I sent an e-mail to the British Council about S4C International funding and got an auto-reply promising an answer. I wait with breath no longer bated as time has passed removing my sense of hopefulness!
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Well, here is what I got back from the British Council:
I have been sent your email re. broadcasting S4C content overseas by a member of the enquiries team.
I am afraid that we do not provide funding for the kind of initiative that you suggested, which is in my humble opinion a very interesting one.
During 2015 the British Council was tasked by the Welsh Government to coordinate the celebrations of the 150 years of the landing of the Welsh in Patagonia. Since the finding available was extremely limited, all we could do was coordinate a series of projects run by partners like the BBC Orchestra of Wales, S4C, BBC Wales-Cymru, National Museum Wales and many others. We were not able to manage or generate activities, only provide support though our contacts in Wales and in Argentina.
I believe that the idea of allowing content to be broadcast in Argentina was something that Welsh-speaking Patagonians had been asking for for a long time, and it was basically a S4C idea to look for the way to lift the restrictions.
I feel that the best option would be to approach S4C to make them aware that there is interest beyond Patagonia in watching S4C content.
I hope that this is of some help. But please contact me if you have any queries.
@Deborah-SSi, not sure if you can n/l this? @aran what do you think?
I have already told S4C about petitioners who have said they would be happy to subscribe. Any ideas, folks?
Let’s face it, less than 1300 signatures, most of which are in UK is not evidence of a potential flood of subscriptions. I’m not sure S4C would think it worth their while to pursue, They already make programs about early pioneers from Wales in many parts of the world, but do not, I think, try to sell the programs in those places!
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This sounds reasonable, although I would expect that S4C are about as strapped for cash as they could possibly be…
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He rather missed my point, as I was talking about S4C’s shortage of money! I suppose he means tell them they might get funds by starting a subscription service for S4C International, but I’m not sure how they could do that. I suppose, on line it is possible to set up! Problem - probably UK Government would take a bit off the miserly funding for every £ the channel got overseas!
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It does sound like you have found someone who is receptive fo good ideas - I’m surprised and impressed. There seems to be a number of senior people in the British cou cil, specifically British Council Wales with names that can only be Welsh and you could be pushing on an open door, but supporting S4C specifically might be problematic and that isnt what this is about. In my mind it is allowing people to access S4C materials and productions, which maybr could be done through a third party?
I do wonder if say in the US there may be room for US led organisation interested in celtic cultural links to respective diaspora to find a way to broadcast and promote mayerials, with the endorsement and maybe some financial assistance from bodies funded by the British and Irish governments (like the British Council). A good example of a British-Irish collaborative agreement for its celtic diaspora. I am torn a bit on using the British umbrella to support Welsh things, but my head says its the pragmatic way to increase licence fee and royalty incomes to S4C and more importantly the Welsh creative industries.
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So, do any of our American, Australian, New Zealand etc Forum members fancy getting some sort of approach going at their end to S4C with mention of possible British Council Support. I am not sure if the Patagonia project supports S4C availability there? Now how do I alert people from all those places?
I can assure you that any expat living abroad will be using a proxy server to access home grown content so i would imagine any subscription model would raise very little.
(Used to do this myself by the way as did everyone else i knew).
I am not sure if a proxy server is as naughty as it sounds, but I do know that a lot of petition signers from outside uk have said they’d happily pay a sub to get better access to S4C! So I suspect they haven’t been served by proxy!
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