How NGOs Can Reach Mass Audiences Through Sponsored U.N. TV Programs

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.