Britons living in Bulgaria. Guide to Bulgaria, Sofia and Varna

Britons grow dull on trivia as TV ignores developing world ...


Consumer-oriented travel programmes increased to one-third of all foreign factual programming in 2000-01, and reality TV programmes such as Survivor grew to more than 10% of all factual international coverage on commercial channels. During that period it found there were only four programmes on the politics of developing countries, and that BBC1, ITV1 and Channel 5 showed no programmes at all in this category. It found significant rises in lightweight travel, docusoaps, crime and "cultural programming". It made no mention of the K'Wa, or bushmen, being evicted from their ancestral areas in what observers term a human rights disaster. Much of the output puts British people in the foreground," it says. One BBC programme was a desert adventure with the former footballer Ian Wright, challenged to survive in the Kalahari. Please enclose a self-addressed envelope if you will like your manuscript to be returned. Softer, more accessible and entertainment-led formats now dominate. The research, which covers the year to September 2001, was conducted by the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Trust, 3WE, which is funded by Oxfam, Christian Aid, Comic Relief and other leading development charities. There were just 10 programmes on British TV in the whole year about conflicts and disasters, and programmes on development, human rights and the environment fell to "unprecedented" low levels with just 6% of all factual international programmes. They recommend that the BBC2 and ITV1 remits for public broadcasting are reviewed. Writers are invited to submit articles of no more than 850 words.