PRIX EUROPA

Today is Friday - it's the fifth day of my first time at Prix Europa. And what an interesting week it's been.

In my job for the Goethe-Institut in North America,  I deal with television programs and issues more than with radio, so of course my plan was to spend my time seeing the best of European television. But, instead, I let myself be tempted into the radio documentary room on Sunday morning at 9 am, and I hardly left the room all week unless I was forced to do so.

It's an odd experience to sit in a room full of people who are reading scripts as they listen to audio coming over huge speakers. The programs are in many different languages; the scripts give you the original plus an English translation. It was hard for me not to read ahead, thereby running the chance of missing a dramatic shift in sound quality, a change in the recording space, a subtle effect.

When I next run a "listening room" at the Goethe-Institut in Washington, I will play with getting at least one of the foreign-languages texts to roll on a screen so that the listener/reader is not tempted to get ahead of the producer. It seems to me this must be possible technically, even though it will be a pain to produce - and may cost time and some money.

As the week went on, it seemed to me that the room got fuller and fuller and the sense of camaraderie grew as people got to know each other better. The range of programs was enormous - with some classical radio features harking back to the classics. And other shows that, while interesting, seemed like normal radio interview programs, lacking that special spark that comes from sound-rich production.

I am excited to know what will happen tomorrow, when the winners are announced in this category. Will it be the Austrian program called "Life is Not Good" (a surprising title!) about an ex-couple, a woman and a man who were once married and who now live in separate nursing homes, both of them formerly acrobats and small-town fair performers? It's a story about obsessive and abusive relationships and how we all seem to yearn for impossible love. Or will it be be a serious piece of political history like "Drunken Party," the story from Polish radio about anti-semitism in Poland in the mid-1960's? Or perhaps the surprising program from Norway about a woman whose job it was to serve as nurse for Quisling, the great traitor, in the weeks before his execution.

There are so many great contenders I can't even go through my top ten.

There were also features by young producers - some very professionally produced (including two remarkable programs from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both the results of the EBU's Master School) and others where the producers were learning as they went. What a chance for a young producer working without a budget! to be in the same week of competition with Old Masters.

What I admired about the group of people in the room was that their analyses and critiques of the most as well as the least polished programs  remained at the same high professional level. Clearly, this is a community of professionals who respect each other and expect to learn from each other. They are all competing for a prize, yet they are open to building that community.

Why? because they need each other, both now and in the future. It's enough to give you hope for public media. And for Europe too. My American friends and colleagues in radio should be jealous of me.

William Gilcher (Goethe-Institut Washington, DC)