Expressions of Discontent

This morning, Radio 4 broadcast a programme about marching bands in the USA. What an obscure topic, I thought, and that got me wondering:

In the British media, we frequently get programmes about the most obscure bits of US life and culture, but scarcely anything about anywhere else. For instance, on Radio 4, outside of From our Own Correspondent and Excess Baggage, (1 hour a week in all) you'd scarcely know that any countries existed in the world other than the US and Britain.

Why?

Why no programmes about Chinese opera?

Why not even any programmes about life in New Europe?

Also, why no entertainment, drama or music from anywhere except the US and Britain, unless it is sneaked in by mistake (e.g., some Canadian who cons us into thinking he/she is American)?

I know what you're going to ask now: is there a demand for programmes about Chinese opera?

Well my retort is to ask, is there a pent-up demand for programmes about American marching bands? I think, rather, that there's a demand for interesting, informative programmes, and I've no doubt someone could make an interesting, informative programme about Chinese opera, or about Nepalese carving, or Tibetan dance, or African herbalism, if they took the fancy, but nobody is making those programmes, and I'm inclined to wonder why. Is it just the media who are narrowly fixated on the US, or are reflecting an insularity that belongs to the British population as a whole? If the media broadened their outlook, would the audiences, also? I feel sure that they would.

Someone has said to me that the narrow obsession with America is currently in decline. I hope that's true, but I'm not at all sure it is.

A few weeks ago, the BBC ran a "China Week", scheduling some forty slots about China, and that might seem impressive, but in reality it is overdue. China is fast becoming the most important country in the world, and we scarcely hear a peep about it. No doubt, after this China Week, we'll scarcely hear another peep until the next such week some years hence. Nor did the China Week amount to as much as might seem at first glance. Of the forty slots in the schedule, eleven were broadcast on the international World Service, which has very few listeners within the UK, and most of the rest were brief slots within news programmes.

Meanwhile, "America Weeks" of one kind or other go on all the time. A few weeks ago, for instance, Radio Two, Britain's most popular station, had a big junket to the South by Southwest festival in Texas -- an American rock festival of only moderate importance -- from which they broadcast many hours of material. I've never heard of any similar junket to any other part of the world.

Yet, there'll probably be dozens of similar "America Weeks" of one kind or another throughout the year, and scarcely anyone will notice the odd narrowness of that.