Where talking about Facebook on air is illegal

Public radio in Sweden has been instructed not to encourage listeners to go and find them on Facebook. It’s against the law.

The country’s Review Board has “convicted” the popular radio station P4 for suggesting to listeners that they “like” its morning show on Facebook. The regulator’s concerns centre on promotion of a commercial business (Facebook) by a public utility (Swedish Radio).

Swedish journalist Anders Mildner says this presents a dilemma for the broadcaster because P4 wants to take advantage of the Facebook platform which many of its listeners use.

According to this latest ruling (pdf), the law in Sweden appears to allow public radio stations to acknowledge their presence on Facebook but not actually encourage people to go there. Now there’s an interesting brief for a promo.

It’s not often you hear it said, but compared to Swedish standards, our attitude and practice in the UK  is considerably relaxed.

Radio stations here regularly connect with listeners on third-party sites, largely Facebook and Twitter but also YouTube, Flickr and others, and use that connection to enhance the on-air programming.

The BBC’s set of social media guidelines encourages its broadcasters to engage in open, transparent use of social media while protecting against “undue prominence” on air. For example, it does not permit third party URLs to be read out on the radio but presenters can mention the sites and the activity when it’s directly editorially relevant.

However this isn’t the only possible model and I hear a range of views on the matter from media colleagues. Some find a protective closed wall approach to their content rather appealing. Of course Rupert Murdoch has taken this line with his paywall approach to online newspapers.

At the opposite extreme others suggest media businesses of the future will be able to operate perfectly well solely through social media outlets run by third parties. They may not need websites of their own.

Personally, I prefer the proven ‘middle way’: create an engaging presence in the places your listeners and target listeners are likely to frequent. Then use it to entice them deeper into your content on your own website and radio station.

This model allows tone of voice to be adapted for each social media environment and ensures that any revenues generated around your best content will drop into your pocket and not that of Mr Zuckerburg.

And even in Sweden it would seem to be permitted, so long as nobody tries promoting it on air.

Photo: Sparkly subway map in Stockholm by James Cridland, on Flickr. Used under licence.

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The rise of mobile

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How often have you heard the line “on tv, on radio, online”? We’ll here’s a campaign promoting content on a different mix of platforms.

These promos are for the BBC’s coverage of the Africa Cup of Nations. They’re on air in West Africa and, as you’ll see and hear, they promote coverage on radio, online and mobile with a strong emphasis on the latter.

Thing is, in much of Africa, online means mobile. A recent report picked up by guardian.co.uk highlighted some of the most popular mobile services. Top of the list was Facebook. The BBC was in the top 10 in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia. And the mobile web is growing fast in Africa with page impressions are up 374% in a year.

So what does this mean for radio?

Well, the BBC’s own Hausa language radio service, popular in Northern Nigeria, already has more than 5000 members to its new Facebook group. This from a largely rural part of a relatively poor country where fixed broadband access is out of the reach of the vast majority of people.

In the coming weeks I shall be spending some time in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria and will aim to bring back insights from the broadcasters there who are aiming to make the most of mobile.

But for now here are two tiny insights which go some way to suggest how important mobile has become to life in these countries:

In Nigeria, one radio station manager told me recently that “some people would rather go without a meal than go without their mobile”.

Then, while travelling across Ghana on National Farmers’ Day (we should have one of those) I was listening to a radio phone-in celebrating rural life.

The presenter took a call from a woman who said she had lived without fresh water for seven years. But it was the presenter’s back-anno that truly summed things up:

“…and if you’ve lived for seven years or more without water then text us…”

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