cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies

December 31st, 2012

Via: PeakProsperity:

Bill Ryerson: Well, you brought up Population Media Center. One of the things that we do – and that is the primary thing we do – is to use a strategy of communications that has turned out, from everything we have been able to measure, to be the most cost-effective strategy for changing behavior with regard to family size and contraceptive use on a per-behavior change basis of any strategy we have found on the planet. And this is the use of long-running serialized dramas, melodramas like soap operas, in which characters gradually evolve from the middle of the road in that society into positive role models for daughter education, delaying marriage and childbearing until adulthood, spacing of children, limiting of family size, and various other health and social goals of each country. And we have now done such programs in forty-five countries. And I can give you a couple of statistics.

For example, in northern Nigeria, a program we ran from 2007 to 2009 was listened to by 70% of the population at least weekly. It was a twice a week program. It was clearly a smash hit. And it was a smash hit because it was highly suspenseful and highly entertaining. But it had a storyline dealing with a couple deciding to use family planning, which is almost taboo in northern Nigeria because less than 10% of the people in that region use any modern method of contraception. We had eleven clinics have healthcare workers ask clients what had motivated them to come in for family planning, and 67% percent of them named the program as the motivation.

Chris Martenson: Congratulations.

Bill Ryerson: Our cost per family-planning adopter of that entire program, 208 episodes, writing, acting, production, and primetime air purchase, plus the research pre- and post-broadcast and the monitoring research, came out to 89 cents per family-planning adopter. That is the kind of thing that can dramatically change demographic trends globally. We need to greatly expand this type of work.

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Chris Martenson: Well, maybe there are some things that work there as well. We are seeing changes in behaviors there, too. And if the story is right, if the narrative is correct, people will live into that narrative. And in the absence of a good narrative will default into – maybe I will call them more “primal” sort of behavior sets.