Not so much 'understandable to the rest of the country', if my understanding is correct, as 'not offensive to anyone in the country, while still sounding like a reliable source of information'. They may have said it was about being understood, but what I've heard about the hiring of New Zealanders by the BBC (what they were told when hired) suggests otherwise.
The classic BBC accent of twenty years ago (back when they weren't hiring people who had obvious local dialects colouring their speech) was not quite RP (AKA Received Pronunciation -- the speech of the British university-educated) but was similar.
A number of New Zealanders with upper or middle-class NZ accents in the sixties and seventies did very nicely out of working for the BBC. We sounded upper-middle-class British to them then, but not from any identifiable location. This was regarded as a very good thing as it meant the BBC got to sound nicely 'British' while lacking that very British feature of a clear local accent.
no subject
Date: 5 Feb 2011 01:03 am (UTC)The classic BBC accent of twenty years ago (back when they weren't hiring people who had obvious local dialects colouring their speech) was not quite RP (AKA Received Pronunciation -- the speech of the British university-educated) but was similar.
A number of New Zealanders with upper or middle-class NZ accents in the sixties and seventies did very nicely out of working for the BBC. We sounded upper-middle-class British to them then, but not from any identifiable location. This was regarded as a very good thing as it meant the BBC got to sound nicely 'British' while lacking that very British feature of a clear local accent.