Category Archives: Broadcasters

BBC Media Action: How radio drama is helping change attitudes in South Sudan

Our radio drama Life in Lulu which depicts the lives and trials of people living in a small village in South Sudan and its regular listeners include inmates at Tonj prison. Henning Goransson Sandberg, our Research Manager, talks about his visit there to understand what they took from the programme.

The prison sits on a main road, overlooking the river that flows past the city of Tonj, in central South Sudan. The doors are open to the street, and the only guard at the entrance takes a cursory look through my bag as I walk past his desk on my way in. The courtyard, where most of the prisoners spend the day looking after cows, farming or cooking food, is patrolled by guards and surrounded by a low wall.

I meet the prison director who shows us around and tells me why the prisoners are there; their crimes range from fraud, shoplifting and petty theft to rape, assault and murder. The most serious offenders have their feet chained together, he tells me.

I am here to speak to inmates who have taken part in radio listening clubs facilitated by presenters from Döör FM, the local radio station. They have been discussing Life in Lulu, BBC Media Action’s radio drama about the residents of a small village. The drama, now in its fifth season, is broadcast across South Sudan and explores a number of issues including non-violent ways to resolve conflict.

Döör FM, which means “Peace” in the Dinka language, is a private radio station broadcasting mainly religious, education and public information programmes in the local dialect. The station started the listening clubs around a year ago and has since staged discussions about forgiveness, peaceful conflict resolution, the dangers of weapons in civilian hands and the dangers posed by mines and other explosives. By showing its characters making poor decisions when they are angry or drunk, Life in Lulu highlights the dangers of owning and using weapons.

Most prisoners had not heard the programme before starting their sentences, mainly because they had no access to a radio. But for the past six months they had listened weekly and discussed the show when the Döör FM presenters came to visit. The storylines seemed to resonate with them.

Achol has served two years of an indeterminate sentence for a gun-related crime. “All the problems that exist in this community occur because of guns,” he said. “If you don’t have gun according to the perception we have here is that you are not a man and you don’t deserve the respect that men in the society enjoy.”[…]

Continue reading this full article t the BBC Media Action website.

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BBC Witness podcast features Caversham Park

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Caversham Park (Photo source: BBC)

(Source: BBC World Service via Julie M)

For 75 years the BBC ran a monitoring service based in an English stately home. Its job was to listen to foreign broadcasts from all around the world. But in 2018 the BBC decided the building was no longer needed. David Sillito spoke to veterans of the monitoring service before Caversham closed its doors.

Click here to listen via the BBC World Service website.

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“Radio theater makes a comeback across Minnesota”

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(Source: Star Tribune via Mike Hansgen)

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of … a sound effects man with a pair of coconut shells.

Radio theater, which was killed off by television, is being resurrected on the air — and the internet — across the country and across the state.

In International Falls, Icebox Radio Theater produces a twice monthly podcast about a tiny northern Minnesota town isolated by a meteorite strike. “Weird stuff keeps happening,” said playwright Jeff Adams of the fictional town of Icebox, Minn. “Comedy and science fiction and maybe some dark touches now and then.”

St. Cloud’s “Granite City Radio Theatre” serves up inside humor plus cameo appearances by the police chief and the university president. “Imagine ‘Prairie Home Companion’ was about your neighborhood,” said Jo McMullen-Boyer, station manager of KVSC, which has produced the skit-and-music show four times a year for six years. “It’s hyperlocal. It’s poking fun at ourselves, but also with pride.”

And in the Twin Cities, the Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society embraces nostalgia by turning recordings of old radio shows into scripts, which it stages as live performances (including sound effects and commercials) before audiences at the James J. Hill Center in downtown St. Paul.[…]

Click here to read the full story at the Star Tribune.

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A short video tour of Czech Radio

UK digital radio listening now eclipses analog according to study

95th anniversary of Czech radio’s first broadcasts

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Czech Radio’s main headquarters in Vinohradská street in the centre of Prague, photo: Lenka Žižková

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who shares the following news items from Radio Prague regarding the 95th anniversary of Czech Radio’s first broadcasts:

Listening Sessions at a Prague Cinema: Czech Radio’s First Broadcasts Recalled, 95 Years Later

A historic moment occurred at 20:15 on Saturday May 18, 1923 when the first ever broadcast by Czechoslovak Radio was made from a tent at a military air base in Prague’s Kbely district.

After the United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia was the second country in Europe to launch regular radio broadcasting.

Zuzana Foglarová is communications manager at today’s Czech Radio. Speaking at a new exhibition of radio technology at the station, she describes the scene in May 1923.

“Above all it was very simple. There was one tent, which had been borrowed from the scouts. On the floor in the tent was a piano and stool. There was also a table for the presenter, technicians and so on. There was only one microphone, and the story goes that if somebody was playing the piano and somebody else was singing, the latter had to sit under the piano so the microphone could pick up all the sounds.”

Many of the first listeners 95 years ago were waiting to hear the signal come through at a cinema just off Prague’s Wenceslas Square.[…]

Click here to download recording.

Click here to read the full article at Radio Prague.

The spectacular Rudgers?v Palace built in the Neo-Classicist style is home to Czech Radio’s Ostrava studios, photo: Daniel Martínek, Czech Radio (Source: Radio Praha)

Past and Present: A Gallery of Czech´s Radio Buildings

Czech Radio is celebrating its 95th anniversary this year. The Czech national radio broadcaster has come a long way since its pioneering days. Today it is the biggest radio broadcaster in the country with 9 channels, manned not only by its Prague staff but 14 regional branches providing news and reports from around the country. The station’s buildings are also an important part of its history. On the occasion of Czech Radio’s 95th anniversary we have prepared a photo gallery of its buildings, some of them valuable architectural landmarks.

Click here to view the photo gallery at Radio Prague.

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ABC hit with major budget cuts

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, William Lee, who shares the following links to articles regard cuts faced by the Aaustralian Broadcasting Corporation and other Australian media news:

Regarding the cuts to the ABC, note this email from an ABC Director Regional:

(Source: Radioinfo.com.au)

ABC Radio ‘extremely disappointed’ at cuts

A staff email responds to the federal budget.

A staff email from ABC Director Regional and Local Michael Mason has expressed disappointment at the federal budget funding cuts to the ABC announced this week.

[…]The email reads:

Following the Managing Director’s message regarding more cuts to the ABC’s funding, announced in last night’s Budget, I wanted to add my comments.

Like Michelle, I am extremely disappointed in the Government’s decision to freeze the corporation’s annual funding indexation. And I also share the MD’s concern. This move represents a loss of $84 million in funding over three years starting in the next Financial Year in July 2019.

This comes at a time when the ABC is preparing its submission for its next Triennial funding period, which will also start in July 2019. This means our next funding bid takes on even more importance and significance.

We have 12 months to try and reverse that decision and position the organisation as strongly as possible as Australia’s most trusted media organisation and one that is able to meet all its charter obligations.

In Regional & Local we have consistently delivered high quality programming against a falling trend in funding that the ABC has had to work with over the past five years.

I know that everyone, from our stakeholders in Canberra, to the ABC Executive Leadership Group, to our viewers, listeners and on-line audiences, have all been hugely impressed with the work you have done. Our regional and local content is at the heart of what the ABC does and that won’t change.

Once again, we find ourselves in the situation of defending the importance and relevance of our work in order to safeguard its future. I have every confidence that, given the talent and quality in our team, we will meet the challenge, but to do that effectively, we must do it as one.

I will be talking to you more in coming weeks about what is required from R&L to support the ABC’s opposition to this decision and how best we can contribute to the 2019 Triennial Funding bid.