At the BA's Building Bridges to Science forum in Edinburgh last weekend I
spoke briefly about my 5-month secondment to the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, with the
International Technology Service - Secondments Scheme run by the
Department of Trade and Industry.
I described an initiative run by the Campaign for National Awareness (CNA)
at CSIRO, called The SciFiles. Briefly, CNA produces one CD per month
carrying ten stories with running times from 90 seconds to 2 minutes. They
send copies to commercial and public radio stations across Australia for
free-to-air broadcasting. I was asked about the effectiveness of this project at
the forum. The Director of CNA sent this:
"We originally sent The SciFiles to all 360 radio stations in Oz, in the
expectation of getting 100 regular subscribers. We then surveyed them all and
200 asked to receive it on a regular basis - double what we had planned.
Furthermore, the original disc had 10 stories on it - and the overwhelming
request was for 20 stories, or one a weekday for a month. So we doubled
the content too.
There have since been further requests - I think we are now up to 216
stations taking it.
Comments by radio stations were all positive and many very enthusiastic.
Besides circulating the CD, we put out a brief describing each story so
radio announcers can do their own interviews with the scientists if they
want. In this way the CD's act as a form of electronic media release.
We are doing a special promotion of TSF during Science Week, using a well
known kids presenter to see if we can gather in a few more subscribers -
but candidly, I think we have now got about as many radio stations whose
format permits that kind of story. The others are wall-to-wall music."
If anyone would like any more information, please contact me.
Anita Shaw
--
Dr Anita Shaw
Education Projects Manager
Techniquest
Stuart Street
Cardiff CF10 6BW
Telephone: +44 (0) 1222 475 475
Fax: +44 (0) 1222 482 517
Web: http://www.tquest.org.uk/
Techniquest is a Company Limited by Guarantee, registered in
England & Wales, no. 1955696.
It is registered as a Charity, no. 517722.
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