Kofi Annan has proposed a restructuring of the United Nations… with three legs :: development, security, and human rights... supported, like any good chair, by a fourth leg... reformed management. That is the U.N. we want to place our bets on. But for it to work, we need the U.S. to support this agenda - and support it not just in a whisper but in a coast-to-coast shout that pushes back the critics domestically and wins over the skeptics internationally. American leaders must again say the U.N. matters.
Mark Malloch Brown, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General, “Power and Super-Power: Global Leadership in the Twenty-First Century” Conference New York City, June 6, 2006
The following
proposal elaborates a strategy for developing a deeper base of public
knowledge about the United Nations. U.N. supporting non-governmental organizations
can co-sponsor one hour of U.N.-related and civil society-affirming programs
weekly in the early evenings on regional TV outlets. Targeted promotion
and advertising will draw large audiences.
CURRENTLY INVISIBLE U.N. PROGRAMMING
The United Nations Department of Public Information and U.N. Television
together produce hours of programming every week, which they make available
free to broadcasters around the world. Many stations abroad telecast these
shows for vast numbers. Only one country’s media virtually never airs
any of this material... the United States.
The U.S. government and the dominant political class apparently prefer
to frame world events for the public within a narrowly Amero-centric perspective.
The U.N. generally takes the hit from U.S. media, such as criticism for
being incompetent to stop genocide in Darfur and Rwanda, or corrupt in
managing the Oil for Food money. In the summer of 2005, the average American
in the street was much more likely to associate Secretary-General Kofi
Annan with the Oil for Food scandal than the U.N. Reform Summit. Yet in
the recent Lebanon crisis, the U.N. brought about the ceasefire.
Despite the virtual blackout of positive U.N. coverage in the mainstream
U.S. media, the American public nonetheless overwhelming supports the
world body. Translating these uninformed good feelings into usable political
capital has proven difficult.
The non-governmental organizations associated with the U.N., such as the
United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA/USA),
Citizens for Global Solutions, Rotary International, and the World Federalist
Movement, have had to struggle to focus mainstream attention on the needs
of the U.N. Some of these groups have sizable memberships and even outreach
budgets, but their events tend to address mostly those already in the
know. Commercial broadcasters rarely see the U.N. as a sexy subject to
cover, unless a celebrity like Angelina Jolie is fronting one of its good
works.
GRASS ROOTS TV PROGRESS TO DATE
To fill the vacuum of public information, a few grass roots stalwarts
have put pro-U.N. programming on local public access outlets. UNA/USA’s
Bill Miller from Frankfurt, Kentucky, even visits the U.N. monthly to
tape interviews with insiders there for later cablecast in Frankfurt and
Louisville. Jennifer Stillman of Westchester, New York’s UNA chapter,
has now collected two 26 week seasons of professionally produced UN-related
half hour programs she calls "Going Global with the UN.” She delivers
VHS copies of these for distribution by each of Westchester County’s fourteen
different public access franchises, for them to play weekly during various
time slots.
Bill McCarthy of the Unity Foundation in San Francisco and lately also
of Los Angeles, has for some years been producing monthly installments
of “Positive Spin,” a half hour program dedicated to positive news and
local, national, and international solutions. Guests include political
leaders from all over the world, social activists, performers, writers,
and artists. Besides Northern California public access screenings, “Positive
Spin” now airs and repeats often on the satellite dish network, Free Speech
TV. Some Bay Area non-profits do co-sponsor Bill's program, but only to
defray modest production and editing costs. None of these TV series has
a budget for promotion and advertising, while the channels on which they
appear are not well known, so they touch too few viewers.
EXPANDING OUTREACH THROUGH SPONSORED PROGRAMMING
“Going Global with the UN” and "Positive Spin" are entertaining,
informative, and decently produced. They will inspire self-selected general
audiences. If we place them back to back on regionwide outlets, with targeted
promotion and advertising, in most metropolitan areas they should attract
very respectable audiences, in the tens of thousands.
Regional channels come at various levels and costs. As one example, for
no charge, the Chicago Area Network places public access programming in
three million cable homes. The City University of New York (CUNY) channel
similarly cablecasts to two million homes in all five boroughs. In other
places, areawide leased access infomercial slots can run as low as $200
an hour. UHF channels that reach the entire Los Angeles, California basin
or New York City to Albany, both viewable in some five million living
rooms, cost just $1500 3000 per hour.
Excellent time slots are available between 5:00 and 8:00 PM, the soft
underbelly of TV scheduling. Just off prime time, usually filled up with
local news and old reruns, such a niche can bring large numbers of viewers
to substantive programming, if they know it is there. Weekends are likewise
open and affordable. In some areas, this content might even be able to
appear on PBS stations.
Networks promote and advertise their signature programs to increase viewership.
So must we, for each of our outlets. Professional public relations services,
at rates scaled for civic groups, can generate a lot of buzz about such
unusually life-affirming program matter. Print ads in the major municipal
newspaper's weekly TV Times, in TV Guide, and in the main alternative
area weekly, along with radio spots on local NPR, Pacifica, or community
radio stations, can bring in PBS-type and socially conscious listeners.
The ads themselves will evoke an awareness of global issues, even for
people who never watch the programs. Figure on spending per locale as
much again for promotion and advertising as air time, starting from a
minimum of $200 a month budget, assuming free time.
Each program hour theoretically includes up to twelve promotional minutes.
To finance substantive outreach, co-sponsors need to pay $100 - 500 per
minute. Groups can ask for just a credit by name, fill a screen with their
contact information, include a :30 to :90 Public Service Announcement
conveying their message, or produce a short good news segment showing
themselves in action. When their listed 800#s and website addresses attract
respondents off-air, associations can then solicit them to donate time
and money. The national offices of the above-mentioned major NGOs, among
others, could offer funds to match whatever local chapters can raise.
There need be no on-air fundraising or selling.
This sponsored UNTV project would best begin in the three most influential
U.S. population centers of New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco
Bay Area. Other cities with strong local groups willing to aggressively
pursue this strategy can at any point add themselves to the emerging network.
Eligible sponsors include non-profits, foundations, and socially responsible
firms. Internationalist organizations, peace advocates, environmental
groups, spiritual centers, and holistic health practitioners are all potential
backers.
Since the necessary programming is already in hand, we can build this
system one self-financing outlet at a time. We can learn as we go what
are the key complicating factors and how to enlarge demographic appeal.
Over time, we should seek grant money to pay for support materials like
promotional brochures and teacher guides. Once we develop a working model,
larger donors might help expand our base of stations. As we get more established
in each locality, additional civic groups will come on board.
INCORPORATING “21ST CENTURY”... A NEW MONTHLY U.N. PROGRAM
United Nations Television (UNTV) has recently launched “21st Century,”
a series of twelve 26 minute news-magazine shows, putting a spotlight
on the world’s most underreported stories. Each episode highlights three
to four character-driven, human interest features, as they unfold over
time. Producers dispatched across the globe illustrate the U.N. and its
agencies' ongoing work for human rights, development, and peace.
We can work with UNTV to promote this exciting new monthly show within
the hour we air weekly. The plan is to establish core infrastructure in
several cities: organizational co-sponsors, regionwide airtime, helpful
local PR firms and ad agencies, a high profile news and advertorial presence
in the municipal media, and a built up audience of thousands.
This UNTV base might then attach to itself a public affairs program series,
to give us a three-hour time block, which should draw and hold significant
size audiences. One potential source is the UNA Film Festival, which annually
selects profound international documentaries that deserve wider distribution.
Another minimally seen program category is the many political documentaries
now only screening in movie theaters, on the web, or on DVD.
Civil society has enormously expanded its range and importance in recent
years. The 2006 U.S. elections have opened space for new ideas. This is
an opportune time to come out of marginality to directly engage the mainstream
politics of our times.
We need now to put our content squarely before the mass of the people,
where so many of them are so much of the time, at home watching well-promoted
TV programs. By this means, we can prominently present progressive alternatives
in the marketplace of ideas. Such as it is, national policy debate in
America takes place on TV. If we are on it, we can be in it!
DAVID LIONEL is a veteran video producer and editor who has worked on many projects prototyping citizen TV since 1967. His documentary videobooks portray several of the historic UN civil society forums of the past twenty-five years, including recently the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the 1996 City Summit in Istanbul, and the 2000 Millennium Forum in New York. “Reinventing the United Nations,” an article he co-authored, appeared in the September 2006 Foreign Service Journal.