Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Andrea Borgnino, who shares the following news via Twitter:
Radio Liberty to stop Russian broadcasts on shortwave https://t.co/vFQB67erNo @SWLingDotCom @aborgnino @UlisK3LU
— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) May 31, 2016
I am afraid that the current form of RL in Russian makes more harm than good. Endless speak about unpopular Russian opposition politicians, the murdered jourmalist Politkovskaya, the former Yukos CEO and prisoner Khodorkovsky and the annexed Crimea etc. does not work. RL needs more emotional understanding of Russian people and a redesign of their programming accordingly. In my opinion, balanced content is badly needed here.
Not at all sure what you mean by “balanced”. Perhaps you mean what passes for news from RT and Life news? LOL. RFE/RL helped the Soviet empire collapse, so I agree that it’s extremely short sighted to leave shortwave now.
I mean balanced content in similar way as BBC WS is balanced would create more confidence in Russian audience. RL needs wider focus, they are now concentrating very heavily on their few favorite topics (or that is my impression, I haven’t listened RL very extensively). I am afraid that majority of Russians feel RL as enemy propaganda.
However, I am perhaps not the best person to comment this as Russian is only my fifth best language after Finnish, English, Swedish and German and I don’t know any Russians personally by now.
Read you, KU. During the Cold War, however, the programming was purposely narrow. You didn’t hear about hurricanes in the Caribbean, but everything about the USSR. That was, and presumably still is the raison d’être of RL.
Yes, that’s true. However, I think that RL worked better during Cold War than now. During Cold War Soviet People were in total disbelief on their local media and for this reason Russians were active shortwave listeners. Now it is different. Nowadays, Russian state controlled media is often quite successful in telling what people like to hear and RL has very little impact on Russian society as they lack both confidence and interest among Russian people. I wish RL all the success, but for me it is obvious that they need to reform. RL could make their scope wider even in covering everything about Russia.
Recently, there was some discussion on creating Russian language TV channel for European Union. I support this idea. Hopefully it will be made available wihin Russia as well.
To me it seems like a rather ill-informed decision, especially at this point in time.
I can just see it now – some day when something hits the fan in US-Russian relations, and the Internet and satellites are blocked, they’ll suddenly realize that there needs to be an independent way of reaching the Russian people. Of course, shortwave! However, since no one with shortwave capable radios even knows to look for them on shortwave, our viewpoint will be lost.
From the RL site, a clip of an inaugural broadcast in 1953.
https://clyp.it/sduelx32
This is real shame and mourning for all Russian RFL SW listeners. I’m pretty sure this was hasty decision. Here’s the nice report and explanation of what is actually going on: http://bbgwatch.com/bbgwatch/masters-of-bad-timing-bbg-to-eliminate-radio-libertys-shortwave-broadcasts-in-russian/