The Russian language N News Agency reports:
“The Russian government’s international radio broadcasting service Golos Rossii (Voice of Russia) will stop its shortwave broadcasts from January 1st next year.
The shortwave service is closing due to funding cuts. Voice of Russia is to broadcast several programs in foreign languages including Mongolian language for the last time on December 29th, 2013.[…]”
This is the second time the closure of VOR has been mentioned in the online press.
To date, I have seen no official announcement/confirmation from the Voice of Russia (though an earlier statement from VOR didn’t deny the possibility).
Many thanks to Andy Sennitt for the tip!
My opening comments for this week’s Your Reports Express (downloadable for free when posted at http://www.odxa.on.ca): The bad news just keeps on coming! On the PCJ Media and PCJ Radio Facebook group page, Andy Sennitt has posted the bad news that the Voice of Russia will cease all shortwave transmissions on January 1st. How the mighty have fallen! I can remember back in the 80s when its predecessor, Radio Moscow, would be on the air twenty-four hours a day in multiple languages and on multiple frequencies in just about every band.
Sad to read that. Soon there will only be China on the short waves…?
Note: Your Captcha is very hard to read.
Hi, Chris–I totally agree about the Captcha. Tom also has commented the same. I’m going to explore other comment SPAM filters. Captcha has even produced Greek alphabet before and expected me to get it right! 🙂
-Thomas
I wonder if there is a captcha system that allows you to enter your own questions. You could cash in on domain-specific knowledge of readers: “6.435Mhz is in which SW band: (1)41, 2(….
I suppose this means that Russia has decided there is no future for DRM as well – yet they have always been one of the supporters. I personally believe the DRM window of opportunity has closed. The DRM movement seems to be ignoring what’s happening in other media areas, especially IPTV and mobile. Radio and TV for many people is becoming an app. So that’s why I feel that some latest efforts by DRM to push the system as a kind of emergency warning system seem to be doomed. http://www.drm.org/?p=2668 In the Netherlands they are switching public warning systems to reach the device people are carrying – the mobile phone with (perhaps) a built in radio. Look at http://google.org/crisismap/2013-yolanda and compare.
DRM is such a missed opportunity. Imagine, for example, a system that delivers newspaper articles (i.e., text), important (small) images (including weather maps), and short recorded audio newscasts to your device, to be listened to or viewed at your leisure, regardless of where you are in the world. Instead, they mindlessly tried to increase audio quality with wide-bandwidth transmissions that require expensive receivers, high power (expensive) transmission stations, waste spectrum, are not very robust to noise, and don’t conform to how people like to absorb their media now. What a shame.
I honestly believe that if shortwave propagation was just discovered now, instead of a century ago, people wouldn’t be so apathetic toward it. We would have startups transmitting all sorts of important digital data for world consumption. Instead it’s considered antiquated by most, and those actually making use of it are stuck in a 20th century mindset.
I’ve been calling DRM a loser since it was introduced. A proprietary format married to a dying technology, ill-conceived and ill-promoted, DRM wasn’t even a blip on the radar to the average listener. Year after year there were plans and conferences and announcements and initiatives; some broadcasting authorities would buy into the concept and then spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment and airtime to broadcast to a handful of listeners. It’s hard to believe even a decade ago, before smartphones came along, that anyone would consider this the future of radio.
Don’t you mean 2014 Thomas, not 2013. Great update by the way.
Ooops! Thanks, Tom. Just fixed it. 🙂
-Thomas