30 April 2006

Youth gap: what the BBC and the Church share

It seems that the BBC shares a problem with the church in the UK, they both seem to be failing to reach young adults.
the BBC was in real danger of losing touch with tomorrow's licence-fee payers; tech-savvy 16-24-year-olds who feel little affinity with its output and consume content in ways their parents wouldn't begin to understand. Research found that 60 per cent of 16-24-year-olds watch less than three hours of BBC television a week.

It is a matter of culture, and perhaps watching what market driven-cultural industries do is part of the learning we can both do. That's not to say that I would have us emulate the antics of the market, since I think that there are some deeply problematic things about it [for a clue as to what I think those are you could look over one of my recent posts]. But I would say that the clues we can gain about cultural change and the way that perceptions are moulded and change is important. Cultural reading and media literacy should be part of Christian formation in a broad way, and I don't mean that right-wing stuff thinly disguised as Christian cultural critique which owes more to the values of tyranny than to the gospel of peace.

On a final, oblique note. Perhaps the reply to the sneering comments from journalists about falling numbers in churches is to remind them that newspapers and television journalism seem to share the same problem ... And that some churches seem to be bucking that trend.
The Observer | Business | The BBC's digital future - but will it work?:
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