ABC vs. BBC: The Global Media Divide Online

The Eurovision Song Contest drew hundreds of thousands of people to the streets, joining national parades of pride. Eurovision is the epitome of the arts to all of Europe. The annual song contest is like the World Cup. It is the greatest symbol of culture because it has been around longer than any other TV program. The Eurovision Song Contest is like American Idol or X Factor. BBC and ABC wrote articles about it in early June and late May, 2010, but the divide between the two media outlets are different. The information presented in each article is similar because they talk about the subject yet different because the BBC actually cares.

The BBC and ABC articulate the importance of the song contest for the various European countries by selecting one country to focus in on. Both articles give insight to the 2010 Eurovision Song contest held in Oslo. The Internet news departments report on the contest in a journalistic format one might read in a newspaper. Both are trusted resources of news information. Both articles on the Eurovision Song Contest are featured under entertainment.

However, the BBC and ABC are more different than they are similar. When looking at BBC News- Eurovision 2010: Pete Waterman, posted May 28th, 2010 it appears that the article is an interview format with one of the pioneer song writers at Eurovision Song Contest. The song writer, PeteWaterman, formerly wrote arguably the most popular internet music video song, Never Gunna Give You Up, by Rick Astley.

Waterman, in 2004, won the OBE for his contribution to music. Furthermore, Waterman’s song entry this year is for the United Kingdom titled, That Sounds Good To Me. BBC news ran this article on their homepage where it links to a special page created in partnership with Eurovision Song Contest. The page is mesmorizing with a UI design that keeps your mouse clicking. The design alone is so great that it must have taken them 3 months just to launch the web design. The viewer can tell that the BBC takes the Eurovision Song Contest seriously and they want to win one for the UK.

In fact, an entire brand extension site exists between the BBC and Eurovision, highlighting the UK flag as if the song contest is as big as the World Cup behind all singing personalities, including the singers from Germany and others. BBC is more concerned with the “wrapping paper” of Eurovision on their  website than they are the content. The graphics are large and each highlighted talent’s face has a transparent UK flag waving in the wind. The BBC makes you walk away feeling patriotic and ready to cast your votes. The BBC wants to transplant you, but their iplayer only plays for people who are in Europe. People who want to watch the video need to go to YouTube. It’s almost like Europe is aware that the USA isn’t that interested.

On that note, ABC writes about the Eurovision Song Contest under Entertainment, but does not feature the article on the home page. In fact, it looks as though the ABC author copied and pasted the article without giving much interpretation at all into the news story. The story, Germany Finally Feels Loved With Eurovision Win, is about how Germany’s star Lena won with great achievement. She topped the itunes charts with her hit single, Satellite. She grew to instant fame overnight with the contest win and is now creating a record breaking win for Germany as a whole in the future of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Lastly, ABC’s reporting on the story is different than the BBC because ABC talks more about the celebrity success of the star of Germany where the BBC talks more about the star song writer working behind the scenes on the story. It appears that the BBC takes a more local focus to the UK even though they are an international brand. If you read between the lines you can tell that both the BBC and ABC don’t care about informing the American people about the Eurovision Song Contest.

That’s too bad because ABC is losing out on a potential demographic by posting the story to its website and not featuring the Eurovision Song Contest on its homepage like the BBC does. In addition, ABC should research and give more insight into the story rather than just copy and paste it. The best websites cater more to an online audience who is international. While ABC news may be a huge local success, it is an international failure. BBC is an example of a successful online news brand. BBC may be more interested, culturally, in the success of the UK singers when writing about the UK more than other countries; however, BBC makes more of an effort with branding the Eurovision Song Contest than any European newspaper. BBC seems to be the leader with this news story given that its demographic is international.
The demographic of ABC is national to the US. Thus comparing it to that of the BBC is sort of like comparing oranges to apples. With all the tools available, like RSS, Twitter saved search, and Facebook news feeds from your favorite fan pages, why aren’t more people using current tools to gather more information?

The news stories break first on twitter, my online community of followers constantly keep in communication with me about tweets on Eurovision. Why go over to ABC for this sort of information? Internet users and bloggers, look to social media text and video site as sources for the most current information on the Eurovision Song Contest. These people who read newspapers are a different demographic of people, and their numbers are shrinking.

If the ABC decides to write about the Eurovision Song Contest next year, let’s hope they actually send a reporter to cover it and feature it on the homepage. If ABC were to do so then maybe we would see the BBC update it’s flash video player to one that’s playable in the US. If the media cares then people care so let’s care because the Eurovision Song Contest is one of the greatest musical, theatrical, and popcultural icons of our time and we Americans are missing out.