Sep 26, 2010
Looking back through old radio magazines of about 25 years ago, you
see some very strange articles. Speakers at international radio
conferences like ANARC and the European DX Council proudly talked
about short-wave turning to single-sideband by the year 2015 and
that satellites would not play a significant role before the end of
the century. They seemed to have totally misjudged the competition
from commercial TV broadcasters like CNN, or the growing demand
from the consumer for better quality audio and more choice. Another
denial, this time from BBC World Service. They were reacting to an
article in the Sunday Times of London which claimed on the 26th
September that BBC’s external service is about to shut some
language services. (history is repeating itself in 2010). BBC’s
German service, which has just celebrated 60 years on the air, was
supposedly to close together with transmissions to Nepal,
Portuguese speaking Africa, Slovakia and Hungary. BBC told us that
a decision on how to bridge a 5.7 million pound shortfall had not
been taken. We also spoke with former RNW programme Director Frans
Suasso, who had just returned from a trip to Kazakhstan to examine
the media scene there.