Tag Archives: BBC World Service

BBC shortwave frequencies and schedule for Nepal earthquake relief

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Nepal-Earthquake-Map

BBC-Nepal(Source: BBC Media Centre press release)

BBC World Service broadcasts Lifeline programmes in Nepal

In response to the aftermath of the earthquake in Nepal, the BBC World Service is now broadcasting additional programming on shortwave in both Nepalese and in English.
BBC Media Action – the BBC’s international development charity – is working with the Nepali Service on BBC World Service (radio and online) and local partner radio stations to broadcast ‘Lifeline’ programming.

Liliane Landor, Controller of World Service Languages, says: “Information is vital and we are doing all we can to make sure that our audiences in the affected areas receive their local and regional news as well as ‘Lifeline’ programming designed to give practical information to help deal with the aftermath of the earthquake.”

The Nepali language programme is available on shortwave as follows:

Nepali dawn transmission (01:30-01:45 GMT)
11995 kHz (25 metre band)
15510 kHz (19 metre band)

Nepali evening transmission (15:00-16:00 GMT)
9650 kHz (31 metre band)
5895 kHz (49 metre band)

The availability of World Service English on short wave to Northern India and Nepal has been extended with the service now starting one hour earlier than normal at 23.00 GMT.

Additional frequencies for World Service in English (to S Asia) from 23:00 GMT to 24:00GMT
5895 kHz (49 metre band)
9540 kHz (31 metre band)

From 00:00GMT the broadcasts continue as normal on 12,095kHz, 9,410kHz and 5970kHz

CRI, RFA, Sputnik, and the BBC: an “information battle?”

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Radio-Dial-Blurred-Dark

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Cuff, for sharing this article from The National:

Radio wars: information battle heats up as Russia and China muscle in

For about 70 years it was the base of the BBC World Service. Bush House, with its grand marble entrance in central London, stood as a powerful symbol of the BBC, home to the short-wave radio services that delivered news to dozens of countries in more than 40 languages. But the lights went out in 2012 when the World Service moved to the more prosaic Broadcasting House; two years later it lost its annual £245 million (Dh1.341 billion) grant from the UK’s government.

Both changes are symptomatic of the BBC’s less certain place in the broadcasting world as other countries significantly ramp up recruitment and funding for their own equivalent services.

Last December, Peter Horrocks, the BBC World Service’s former director, warned that the West was losing the “information war” with Moscow as the old Cold War foe pumped out wave after wave of pro-Kremlin propaganda on its rapidly expanding radio, TV and online platforms.

Horrocks had called for a rethink on financial assistance from the UK government as, even before the grant was ended, cutbacks in 2011 forced the closure of five language services and some short-wave broadcasts.

“We are being financially outgunned by Russia and the Chinese. Medium to long term there has to be an anxiety about the spending of others compared to what the BBC are putting into it,” he said.

It is now all too clear that established broadcasters that are based in the West, such as Radio Free Asia, Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe (RFE) – funded mainly through an agency of the US government – and the BBC are facing increased competition. Last November, Moscow rebranded its international English-language radio service: Radio Sputnik replaced the Voice of Russia and funding was increased for a new state-owned global news agency, Rossiya Segodnya.

Meanwhile, Beijing’s China Radio International (CRI) is an important part of the Communist Party’s foreign policy. CRI uses internet, short wave and satellite to broadcast around the world in dozens of languages, while Radio Sputnik has ambitions to broadcast in 30 languages across more than 130 countries by the end of the year.[…]

Continue reading on The National website…

BBC plans North Korean news service

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NorthKorea-Map (2)Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing this news from The Telegraph:

BBC-WorldService“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...]

BBC Relay Station handed back to Seychelles

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BBC Seychelles Relay Station (Photo: Vijay.sc)

BBC Seychelles Relay Station (Photo: Vijay.sc)

(Source: Seychelles News Agency via Andy Sennitt)

Tuesday November 18 marked the closure of an iconic chapter of Seychelles’ history, signalling the end of an era when information was much more difficult to come by. With much of Africa joining the internet and mobile phone revolution, the times of trying to glean information about happenings in the rest of the world on a crackly AM radio station have now passed by.

Over 25 years after its establishment, the site of the BBC’s former Indian Ocean Relay Station (IORS), located at Grand Anse, on the western side of the largest inhabited island in the archipelago, was handed back to the government of Seychelles by the country’s British High Commissioner, Lindsay Skoll.

The station transmitted BBC World Service programmes since 1988 via shortwave to listeners across East Africa in a range of languages, including the BBC’s English-language output for Africa as well as programmes in Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Somali and French.

In November 2013, the BBC announced its intention to cease all its shortwave transmission services from Seychelles due to a gradual and irreversible fall in demand for shortwave radio services, and on March 29 this year, the BBC IORS retransmission services from Seychelles were officially switched off. BBC World Service broadcasts in East Africa are still available via the internet and also via various other localised frequencies.
The handing over of the site to the Ministry of Land Use and Housing (MLUH) also included the station’s buildings and equipment, all of which are still in working order. The site is spread over a 32,000 square metre property, occupied under a lease dating back to March 27, 1985.

[…]The station is equipped with 33KV high-voltage equipment and transformers which will now go into the possession of the Public Utilities Corporation, while the Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) will take over three of the BBC’s four steel communications towers and the annex building.

The SCAA will use the towers to strengthen its air communication and surveillance capabilities and the annex building will be used to house a new high-frequency aviation communications radio system to help control air traffic coming in from the west of the island.

The fourth steel tower will be allocated to the local telecommunications company Cable and Wireless for mobile based telecommunications.

Read the full article on the Seychelles News Agency’s website.

China pays local radio and TV stations to broadcast their content

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(Image source: BBC)

(Source: The Independent via Andy Sennitt)

“The BBC has warned that China poses a “direct threat” to its global reach by paying incentives to local broadcast companies to prioritise its state-funded CCTV service over other international networks.

Peter Horrocks, the Director of the BBC’s World Service Group, told The Independent that the BBC’s distribution network was in danger from the hugely-ambitious CCTV and its deep financial resources.

“What the Chinese do is to pay local radio and TV stations to take their content,” he said in an interview with The Independent. “If you are a poor TV station in Tanzania and someone from China comes along and says ‘Will you take this content in Swahili?’ then you are quite likely to take it – so it’s a real threat to the future of the World Service’s content.”

As shortwave radio has become less widely used, the BBC has become increasingly dependent on local distribution partners for its radio and television output in large parts of the developing world. Around 40 per cent of the BBC’s global content is distributed through such intermediaries. “Locally distributed content is a very significant proportion of our overall audience,” said Horrocks. The BBC either seeks payment for its programming or provides it for free.”

[Continue reading…]

The BBC Genome Project

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RadioTimes

Many thanks to Mike Barraclough who shares this news:

“BBC has today launched a website publishing every BBC programme ever broadcast by the Corporation from digitised editions of the Radio Times 1923-2009. Getting occasional internal errors at the moment presumably due to heavy use following publicity. Well designed and easy to search. http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/“

The archive is quite deep–if you’re the nostalgic type, expect to spend a few hours browsing.