Category Archives: International Broadcasting

The Mighty KBC: Summer frequency changes/additions

If you enjoy listening to The Mighty KBC, you’ll want to note these frequency changes and additions:

Frequency changes for The Mighty KBC

We are delighted to announce that from the 1st June 2015, KBC will be heard daily on medium wave. We will broadcast on 1602 kHz between 07.00 – 19.00 CET from transmitters aboard the LV Jenni Baynton.

Our Sunday shortwave transmissions will continue on 6095 and we will add an extra hour onto 7375 transmission.

To facilitate these latest changes, our Saturday 6095 transmissions will end on Saturday March 28th but all regular shows will be maintained on a new KBC Internet stream which will be available online 24/7.

Also, look out later this year for KBC on DAB+
We hope you enjoy our new outlets and will join KBC on MW, SW, DAB+ and Online.

Check out our website kbcradio.eu and our FB page facebook.com/TheMightyKBc for all the latest news.

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Deutsche Welle to close Kigali relay March 28, 2015

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DW’s relay station in Kigali (Source: Deutsche Welle)

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Mike, who writes:

“I wanted to pass on a quick (and unfortunate) word that Deutsche Welle will be closing its Kigali, Rwanda relay on March 28th. This word came from the Wavescan program on WRMI. I would highly recommend that anyone who would like a QSL response from DW should get their correspondences in as soon as possible. It seems that the site will be dismantled shortly afterward. In addition it seems that tests are ongoing at RFI’s Issoudun site by DW to replace some of the broadcasts that used to originate from their Kigali relay.

I find the closing of another landmark relay a greatly displeasing event especially due to the short time frame between the announcement of the closure and the actual closure date. I find it surprising as well due to the lack of mention of any recent budget cuts at Deutsche Welle.”

As Mike mentions, the relay is scheduled to close on March 28, 2015–if you’d like to log this site, you’ll need to do so very soon. Click here for current schedules. Kigali is Deutsche Welle’s only remaining relay station.

RadioWorld magazine also posted a short news item about the Kigali closure–click here to read.

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RAI may face reform

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Bill Patalon, for sharing this article about potential reform at Italy state broadcaster, RAI:

(Source: The Economist)

“SELDOM has an organisational chart prompted a defamation trial. Yet judges in Milan recently heard a case involving a colour-coded table published by Libero, a newspaper. The chart listed 900 executives of Italy’s public television and radio network, RAI, and the political parties to which they supposedly owed their appointment. Dismissing charges of libel, the judges said it was well known that, in RAI, “even the most meritorious individuals are favoured by their acquaintanceships in political circles”.

Italian commentators call RAI the “mirror of the nation”: an institution so permeated by competing interests that it sometimes anticipates political shifts even before they surface. Once, this was not unhealthy. Instead of being in thrall to the government of the day, RAI offered contrasting viewpoints. The Christian Democrats controlled the first television channel, the Socialists the second and, from 1979, the Communists a third. All three parties disintegrated in the 1990s, but the idea that politicians were entitled to meddle in RAI survived. The number of newsrooms grew to 11, as did a spirit of fierce internal rivalry.

[Continue reading at The Economist…]

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BBC plans North Korean news service

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing this news from The Telegraph:

“The BBC is planning a new North Korea service to give the totalitarian state’s 25 million people an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s propaganda.

In a move that could plunge the corporation into confrontation with the North Korean dictator, the World Service is examining how to set up a special news channel that will get around Pyongyang’s ban on foreign media broadcasts.

The plan has echoes of Western broadcasts into the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, when the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America all broadcasted to listeners behind the Iron Curtain.

However, it is likely to spark fury from Pyongyang’s volatile leadership, and could lead to the British embassy in Pyongyang being targeted for protests or being shut down altogether.

It could also put Britain in the firing line for North Korean-led cyberattacks, such as the one that targeted Sony Pictures last year over its film “The Interview”, which lampooned Kim Jong-un.”[…]

[Continue reading at The Telegraph...]

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ERT Open shortwave schedule & news

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Merkouris, who writes:

I’ve just thought that the shortwave schedule of ERT Open, published on the 28th of February, might be of interest to you and the readers of the SWLing Post.

Here is the link in Greek and below is the translation in English [by time, region, frequency, and program]:

0000-1500 UTC, Europe/North America, 9420 kHz, ERA Athens
1500-2400 UTC, Europe/North America, 9415 kHz, ERA Athens
1100-0450 UTC, Europe/Central America, 9935 kHz, ERA Athens
0500-1050 UTC, Central & South Africa, 11645 kHz, ERA Athens
0000-0550 UTC, Russia/Japan, 15630 kHz, ERA Athens
0600-1850 UTC, Europe/Central America, 15630 kHz, ERA Athens
1900-2350 UTC, Middle East – Australia, 15650 kHz, ERA Athens

Draft Bill to Reestablish ERT?

(Photo source: AP / Petros Giannakouris)

Merkouris also included links to the following reports from Greek and English language news sources.

(Source: ANAmpa.gr)

ANA – MPA — A draft bill to reestablish defunct public broadcaster ERT was released to public consultation on Monday afternoon, under the title “Regulations on issues of the state radio and television agency, Hellenic Radio and Television SA, and amendment of article 48 of Law 2190-1920.”

The consultation period will end at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday.

[…]It also said it was reinstating all the ERT staff who had permanent contracts by June 11, 2013 and said a fee of 3 euros would be introduced for ERT on PPC bills and the present name of the public broadcaster (“NERIT S.A.”) be replaced by ERT S.A.

[Click here to read full article…]

This is an interesting development for the Greek public broadcaster. Of course, even if the bill passes, it is unknown how this could affect shortwave radio relays. I must say that I’m impressed that ERT Open has been broadcasting on shortwave a good 1.5 years after they should have been closed down. (Personally, I hope they never go off the air as I love ERT Open’s weekend music programs!)

Again, many thanks Merkouris for sharing this schedule and breaking news. Please keep us informed!

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Remembering Radio Canada International’s final shortwave broadcast

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The transmitter building of Radio Canada International, Sackville, NB.

I spent the summer of 2012 in an off-grid cabin on the eastern coast of Prince Edward Island, Canada. That summer, I listened as two of my favorite shortwave broadcasters left the air within weeks of each other: Radio Netherlands Worldwide and Radio Canada International.

I was able to not only listen to the final broadcasts of Radio Netherlands, but also record them. I wrote a post about that memorable experience.

Ironically, though I was only a geographic stone’s-throw from the RCI Sackville transmitter site, I struggled to hear any Sackville signals as my location was too close for skywave propagation and a little too far for ground wave. Though I paid a visit to the transmitter site only two days prior, I was unable to hear or record RCI’s final broadcast.

Unlike RNW’s final broadcasts, RCI’s ended without fanfare and quite abruptly. This week, I heard a recording of that final RCI broadcast for the first time. My friend, Rajdeep Das, recorded it on June 24, 2012 in Kolkata, India. Rajdeep has kindly shared his recording with the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive and here on the SWLing Post.

This is a short 10 minute recording, beginning at 1550 UTC, June 24, 2012 on 11,675 kHz. Listeners will note that the broadcast ends abruptly during the mailbag program–obviously the Sackville transmitters were turned off prematurely.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

While we’re talking about RCI, I would also like to thank @LeedsRadio, @UKDXer and Al Holt for sharing the following brilliant QSLs and pennant:

Source: @UKDXer via Twitter

Source: @LeedsRadio via Twitter

Source: @grovekid2 (Al Holt) via Twitter

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane!

SWLing Post readers should note that Rajdeep Das has a DX blog you should visit. I’ve added Rajdeep’s site to our blog roll. Thanks again, Rajdeep!

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Radio Canada International 70th Anniversary was bittersweet for some

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The transmitter building of Radio Canada International, Sackville, NB (June, 2012).

RCI Action

We recently noted that Radio Canada International (RCI) celebrated its 70th year anniversary. While it was certainly an amazing milestone–dating back to WWII–it was a bittersweet celebration for some. Check out this article on the RCI Action blog:

“The flood of wonderful memories, fueled by the old and not so old photos of Radio Canada International’s 70 years, is now, as I write this, suddenly mixed with regret, lost opportunities, and missing colleagues.

In a way I dreaded this anniversary, not knowing how to deal with this important milestone.

RCI has survived all these years since its first broadcast on February 25, 1945, as Canada’s Voice to the World. But now, almost three years after an 80% budget cut that took us off shortwave radio, cutting us off from our listeners, how do you celebrate? How do you not look with some exasperation, regretfully, wistfully, at how little people, even colleagues, know about RCI’s proud achievements, and its path-breaking innovations?

The contradictions of how some viewed us and the reality is almost too much to bear. People say we used outdated technology, weren’t moving with the times, and no longer needed to explain Canada to the world.

Yet none of this is true.”

[Continue reading on RCI Action…]

Sheldon Harvey

My good friend, and host of the International Radio Report, Sheldon Harvey was interviewed by Lynn Desjardins of Radio Canada International regarding Radio Canada International’s 70th anniversary. Here is a link to the story and the audio of the interview now accessible through RCI’s webpage

Amanda Dawn Christie

On a similar note, you might check out this interview between Wojtek Gwiazda and film marker, Amanda Dawn Christie. Amanda is making a documentary film about the destruction of the RCI Sackville transmitter site.

Click here to listen to the full interview via Radio Canada International online.

Check out Amanda’s short video of several towers as they were taken down: