Project Save the World Podcast / Talk Show Episode Number: 84
Panelists: William (Bill) Ryerson
Host: Metta Spencer

Date Aired:  4 November 2019
Date Transcribed and Verified:  31 May 2021
Transcription: Otter.ai
Transcription Review and Edits: Adam Wynne

Intro/Outro

Welcome. This is Talk About Saving the World, a weekly series of discussions sponsored by Peace Magazine and Project Save the World. Every week, we join some friends and experts at our respective webcams, to talk about how to prevent one or more of the six most serious global threats to humankind: war and weapons, especially nuclear; global warming; famine; pandemics; massive radiation exposure through something like a reactor explosion, and cyber-attacks. Our host is a retired University of Toronto sociology professor, Metta Spencer.

Metta Spencer  

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer. And today I get to talk to one of my heroes. Because about 10 years ago, I wrote a book called Two Aspirins and a Comedy, which was about the use of fiction as a way of influencing public opinion or public awareness of various global issues. And it’s not something the world has been eager to hear more about, because the book didn’t have a huge audience. But I certainly was intrigued by the work of William Ryerson in a place called the Population Media Centre in Shelburne, Vermont.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

We’re now in South Burlington, but very close to Shelburne, where we started,

Metta Spencer  

Bill, tell us about, you can start at the top, and tell us about your work and how you use and promote the use of soap operas and other such methods. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Sure, there’s a good illustration of why we use melodrama and that is the treatment of HIV/AIDS by two American shows: 60 Minutes, which at the time, during the Clinton administration was the primetime show with a huge audience; and a daytime soap opera called The Bold and the Beautiful. Each one was provided with a unique 800 number that people could call to get information about HIV/AIDS after the treatment of this issue by these two shows. And they expected the calls generated from 60 Minutes with its much bigger audience would outnumber the calls generated by The Bold and the Beautiful. And Donna Shalala told this story at a meeting we organized for Hollywood professionals. She said the amazing thing was that 60 Minutes did its normal treatment, like a news magazine program of the epidemic and its origins and its magnitude and the treatments that were being developed; while The Bold and the Beautiful had a longtime character named Tony, who had been coming into people’s living rooms for years, discover he was HIV positive. And the calls generated by The Bold and the Beautiful, outnumbered the calls from 60 Minutes 10-to-1. This speaks to the power of storytelling and emotion. If you remember what you were doing on September 11 2001, more clearly than what you were doing on September 11 2011, which is 10 years more recent, there’s a reason for that and it’s called emotional involvement. Emotional involvement, as psychologists can tell you, enhances memory. So, regarding one of the early family planning soap operas, as we call them, or telenovelas, I was in the backseat of a taxi in Washington DC a few years ago with a middle-aged Indian gentleman. And I said to him, where were you living during the mid-1980s? And he said, I was in New Delhi at the time. And I said: Did you happen to see a TV show called Hum Log? – which in Hindi means We People. And he said: Oh my god, you know that program? And I said: Yes, I was involved with an organization that convinced Indira Gandhi to allow that program to go on the air. And the methodology used by that program was based on the work of Miguel Sabido of Mexico, who, along with my colleague met with Indira Gandhi. And he said: that’s so amazing. And then for the rest of the taxi ride, he told me episode by episode of the characters had done and what he had learned from them. And we’re talking more than 20 years later. 

Metta Spencer  

Now you’re not talking about a housewife who has nothing to do and is sitting at home bored. You’re talking about a guy who’s got plenty of work and is well established in life and he’s watching the soap opera.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Well, the big difference between what we think of as soap operas and programs of the type that Population Media Center does is they are primetime. They’re not daytime soap operas aimed at housewives or those who are stuck at home, they are primetime evening shows. But the concept of a serialized melodrama is the same. So, there’s a continuing storyline over 200 episodes in which positive and negative characters that populate all melodrama that are battling over various issues or values. And then the formulation created by Miguel Sabido of Mexico, there are middle of the road characters, designed to be aspirational, but similar to segments of the audience, who are getting that conflicting advice from the positive and negative characters. And over time, with a lot of suspense, a lot of cliffhangers, finally sorting out who’s right and who’s wrong, and gradually, with a lot of falling back, but gradually evolving in the positive role models for the audience. So that’s the design. And one of the great things about this in use of this strategy in the population field is that it’s respectful of human rights. We’re never telling the audience what to do. A lot of people are nervous about the population issue, because they’ve heard about coercion in India and China. And even when you look at public health messaging, it is such things as use a bed net, wear a condom, telling people what to do, which doesn’t really get a good reaction from a lot of people because they don’t want to be lectured to. But these programs are just modeling characters that people fall in love with, who are struggling with issues similar to what the audience is struggling with, and getting the conflicting advice that exists in that society. So, we do extensive formative research and then gradually evolving into positive role models. And because of pushback from trying innovative things like use of contraceptive methods, or stopping child marriage and sending daughters to school, or other innovations that may not be accepted in that traditional society, they get tremendous pushback, and these characters then fall back. And then they suffer the consequences of these negative behaviors. And then ultimately, they become absolutely committed to the new behavior. And they become advocates among the other characters, this role modeling advocacy for the audience, and we’re actually able to measure dramatic increases in interpersonal communication between audience members and friends and family that are modeled for them by the characters. And when you’re dealing with reproductive health issues, including family planning and HIV prevention, and various other issues like that, these are sensitive topics. And so, modeling how to have such a conversation with a loved one is very important to sort of give people permission and ideas of how to broach the subject. So Miguel Sabido created the strategy in the 1970s. And his first use of this strategy was with the issue of adult education. The Mexican Department of Public Education was running a campaign using public service announcements, advertising their literacy campaign, and you could take free evening classes. And then the year before Miguel created a telenovela dealing with this subject, the public service announcements generated 99,000 registrations for these classes. And Sabido saw these – 

Metta Spencer  

I’m sorry, but these public service announcements would be like spot ads? Call this number and sign up for an adult literacy course?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Exactly.

Metta Spencer  

 Something like that. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

If you would like to learn to read and write here’s a number you can call where you can sign up. Exactly. And so, Sabido said, since he was seeing these PSAs on Televisa airwaves, well let me include this issue in the next storyline I’m doing for a telenovela and these were primetime telenovelas. So, he created a program called Ven conmigo. And it had many illiterate characters suffering from poverty and unemployment. And then negative characters responded to these characters, inquiries about how can they improve their situation by saying to them what a lot of illiterate people hear: “Look, you’re just too old or too stupid to learn. So, forget about it. Learn to live with your poverty.” And the positive character said: “Of course, you can learn to read and write. You’re as smart as anybody else, you were just bypassed by formal education. But guess what, it’s not too late. You can take these free classes in the evening and improve your situation.” So, one by one, the character signed up, struggled through the classes, got their diplomas, got better jobs, and their lives improved. And well into this 260-episode program, Sabido’s most popular character, a grandfather figure, went through his graduation ceremony where he shed tears of joy, because finally he could read all the letters he had gotten over many years from his granddaughter. So, it was a highly emotional scene and then is followed by an ad, saying: Perhaps you too, would like to do what this man has done. And we’re going to read aloud the addresses of all the registration sites in Mexico, which they did. Before he put this episode on the air, Sabido called the government and said: I’ve been hearing your public service announcements. I have 33% of the nation’s viewers watching my program. Can you handle a crowd? And they said: Sir, we love your program, because it’s reinforcing our public service announcements. But yes, we signed up 99,000 people last year, so we can handle any number you might generate. 

Metta Spencer  

I think that’s wonderful. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

He runs that episode with the epilogue giving addresses and the following day 250,000 people show up in a single day. He continues running these epilogues for the remaining weeks of the serial drama, and by the time it ends: 840,000 people have signed up for adult education. So, compared to 99,000 the year before, this was more than eight times as many. And in response to a program that was profitable in this case, because it had such a big audience. And then Sabido did 5 family planning telenovelas modeling family planning use and teenage pregnancy prevention and related topics in 5 storylines that coincided with Mexico having the most dramatic decline in fertility rate of any developing country in the 20th century. So, this was recognized by the UN Population Fund with the UN Population Prize in 1986.

Metta Spencer  

Yeah, well, now tell me, one of the things that you said is you want to have people backsliding and going back and forth. It sounds as if the show about adult education… How did they work that out? That some people would waiver and think they’re going to do it, but then back out, or…?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Some people dropped out of the classes because they were difficult. And then they got the courage to come back and finish the courses. So, it’s a little different from how one might give up use of family planning methods or educating their daughters, but a similar idea. They slid back into their old ways, because it wasn’t totally easy. I mean, learning to read and write as an adult is a challenge. But indeed, they demonstrated the courage to do that and the huge ultimate effect that has on their quality of life.

Metta Spencer  

Now, I heard of one case – that was a long time ago when I was into this literature – in Africa someplace. I can’t remember, whether it was Somalia or where it was, but it was about a truck driver who was stopping along the way to visit prostitutes and his wife knew that he was exposing himself and so she made him start using condoms or something and then he dies as I recall. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

That’s correct. His name was Mkwaju. Mkwaju attracted a huge male following in Tanzania, where that radio serial drama aired. It started in 1993 and I was there for the training workshop. Our representative from Kenya – Tom Kazungu – the first African trained by Sabido to use this methodology came after having a very successful program in Kenya and trained the Tanzanian writing team. And so, Mkwaju is having this wonderful lifestyle except he’s obviously at great risk. And his wife Tenu stands up to him on a home visit early in the show in 1993, and says: Look, I know what you’re up to on the road. And I’ve heard about the AIDS epidemic. So, you’re going to have to use condoms when you’re at home and she made that happen. And so, Mkwaju ultimately dies of AIDS. Tenu takes a job and ultimately becomes an entrepreneur and founds her own business. So that was the storyline.

Metta Spencer  

It’s not only an anti-HIV program, it’s also about feminist empowerment.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Yes, we model female entrepreneurship. And we have a storyline related to family planning as well. So, just to give you an idea of the evaluation that we put together for this show: I took two scholars who were involved in evaluation of communication programs and they work with one of the ministries of the government in Tanzania that put together what was a semi-controlled experiment. So, part of the country got music during the time slot, when the rest of the country got this radio serial drama and radio was the only way to go at the time, because there was no TV outside of Dar es Salaam and there was really only one radio station: Radio Tanzania. So, it was a great time to do this study. So twice a week for 2 years – from 1993 to 1995 – this program was broadcast in all but one region and that region got music. So, the control area otherwise got all the national programs dealing with family planning and HIV prevention. And then to make sure that it wasn’t that the people in the control region were different, the following 2 years – from 1995 to 1997 – we broadcast the program in the control region around the transmitter in Dodoma, Tanzania. And here’s what we learned, because there were nationwide surveys annually of just under 3000 people, a random sample hour long interview to determine knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behavior. And then we got other behavioral information from the Ministry of Health’s National AIDS Control Program. So, the survey at the end of the first two years, where the show was broadcast everywhere except the Dodoma region, showed in the broadcast areas 58%. were listening on a regular basis. In the non-broadcast area, 2% claimed to have heard it on shortwave, but it was essentially no one compared to the broadcast area. And among the listeners in the broadcast areas, 82%, said the program had caused them to change their own behavior to avoid HIV infection. Number 1 through reduction in the number of partners; and second through condom use. So, to see if we could find any correlation, we got the condom distribution data from the National AIDS Control Program in the government, since distribution was done in response to demand, and it was broken down by district. So, in the districts that made up the control area, there was a 16% increase in condom distribution, while which probably didn’t result from this program, while in the broadcast areas, condom distribution increased 153%. On family planning use, I got the Minister of Health to have health care workers at ministry family planning clinics, ask new adopters, what has motivated their decision, and to give us the numbers by district. So, what that showed was in the control area, there was 0 change in the number of family planning adopters, while in the broadcast areas, there was a 32% increase. When those new adopters were asked: What motivated the decision? 41% of them named the program by name. Then when we broadcast the program and the control area, we got —

Metta Spencer  

It wasn’t just that you had a checklist and asked them to check whether they’ve watched soap operas or that show?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

It was an open-ended question. 

Metta Spencer  

They volunteered the name of the show without being asked for what they’ve been doing with media, right?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

That’s right with this detail. 25% named the show outright because they were just asked: Can you identify the primary factor that caused you to come? 25% answered with the name of the show Twende na Wakati which means Let’s Go With the Times. Another 16% said it was something I heard on the radio. And those people were then shown a list of programs on the radio and asked to determine which one it was and they picked Twende na Wakati. So that came to 41% in total. But they weren’t given a list to start with. Then when we ran the program in the control area, we got the same results. So, it was clear that it wasn’t the people in Dodoma were somehow different.

Metta Spencer  

It is so spectacularly important, you would think that everybody in the world would realize that this is what we should be doing with our television shows, with all kinds of things. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Absolutely. 

Metta Spencer  

Yeah.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

There’s a lot of promise in broadcasting to do good, but it’s basically been auctioned off to the highest bidder in the West. But still there is the possibility of doing really high-quality social content programs that serve the audience well and still, because they’re well written, attract huge audiences.

Metta Spencer  

I went to Hollywood and talk to a woman who’s name you probably remember, but I have forgotten now, she had an office connected with I think, USC, some program developing —

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Hollywood Health and Society?

Metta Spencer  

Could be, very likely. And she had connections in the industry, with writers of television and movies also, but mostly, I think, also radio. And they would call her, you know, some of the writers and would say: I’ve got a storyline in which the character has such a such a disease. Give me information about what that is like and what the symptoms should be and how do I write this story about that disease? And then: What is the cure for it and can we work that in? So, she had the medical information available and would give it them upon request, but they were also doing outreach to various shows. And I happened to be at that point, watching a show called Numbers, which was I remember I was I was interested in it because of my interest in Rob Morrow, who had roles in other shows that I found extremely interesting from some of the same reasons. Morrow was playing in this thing called Numbers and this woman had been working on trying to get people to sign the card for organ donation. So, at the end of this particular episode, I knew that she had been involved with this, because the one of the characters comes in and at the end of the show, he says: I got my driver’s license renewed today. So, Rob Morrow’s character said: Well, did you sign the organ donor card? And he said: No, I don’t want to take the chance that they’ll do it too soon or something like that. And so, Rob said: No, no, Dad and I will make sure that they don’t – and they reassure each other that it’s, you know, if he signs the card, it’ll be alright. And he says: Okay, I’ll sign the card. So, you know, it’s clear that her office had succeeded in reaching the writers of this particular show and getting them to put it put this in, I would love to see if somebody had kept records of how many more organ donor cards got signed that week than the previous week, but I don’t think they have it. But I understand that some of the shows – medical shows – there was… what was it… ER?… that often had serious medical information. More people would get their real knowledge about diseases and cures and things from this TV show than any other source.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

That’s very true. 

Metta Spencer  

Yeah.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

 Donna Shalala in the same talk that I mentioned, where she pointed out the huge response The Bold and the Beautiful’s treatment of HIV/AIDS, mentioned that more people get their health information from entertainment shows like soap operas and evening shows, then get them from medical professionals. So, it’s very clear these shows have an obligation to give out accurate information when they’re treating a disease. Grey’s Anatomy has been another one that has done a lot of extraordinary work to help people understand details related to various ailments in the context of an entertainment show and we’ve done certainly Hollywood Health and Society has done wonderful work and it’s very cost effective – when you can get a very popular mainstream show – to include mention of any issue. In in our formulation where we’re dealing with an issue or several issues over a period of dozens or hundreds of episodes, it allows us a lot of time to show evolution of characters and do that only after the audience has fallen in love with them. So that we can, in fact lead a large percent of the audience to change behavior. And I, as I mentioned with the Radio Tanzania project, there was a huge change in self-reported behavior and measurable behavior at clinics and condom distribution, that verify there was a show that was causing that. And we then calculated the cost of the entire 208 Episodes, and the primetime air distribution, and all the research surveys and divided that total cost by the number of people who had adopted family planning and attributed that decision to the program. And it came out to 32 cents US. The cost per person who said they changed behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. And when I saw that data, I said, you know, there is no more cost-effective strategy for saving lives and motivating people to benefit from family planning than this strategy. And that’s what motivated me to start Population Media Center in 1998.

Metta Spencer  

Oh, okay. So, somebody motivated you?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Yes. Well, I was involved in that research.

Metta Spencer  

Alright, let me give you a story of my own about motivation. Because, you know, I published this book Two Aspirins and a Comedy, which really was largely about the use of fiction and para-social relationships, emotional bonds to fictional characters. And I also wrote a book about Russia, you know, The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy. I had an opportunity to talk with a politician in Russia named Gregory Yavlinsky who was the leader of the Yabloko Party, the most democratic party in Russia at the time that I think, probably still, today. He had run for President of Russia twice and he’s done rather well. He was extremely enthusiastic about my proposal for how to change Russian political culture. I said: How about if we had a television drama, sort of like the West Wing? And with the West Wing, I think it was… I heard that because Martin Sheen played a character, President Bartlett, and he was such a great president for liberals, I understand – somebody said – that may have cost Al Gore his selection, because Al Gore was a pretty good guy, but he couldn’t hold a candle to President Bartlett. So, people may have thought, well, he’s a poorer second choice, you know, anyway, point was that every year or every week, there would be an installment in which a real political issue was the topic of the day, you know, they had three storylines going for each episode, and one of them would be about a real political issue. And I said: Now, if we could have a, a show set in the Kremlin, with really great Russian president, like President Bartlett, and have the issues of Russia of the day, the issue that we would be discussing there… we could really have some influence, because I think probably the West Wing really influenced people’s thinking, and said, you know: If you could make that happen -and he seemed to think I could, like I could just snap my fingers create a television series – but if you could make that happen, I would quit my job as the head of the party and I’d spend 18 hours a day for the rest of my life working for the show. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Wow. 

Metta Spencer  

Because, he immediately saw the point that yes, it would be great. And of course, you can’t get. So actually, I tried to get a show, based on Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, which was something he was president of, and then I’d have a story set in the in the Middle East after a war in which people were coping with the after effects of war and how to get back to peace issues. And so, Gorbachev and – well I know his friend and his assistant – Alexander Likhotal and they both liked the idea. So, we were out hunting for a producer that would put on you know, create such a show. Now, no, we didn’t get first base. It’s really hard, you know.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

It is not easy.

Metta Spencer  

Why? 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

However, we have made that happen in Hollywood.

Metta Spencer  

You know, people in Hollywood, a lot of them have good values. And maybe, you know, not only all topics, but politically, they’re pretty much, you know, left liberal folks. And you think they would be enthusiastic about this and realize that what they’re doing actually has an impact, but what can you do? 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

In fact, I think many Hollywood professionals stick with violence and sex as a way to ensure large audiences. And while they may not be aware that there’s very strong evidence that such role modeling leads to negative behaviors, by some in the audience, they just don’t know how to go about incorporating positive content, because they’re afraid they’ll lose audience share. We did a show for Hollywood, that I was sure given how competitive it is, would end up on our website. And it is a show about the lives of Hispanic teens. It’s in English, but Hispanic paints have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the US with 50% of Hispanic girls pregnant by the age of 18. So, I went out to Hollywood and shook hands around Los Angeles with various production companies and networks and all of them laughed at the idea that we could do anything, because we hadn’t worked there before, even though we worked in many countries overseas. And then I met with Nely Galán who had been running Telemundo and she connected me with Carlos Portugal, a filmmaker trained at UCLA film school who had done English and Spanish language telenovelas and I had lunch with him and hired him to be director and head writer of the show, we are going to create, as I said I thought would end up on our website. And he hired a writing team. And we sent one of our vice presidents out to manage this project and went out and trained the writing team in the Sabido methodology. And then they produce 24 half hour episodes in a gripping storyline, about the lives of teens at a fictional high school called East Los High, as in East Los Angeles, where it was filmed. And it deals with the lives of the girls in the dance troupe, their competition against other dance troupes, their love lives, pregnancies, use of contraception, etc. And after they had produced the 24 episodes, they put it out for network inspection. And it was so well done, eight networks wanted it. We chose Hulu, an online network with 30 million viewers at the time. And it became the longest running program in the history of that network. And was in the Top 5 for all five years it was on the network. It’s still there if you’re a subscriber, but we’re not producing new episodes now. But it was the number 1 show among Latino viewers for all 5 years. And it was number 1 on the entire network during Season 2 when it dealt with domestic violence. So, East Los High is our first foray into Hollywood. And we have several more planned. So, I’m cautiously optimistic that they’ll all start to influence the Hollywood community with the fact that you can do positive messaging in programs and have a hit show at the same time.

Metta Spencer  

People in Hollywood producers and so on are extremely nervous about receiving unsolicited manuscripts or even project proposals. So, they have -almost all of them, I guess – a special team of people to open the mail. So, if you happen to send them something, an idea for a show, they have somebody to open it and send it back to you and say thank you, we have not seen this because they have been sued. Some of them have been sued as having stolen ideas when in fact they didn’t steal it. They came up with something very similar on their own. But it was so similar to a show proposal that they’d received in the mail that they were, you know, they were sued for plagiarism or for not having credited the real author and they’re scared to death of that, which means you can’t influence those guys in Hollywood at all. At least I can’t. And unless you have a friend, like your woman friend who does the telenovelas, forget it.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Well, now that we’ve had this show on the air, the Hollywood community is well aware of it. It was nominated for 5 Emmy Awards. It got numerous awards for social relevance. And so now Hollywood is very aware of it and we’re getting calls from people about ideas they have for a show they might want to do. 

Metta Spencer  

Great. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Most of our work remains in the developing world. And the reason we’re doing that – when we get back to the population issue – is that while many people think nonuse of contraception is a result of lack of access, in fact, the demographic and health surveys that are carried out all over the world in developing countries every 5 years show the top reasons for non-use of contraception are: number 1 wanting more children; and then after that, 2nd fear of health effects; and 3rd: opposition, personal spousal or religious opposition. So those cultural and informational barriers can be dramatically affected through role modeling and dealing with the reality of, for example, in Muslim countries, that there’s an official finding, that basically says the Qur’an inherently endorses family planning, whereas many people don’t know this. So, it is possible to reach large audiences and change norms. And I’ll just give you a couple of examples. 1 in Sierra Leone, we did a 208-episode radio serial drama, and at family planning clinics across the country, new adopters were asked what motivated the decision and 50% of them named our program. In northern Nigeria, a similar length program of 208 episodes, was cited by 67% of family planning adopters who were interviewed at 11 different clinics asking new clients why they had come. And we’ve seen this now in many countries where on that issue, on attitudes about violence against women, on attitudes about girls education, on attitudes about child marriage, and interventions to stop child marriage, we’ve had profound effects. For example, in Nepal, we did two radio programs addressing child marriage and our listeners were more than twice as likely as non-listeners to report having intervened to stop children from being married.

Metta Spencer  

How widespread is that practice still in a country like Nepal to begin with or other countries? 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

It’s very common in Nepal. Nepal has one of the highest rates of child marriage on the planet. And it affects boys and girls, often they are married without any say in the matter, at 7, 8, 9 years old, and then live with one of the parents, normally his parents until they’re old enough to live on their own. But that practice is something that the government is trying to change. The first president after the end of the monarchy, actually launched our show. He had been married against his will at age 14 and felt very strongly that this practice had to stop. And it’s very true in many African countries. In northern Nigeria, we see girls being married at 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. So, changing that and motivating parents to educate their daughters not only improves the health and welfare of the women and ultimately their children, but leads to much lower fertility rates.

Metta Spencer  

You mentioned a bit ago that the top reason for the reluctance to use condoms is people want to have more children. Now, the question is: How much is the desire for family size changing in places where we would hope that it would change the most, that is places where the population is growing very rapidly? How much is it changing? And can it be affected very much by any of the shows that are of the type that you’ve produced?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Let me give you an example. The first show Tom Kazungu did in Kenya dealt with the link between family size decision and land inheritance – a very hot issue in Kenya. So, there are two brothers, co-farming a farm they inherited from their father, and they’re now getting ready to retire. 1 of them has 9 sons and 1 has 1 son. And they’re talking about how to divide the farm up. And the one with 9 sons said let’s divide the farm and 10 equal portions among our 10 sons. And the 1 with 1 son said: No way, your son’s gonna have your half, my son will have my half. And so, it becomes the tale of 2 families with these 9 sons with teeny plots of land, unable to feed their parents or their children and living in poverty and the 1 son who marries a woman from another tribe, and has 1 daughter, sends her through university and supports his parents gloriously in their old age. Desired number of children during the 2 years of that nationwide broadcast fell from 6.6 to 4.4. Contraceptive prevalence went up 58%. University of Nairobi School of Journalism which did interviews all over the country at family planning clinics evaluated it as the most impactful program in the history of family planning in Kenya. 

Metta Spencer  

Wow! 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Now, in much of Africa and Asia, desired number of children is quite close to actual fertility rate. So, people may want 4.5 average and have 5. And so, there is some error that could be improved with better contraceptive methods. But, in West Africa, desired fertility is typically above actual fertility. In Niger, for example, fertility is 7.6 children per woman. But when women are asked in the demographic survey how many children, they think is ideal: they say 10 and men say 13. In Nigeria, fertility is 5.7. Women want 7, men want 9 and only 10% of married women are using modern methods of contraception in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. So, changing desired family size, and overcoming the opposition and fear of health effects that are based largely on misinformation can make dramatic changes, as we’ve seen in northern Nigeria where huge percentages of new adopters of family planning say that our program is the reason.

Metta Spencer  

Fascinating, fascinating. What would you do other than tie it to land? What kind of a plot would you use besides land distribution?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Miguel Sabido looked at this question when he decided to address family planning 3 years after Mexico had legalized contraception and basically there are 3 areas that typically get used to show the benefit of family planning on a personal level. Economic welfare – so in fact, the demographic dividend is a result of having smaller numbers of children to feed, house, and clothe – allowing people to save some money; building capital in the marketplace; allowing businesses to borrow and expand; driving up employment; driving up wages; creating a middle class; and taxable incomes that can be used by the government to build schools and roads and other infrastructure. The second is health. So, early and repeated childbearing and particularly early childbearing – is a major factor in maternal mortality and morbidity and in infant mortality. And spacing of children and starting later when one reaches adulthood, are key steps to improve maternal health and to reduce mortality among women and children. So those are two – but Miguel Sabido – for his first program, chose a third. And that is family harmony. So, he created Marta and Jesus, a young middle-class couple with 2 children, trying to hold their marriage together and watching their friends fall into poverty as they had baby after baby. And she had grown up in poverty in a family of 10 children and didn’t want to repeat that. So they struggle on how to achieve the small family goal. And because at the time, they didn’t know about contraception, she separates their beds, which in the case of her husband, did not improve family harmony. And then she finds out about the rhythm method and she presents that to him. And he goes along with it until it’s time to be disciplined and then he gets angry. And finally, she learns about the fact that there’s something medical you can do and in front of a huge audience nationwide in Mexico, they visit a MexFam clinic – the Planned Parenthood of Mexico – and hear about all the methods and adopt an IUD and live happily ever after. And then they were very happy, because they didn’t have to have this periodic discipline. And they were able to achieve the family they wanted. And it led to a 33% increase in clinic attendance in a 6-month period.

Metta Spencer  

And you write stories yourself?

William (Bill) Ryerson  

I do not. 

Metta Spencer  

You do not? Well, you have an operation there that seems to be actually engaged in helping people produce shows. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

We hire writers and producers in every country who speak the local language. We put them through a formative research process where they learn about the lifestyles and attitudes of the rural population. And then based on the training we give them; they create the show in a way that’s totally culturally relevant. So, it can be much better than if we were trying to write them in our headquarters.

Metta Spencer  

Once I went to a show meeting in Atlanta for people many years ago – 15 years ago or so – who were interested in using soap operas for social change. And I met a man named Fox, I can’t remember his name, but he’s been a producer of shows in Hollywood. I think TV shows mostly. And he said that to be effective, you can’t have an international show as effective as one that set in the local language and showing the lifestyle of the local people.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Exactly right. And Sonny Fox was our West Coast representative at the time. He was at one point in his career, Head of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Co-Founder of the International Television Academy. And he set up a meeting that involved me and Albert Bandura – a Stanford psychologist who’s the world’s authority on role modeling – at the CDC in Atlanta. It may have been that same event where you met him.

Metta Spencer  

Okay, it probably was. Some years ago, uh-huh. So, it is apparently true. In a way, it’d be a lot better if you could have kind of a one big show that would work for the whole world and you could do something like, it might be in English, and you could dub it in foreign languages and so on. But he didn’t think that would work, that you’d have to have specific shows made that were about people in their own culture.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

My view is, it’s possible to have shows like telenovelas from Mexico and Brazil, dubbed into local languages and have some influence. And certainly, American television shows dubbed in local languages have some influence. But nothing is more powerful than something that looks as if it’s about your own culture and your own situation. So doing programs in local languages, I think is far more powerful. And based on the local culture, then of bringing in external shows from other cultures and dubbing them.

Metta Spencer  

Well, maybe it’s also easier to get hired or get access to, you know, airtime if you’re dealing with a local or a smaller scale than if you try to go through Hollywood or one of the big networks or so.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Hollywood is not an easy place to work.

Metta Spencer  

It isn’t, then, but I’m hoping that maybe…wouldn’t it be desirable to have some sort of social campaign where we could make people aware of the desirability of having good dramas of programming that have social messages? I just admire that so much. Of course, you have occasionally a company like Participant Media that produces shows with really good content, strong social messages, and so on.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Participant, by the way, has now taken a big interest in what we’re doing.  Are they? We’ve had this one show: East Los High. Now we have 17 additional show concepts that we’re working on. Some of them getting very close to going to market, like a serialized drama about the lives of young people in Harlem. So, I hope we will expand our portfolio and footprint in Hollywood and in the US, in part because the US does export a lot of its media around the world. I bought Season One of East Los High in a pirate video shop in Kampala, Uganda. And, you know, to what extent it’s having an influence on Ugandan attitudes? I don’t know, but it’s probably helping. 

Metta Spencer  

Okay, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Jeffrey Skoll is very high on my pantheon of saints. Some rich guys who know what to do with their money that really is valuable. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Exactly. Yes.

Metta Spencer  

That kind of contribution is fabulous. And you’re now on my pantheon of saints.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Oh, Metta, thank you very much.

Metta Spencer  

I really think this is such a suitable and acceptable medium for trying to influence public opinion and political values and so on. It’s because it’s voluntary, you know, because you’re not forcing anything on anybody. You’re giving them the option of watching a drama that they can turn off if they don’t like it. But they watch it because they want to.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

And it’s not manipulative, unlike what one would traditionally call propaganda. It’s not giving one option. It’s showing a range of behaviors and realistic consequences of those behaviors. And letting the audience decide which of those consequences they want to pursue.

Metta Spencer  

You know, I watch a lot of… when I go to bed at night, I usually turn on CNN and watch what Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo and those guys are saying about Trump. And it’s always absolutely, totally convincing. And yet, boy, after a while, they always change the subject. Is there any way we can think of addressing some of the issues that are ongoing on around the world today? In the US most conspicuously and Brexit, which I think is a tragedy unfolding. They’re about to really leave the EU, I think, I think it’s really going to happen now. And all of these right-wing populist movements, that are somehow finding such resonance. And I think what it’s about…. I am not much of a Marxist frankly, never have been, I guess I would say I’m a Weberian mostly. And I think, in a sense, that there’s such a thing as status that’s different from class. You know, class is about money; status is about local prestige or your sense of position, respectability, honor within society, and so on. And the prestige level or status level that people have, has been declining in ways that, I think, is reflected in this move toward populist right-wing action. It isn’t they really like Trump’s economic proposals, it is that they want to keep out these immigrants who are getting higher status than they have, you know, that White, Protestant, longtime Americans think that all you have to do is appear as an immigrant from a dark-skinned country, and you’ll be given privileges that they are no longer having. And so, the sense of declining of status and resentment against people who are being helped by left liberals like myself, I think this resentment is something that finds expression in things like – at their most extreme end would be the neo-Nazi movement – these parades like Charlottesville. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

I think that it’s pretty clear that the swing towards more conservative governments in Europe and North America has, at least in the US, has been in part fueled by fear of rising numbers of migrants. And certainly, the massive migrations across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe have led to a rapid rise in conservative movements and concern on how to keep people out and keep them from competing for jobs and so on. And justified or not justified, this is a factor in what we see going on in the world and one that’s quite predictable because of the unsustainable population growth in some of the sending countries, leading to both ecological and political deterioration and leading to people leaving for places that they think they can obtain refuge. 

Metta Spencer  

The tip of the iceberg. You know, 10 to 15 years from now when the oceans start rising, and Bangladeshis got to go someplace, or even people in Miami got to go someplace for that matter. When we have floods and we have unsustainable agricultural lands and so on, the migration is going to multiply.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

And guess what: India is building a wall to keep the Bangladeshis out.   

Metta Spencer  

Gee. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

They see it coming.

Metta Spencer  

Oh, boy. Oh, boy, I just got your newsletter today. I haven’t read it yet, but I did see one thing. You mentioned that although the prediction had been something like 9 billion people to be on the planet by a certain date, I don’t know, 2050, whatever it was, you said… That they’ve upped it now to 11 something? Tell me about that. That projection is news to me. And very unwelcome news.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Over the last several UN Population Division projections, which happen every couple of years, they have been adjusting their assumptions upward, because fertility rates have not been falling as fast as they had predicted. And mortality rates have been coming down. So it means that population growth rates are much higher than originally forecast say 20 years ago. And so, one of the reasons for this is that much of the global community has focused on improving access to contraceptive methods. While as I mentioned earlier, the primary barriers to use are cultural and informational factors, like desire, family size, fear of health effects, and various forms of opposition. So, in the now, the end of century projections are much higher than they were just 20 years ago. Hopefully this can change. I mean, certainly, we’ve seen examples in many countries of dramatic changes in number of children and in desired number of children.

Metta Spencer  

The resentment of that kind of culture of elite, educated, West Coast and East Coast intellectuals or professionals somehow is a big motivating factor.

William (Bill) Ryerson  

When we started East Los High, Carlos Portugal was so excited because he said to me: You mean this is going to be a show all about Hispanic life and not where the only Hispanic character is the gardener. And I said: Exactly this needs to serve the Hispanic community. And why I bring this example up is I think, when people get to know migrants, or people of different faiths, or people who have different cultural traditions, on a personal level, they lose a lot of their fear. And if you don’t have them as neighbors, having shows that show the reality and the human kindness of people from other cultural settings, is one way that the public can learn about who we’re talking about, rather than just looking images that are created by political opportunists. 

Metta Spencer  

If we can create programming that really illustrated the kind of solutions that we think might work for people, it would be a huge contribution to the world. 

William (Bill) Ryerson  

Well, one way that people can find out about these shows is going to our website, which is populationmedia.org. And if they are Hulu subscribers, they can go on the Hulu site and search for East Los High and watch 61 episodes of a very gripping drama. So those are two places people can start.

Metta Spencer  

Well, I’ll go look at it myself. I haven’t seen it yet. But bless you. Thank you so much, Bill. It’s been fun and really very, very valuable.

Intro/Outro  

This conversation is one of the weekly series Talk About Saving the World, produced by Peace Magazine and Project Save the World. Please visit our website tosavetheworld.ca where you can sign the Platform for Survival, a list of 25 public policy proposals that, if enacted, would greatly reduce the risk of 6 global threats to humankind. Come back next week for another discussion of a serious global issue.