SWLing Post reader, David, writes from Barcelona:
I would like to let you know that changes are coming to my country’s SW broadcast station, Radio Exterior de España.
As they say in the latest “Listeners Club” program in the English Language broadcast, new bosses have come, the situation is chaotic now, and everything now is “up in the air”.
They may simply undergo a simple schedule change, but there’s a strong possibility as well, that REE went completely off the air. I think it is news worth spreading.
Here is a link to the latest “Listeners Club”, which includes comments on the issue: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/emision-en-ingles/english-broadcast-listeners-club/2735360/
Many thanks, David. Please keep us informed if you hear any news.
According to a statement made public by RTVE’s workers’ union on September 3, the sprawling Noblejas transmitting station, located south of Madrid and one that can easily seen from train, will be closed because of economic reasons. Justin Coe told me last month that the plan is to end all REE shortwave broadcasts by the end of 2015 and only offer programs through the internet. The union also says that the BBC puts REE audience between 10 million and 40 million, but unfortunately doesn’t give any reference to that study. And union officials lament the demise of emblematic programs such “Un idioma sin fronteras” (A language without bounds) and “Made in Spain.” And we must not forget, REE carries live play-by-play soccer matches of the Spanish Liga, which are widely followed in Latin America, by re-transmitting RNE’s broadcasts for listeners abroad. True, as Jonathan says, Radio-Television Española (RTVE) embarked on an aggressive venture to offer satellite programming to the Americas in the late 1980s and then reached out to more audiences via local cable TV companies. TVE Internacional continues to be a very popular channel throughout Latin America. At the same time, the foreign-language sections at REE were never given enough resources to hire more personnel, so programs have been less-dynamic than what you find from other international broadcasters. As of now, the English-language section consists of two people — Justin and Alison Hughes; Deanelle Baker retired some years back. So there is little time and room to offer abundant features on a daily basis. So it seems the new bosses are letting REE die out on its own. Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of hope. No official decision by the Spanish government has yet been made, and there is talk by the union of mobilizing international support for the entire REE structure in the coming weeks. We can only hope.
To take up Keith’s point, I think RNE made a sensible decision to focus on satellite television, targeting Latin America, mostly with domestic programmes in Spanish. They were well ahead of the Northern European broadcasters who carried on with radio. REE has always had a poor offering in foreign languages, being mainly written talks and features read in front of the microphone. QSL and forget.
If REE was to go off air it would not be a major loss. After years of poor content and no focus it was never a major player. There audience is also to small. Broadcasters like REE and all of the Eastern European broadcasters should have changed their focus 20 years ago. The mistake they made was continuing to target regions of the world where SW audiences were in the decline. They should have targeted Southeast and East Asia where the numbers are still high, but they didn’t. So they got an audience that was dropping like flies and getting older and older.