The ‘BBC Accent’, ‘NPR Voice', and Attracting New Audiences – Recent Years and Recent Challenges

In recent years, efforts to diversify accents in National Public Radio (NPR) and BBC radio have accelerated as part of a societal turn towards greater concern for ‘left behind’ locations and people in an age of populism as well as intersectional/identity politics. Part of this has come from attempts to attract stronger listening figures among Black and Hispanic (NPR) and regional and C2DE (BBC) listeners. While previous research (including Tom McEnaney’s ‘This American Voice: The Odd Timbre of a New Standard in Public Radio’, published in 2019) has looked at the perception and construction of an alleged “standard American voice’, and considered the precedent of the BBC’s received pronunciation (RP) in describing attempts to invent this, there has been little discussion of the various parallels between these recent efforts as part of Anglospheric public radio’s process of self-reflection. This process has been at times controversial and has entered the wider news media as a point of discussion. There have been accusations that NPR dropped a story due to the journalist having an accent dubbed unduly strong, and turnover of black staff members who claim they felt pressured to adhere to a specific mode of speaking. The BBC’s local radio cuts in 2023 attracted considerable criticism, even as the Corporation announced changes in 2021 to move towards the use of more regional accents in Northern areas. The use of accent as a ‘brand' in distinguishing stations from rivals, the influence of other liberal arts fields such as poetry and the stage upon radio voice, the turn towards greater informality, and perceptions and comparative valuing of authenticity all have parallels between the two public radio enterprises. There is also a debate about how much speaking informally relates to impartiality debates and the role of podcasting, pioneered in America by NPR and now a cornerstone of the BBC’s Sounds output, in changing stylistic norms. In analysing discourse about changing styles in public radio, this presentation aims to illustrate how U.K. and U.S. media have succeeded and failed to meet the moment and if their efforts have achieved the stated goals.

 

 

 Hal Conte is a first-year PhD student at the University of Warwick who is writing his thesis on U.K. public-service broadcasting policymaking from 2007 through 2024. His MA at Warwick discussed the influence of the BBC in the creation of American public television. He completed his BA at Temple University in Philadelphia, and originally hails from the Philadelphia suburbs.