Category Archives: Broadcasters

The Gazette: Tributes to RCI pour in from around the world

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A sampling of messages to The Gazette in response to the cuts to Radio Canada International (RCI):

(Source: MontrealGazette.com)

“This is absolutely dreadful. RCI has been one of the best shortwave radio stations and a much-needed voice of solid, objective reporting. I’ve been a loyal listener from the mid-1990s and I am really saddened by this news. I understand that the times are difficult and that cuts need to be made, but this is an incredibly short-sighted decision. The staff and RCI’s international listeners deserve better. Surely a plan can be devised that would keep RCI going.”

Nenad Knezevic, Belgrade, Serbia

“I’m at a loss for words. I’ve been listening to RCI on shortwave since the glory days of the 1970s. This is the loss of a great friend to me. I’ve enjoyed countless English broadcasts of RCI. I feel a huge emptiness upon losing Radio Canada International on shortwave!”

Charles Ermatinger, St. Louis

“What upsetting news! I listen to the Link at night — so insightful and enlightening! Why couldn’t the CBC have made cuts to the television instead? The Internet has usurped the role of the television, but radio is radio!!! I love the immediacy of radio! I will miss your voice most of all, Marc!”

elise db, Ottawa

“Shocking news, I didn’t really expect that the only reliable source of information about this beautiful country is going to be shut down. … Hope you’ll change your decision and continue to broadcast, even only in English.”

Georgi Bancov, Troyan, Bulgaria

“There are places on Earth that just do not have Internet access yet. Many remote locations, in poorer countries. SW radio is their only means to get by. I guess we’re just abandoning them, to stay current with costs and technology. Very sad. BTW, the broadcast from (the Sackville) towers can be heard everywhere on Earth.”

DM, New Brunswick.

“It seems very short-sighted to cease Canadian broadcasting to the world. The astronomical expense of the Olympics are always sold to host countries’ citizens as providing many intangible benefits … well surely the international broadcasts which promote and explain Canada, its systems, policies, culture, innovations and Canadian analysis of international events etc. is valuable to the government and the country. From what I’ve seen on radio discussions boards there will be no more broadcasts and most people laid off for the sake of $10 million … peanuts, methinks.”

BigC-Canuck

Read the full page of comments at The Gazette. We are actively posting news about the RCI cuts here on the SLWing Post and we also welcome your comments.

You will find the latest news by following our tag: RCI Cuts

China Radio International increasing Turkish content

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(Source: Today’s Zaman)

“I’ve sometimes been challenged trying to find exactly the right word to translate from Turkish into Chinese,” recalled Wenjun Liu, a 37-year-old reporter working at the Turkish Broadcast Service of China Radio International (CRI) in Beijing.

 “Thank God, we have Turkish native speakers working here to rush to our aid,” she added.

Like many Chinese nationals who were assigned to work at the Turkish service, Liu has assumed a Turkish name for herself — “Damla.” She works at the world news desk and was working on a story about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s visit to Iran in late March. Like many of her colleagues, Damla is a graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University, a foreign language and international studies university in China.

CRI has been broadcasting in Turkish since October 1957 using the shortwave frequency. It has a one-hour-long program every day, repeated four times during the day in different time slots. It uses Internet broadband to spread the word and has also used local FM stations in ?stanbul and Ankara to reach its audience since 2010. With unprecedented growing ties recently with Turkey, China is set to promote its culture in many areas, including broadcasting more Turkish content on the CRI.

Yongmin Xia, the director of the Turkish service, revealed to Sunday’s Zaman that the CRI has decided to boost its presence in Turkey. Going by the Turkish name Murat, Xia said the CRI has chosen ?stanbul, the largest city in Turkey, to launch a radio station. “We are going to start with five people and hope to reach 15 in this service in ?stanbul,” he said, adding that the stronger presence would help develop bilateral relations further.

“Our common values are more than the differences between the Turkish and Chinese peoples,” he emphasized, pointing to a strong adherence to traditional values in both cultures. “Turks and Chinese share similar traits such as hospitality and warmth in human relations,” he added.

There is no easy way to rate how popular the Turkish service at the CRI is since it airs in shortwave, but the managers at the CRI say they have some idea by looking at regular mail, e-mails and website impressions. “Our Turkish website has 600,000 clicks on a monthly basis,” Xia explained. Overall, the CRI received more than 3 million letters from overseas listeners in 2011.

Read the full article here.

Though CRI has an enormous broadcasting presence around the globe (and it keeps growing), I would certainly question the listenership numbers based on the methods they use to quantify them. If by 600,000 monthly website “clicks,” they mean “hits,” their numbers may be overly generous. Many of “hits” are associated with search engine and other bots that routinely crawl the web. A more telling number would be either web page views or unique visitors.

Frankly, the 3 million letters from overseas listeners is also hard to believe, though I do imagine they receive a hefty amount of correspondence.

CKUT’s International Radio Report sheds light on RCI cuts

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The International Radio Report with Wojtek (left), Janice (center) and Sheldon (right). Photo: RCI Action

Sunday, concerned as I am about the deep cuts to RCI’s (Radio Canada International’s) vital radio programming, I listened to CKUT‘s International Radio Report with much interest.  Hosts (and good friends) Sheldon and Janice were joined by Wojtek Gwiazda, RCI Action Committee spokesperson, as their on-air guest. RCI Action is a coalition that has worked to restore RCI funding since cuts in 1991; Wojtek explains some of their history in the interview.

Most importantly, the interview provides insight into the internal reaction to the program cuts and changes. Wojtek makes many excellent points, including the fact that since RCI’s English and French news rooms are being eliminated, Canada will effectively have no international voice, no means to offer their opinion of world events. He also notes that, even though the US has the VOA, and UK has the BBC World Service, these countries also have periodicals such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, so forth, all of which carry their voices abroad.  Canada, sadly, has no such international news presence. Indeed, I’m aware that The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, has very limited international exposure).

If, like me, you’re interested in the recent developments at RCI–or in reductions to radio’s international presence generally–this show is a must-listen.

Click here to download this episode of the International Radio Report. Click here for an audio archive of past shows.

Note that Wojtek Gwiazda, besides his role with RCI Action, also hosts a show on RCI called Masala Canada. On Saturday, he posted the following message “off mic” for his listeners:

Saturday, April 7, 2012 – 13:34

Why the silence? And a budget cut.

I wanted to take a moment to explain why I’ve been so silent on this site in the last few days.

Some of you may have heard by now that this past Wednesday, Canada’s national radio and television public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada announced the impact of federal government cutbacks to the financing of the broadcaster.

Many services will be affected, many people will lose their jobs.

At Radio Canada International – the effects are quite devastating.

Our budget of $12.3 million will be reduced to $2.3 million.

At least, two-thirds of our staff will be laid off.

We will no longer broadcast on shortwave. The only presence we’ll have is on the Internet, on our website.

The RCI newsroom will be closed, there will be no newscasts.

Our Russian service will be closed, the Brazilian program eliminated.

What will be left is a presence on our website in English, French, Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish. What kind of presence this will be, is yet to be determined.

And yes, that means, that as with everything else that’s being eliminated, the last edition of MASALA CANADA will be on June 23rd.

So far that is all that we know.

I can tell you that there is a union supported lobby group, the RCI Action Committee, which is actively lobbying to stop the cuts. Whether it will be successful, is unknown.

I’ll give you updates when I can.

All the best,

Wojtek

 

RCI’s Sackville towers to be featured in film

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(Source: CBC)

A Moncton artist is now working against the clock to film the Radio-Canada International shortwave towers in her latest film project.

Budget cuts at CBC announced last week mean the towers, near Sackville, N.B., will soon be shut down, but it’s not known exactly what will happen to the towers themselves.

Amanda Dawn Christie said she remembers coming and going from Moncton and the towers signifying that she was almost home.

“Whenever I would drive in, I would just be filled with this exhilaration and I don’t know if it’s the high voltage. Like, some people get headaches and nauseous; I would get exhilarated,” she said. “So I don’t know if it was my interest or if it was the high voltage, but I definitely had this sense of ‘wow.'”

She said she’s heard similar stories as she’s started interviewing people for her feature film.

Christie’s been studying the towers for years.

She even created a sculpture on the marsh near the towers — a kitchen sink designed to catch radio waves — a phenomenon often reported by locals.

Now she’s collecting stories of people who call the towers their landmark, or a tightrope school because of the wires, or the connection to Africa or the Arctic.

Christie said she’s particularly fond of the sight at dawn and dusk.

“The sky’s kind of pink and blue, and the lights are on but you can still see all the towers and the wires. It’s very magical,” she said. “If you don’t know what it is, you’re filled with wonder. And the thing is, if you do know what it is, you’re still filled with wonder.”

Instead of the shortwave towers, RCI will broadcast internationally online.

In truth, even when RCI’s Sackville, NB site is decommissioned, I doubt the towers will be brought down immediately. It’s actually quite an engineering feat to dismantle these. I would hope RCI offers other broadcasters the opportunity to dismantle and use them. VOA (or the IBB) had success doing this at their Greenville, NC transmission site (Site A).

The Link talks about the cuts at RCI

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In this interview with Levon Sevunts, producer for RCI’s The Link, we get a little more insight into the impact of these cuts at Radio Canada International.

One notable quote from the audio interview: Sevunts states rather bluntly, “RCI is getting out of radio altogether.”

RCI’s last day of broadcasting will be June 26th, 2012.

(Source: The Link)

RCI will bear the brunt of the 10 per cent funding cut to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced in the last federal budget. RCI is going off the air. The international service will no longer be heard on shortwave or satellite broadcasts. A budget cut of more than 80% at RCI will mean only limited service will be offered on the Internet in five languages: English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic. Russian and Portuguese services will be dropped. A total of 650 jobs will be lost at the CBC over the next three years and there will be changes in programming. To generate additional revenue, CBC plans to introduce advertising on its CBC Radio 2 and Espace Musique channels. CBC TV will also shut down 620 analog transmitters and cut its in-house documentary unit. Marc Montgomery discusses the changes with The Link’s producer, Levon Sevunts.

Helene Parent: “two out of three RCI employees will lose their jobs by the end of July”

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It appears that the cuts at Radio Canada International will be deep and swift (see below).

(Source: RCInet.ca)

Spending cuts announced last week in Canada’s latest federal budget have reached Radio Canada International. Speaking to employees at RCI’s headquarters in Montreal on Wednesday, RCI director Helene Parent declared that two out of three RCI employees—about 40 people—will lose their jobs by the end of July. RCI’s Russian and Portugueuse sections will be closed along with the English and French-language newsrooms. All shortwave broadcasts will cease as well. RCI will continue to exist solely on the Internet in five languages—English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin.

As with the cuts at the BBC World Service, and Radio Netherlands Worldwide, I am thinking about the friends I made there over the years and hoping they are able to keep their jobs or move to another meaningful post. Unfortunately, since these cuts are also affecting their domestic arm (the CBC and Radio Canada), there may be no easy refuge.

We will keep you posted as we learn more.

Oh, Canada: Radio Canada International to end shortwave broadcasts, Sackville to be closed

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This is another sad day for international broadcasting.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has announced sweeping cuts that will eliminate 650 jobs over the course of 3 years. In a strategic plan called, Same Strategy, Different Path, they specifically outline their cuts of shortwave and satellite transmissions which will also mean the closure of their noted Sackville, New Brunswick transmitter site:

(Source: CBC-Transforming Radio Canada International)

In line with plans to modernize the public broadcaster, as outlined in Strategy 2015, Radio Canada International (RCI) will undergo a transformation that amounts to phasing out its shortwave and satellite services so it can focus on webcasting. This will account for almost $10 million in annual savings for CBC/Radio-Canada by 2013-14. RCI’s transformation is consistent with currently shifting media consumption behaviours, as well as strategies adopted by other public broadcasters.

“From now on RCI will provide multilingual service broadcasting in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin that strives to help audiences discover and especially understand democratic and cultural life and values in Canada,” says Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO.

As well, RCI will provide national and international audiences with online content in five languages (French, English, Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin) instead of seven. The Russian and Brazilian sections of RCI will be shut down. This allows us to concentrate our efforts on what are among Canada’s largest communities of diverse origins. Following this decision, CBC/Radio-Canada will be closing its shortwave transmission site in Sackville, New Brunswick.

What this will mean

  • End of satellite and shortwave transmission
  • End of the production of RCI news broadcasts
  • Shutdown of Brazilian and Russian sections of RCI
  • Almost $10 million in annual savings for CBC/Radio-Canada by 2013-14

What it won’t mean

  • Shutdown of RCI