audio material are available to the journalists. The range of the retrieved material is much higher than before, since the content is more easily searchable.” Heidrun added that the immediate access to the archive material also allows journalists to make better use of contemporary sound documents for the current programs and to produce program formats with more audience participation.

Nguyen Pham Hoa Binh shows damaged audio tapes

Besides presenting several acoustic samples to the guests at the German Embassy, Binh and Speckmann also showed two original tapes which illustrated the severe damage that years of storage in a tropical climate have caused.

Thanks to the training by DW Akademie’s team of experts, VOV archivists are now able to physically restore such tapes and digitize them.

Asians helping Asians

Since the VOV archive experts have learned a lot in the process of modernizing their own archives, they are now qualified to help train archivists at other Asian radio stations.  Together with the team of DW Akademie experts, they have begun long-term training projects in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The archiving project with Radio Nepal in Kathmandu started in 2009, the one with Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation in Colombo in 2010.

As Heidrun Speckmann explained during her presentation in Hanoi, it was a special highlight for the heads of the digital archive projects from all three of these Asian broadcasters to join her at the IASA (International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives) in Frankfurt in 2011. The German-Asian team had been invited to present their long-term project to modernize broadcasting archives in Asia and to make them accessible to journalists and the public at large.

For more information check out these articles (in German only)

– Deutsche Expertin bei VOV stellt Audio-Archiv-Projekte in Asien vor

– Deutsche Experten helfen VOV bei der Digitalisierung von Audioarchiven

– Veranstaltungsreihe: Was macht eigentlich …? – Deutsche Experten in Vietnam berichten

As part of a modernization drive, Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS) has combined their radio and television newsrooms. In the future, reporters will be required to provide news reports in both media. It’s hoped that the convergence will allow the state-funded station to cut costs and do more with limited resources.

It was against this background that two DW-AKADEMIE trainers went to Bhutan’s high-altitude capital Thimphu to conduct a workshop with an enthusiastic group of 12 young BBS journalists. While several already had some radio production experience, many had previously only worked on the TV side of things.

Together, the group started with a review of the basics, such as news judgment and news writing for radio, before moving on to the interview and how to ask that all-important first question that will grab your listeners and keep them from turning the dial.

The focus was on the practical, and with every topic covered, workshop participants completed exercises that, while not exactly the real thing, got fairly close. Besides writing news, they gathered vox pops from people around town and grabbed interviews with some fairly prominent Bhutanese folk, including the coach of the national football (soccer) team and one of the country’s most famous actors. The group analyzed the interviews together and participants offered their colleagues their takes on the strong and weak points of each one.

Then the workshop tackled the radio feature and for many of the journalists, it was the first time they had learned about how to use natural/ambient sound in a radio reportage to evoke a sense of place for listeners and paint mental pictures that can turn a recitation of facts and opinions into a lively, almost “visual” piece, despite the absence of a screen.

For Kuenzang Choden, a producer in the English department at BBS, natural sound was something entirely new. She was excited about the possibilities, as she explains in this short clip.

Toward the end of the two-week workshop, the participants were divided into two groups and each was tasked with creating their own radio magazine program. Both ended up being thematic: one group chose to make a youth program; the other a soccer/football show.

The journalists used their new skills in presentation, interviewing and report production to put together two lively magazines. Reporters for the soccer show, called Druk Kangtsey, went to the training pitch to catch the national team in preparation for a tournament in India.

Convergence, not phase-out

As BBS continues its convergence drive, management was quick to point out that the merger is not a takeover, with radio being the loser. While television recently got brand-new studios and continues to grow in popularity (TV broadcasting was only allowed in the kingdom in 1999), radio is still the dominant medium for many people in this mountainous country.

Many Bhutanese live in remote regions without electricity where newspapers arrive late, if they arrive at all. A battery-powered radio is often the only link to the outside world.

Kesang, who heads the BBS radio department, is playing a key role in the convergence process, but in this video clip he insists radio will not go the way of the dodo.

Journalists’ special role

Besides the late introduction of television in this country of around 708,000 people, democracy was also a late arrival. Until a few years ago, the country was governed by an absolute monarchy.

In 2005, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, adored by his people and seen as a very benevolent monarch, shocked the nation by announcing major democratic reforms. He also proclaimed he would pass the crown to his son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, in order to give him time as head of state in the run-up to the transition to democracy.

Bhutan’s elections for its first parliament and the ratification of its first constitution were completed in 2008.

This major change has put a special responsibility on journalists’ shoulders, according to Thinley Dorji, the managing director of BBS since summer 2011. In the following video he talks about that as well as a government that might not be used to dealing with criticism from the media. He also addresses the country’s changing media landscape and what that means for the broadcaster.

By Kyle James