BC-DX 841 04 Jan 2008 Private Verwendung der Meldun

This may please be noted for the future correspondence. Regards, Iftikhar
Hussain Malik, Engineering Manager, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation,
303 Peshawar Road, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
(via Gupta-IND, dswci DXW Jan 23)
Revamping of External Services of Radio Pakistan.
While going through recent press reports dated Jan 5, regarding the
reinforcement of Radio Pakistan External services through quote "the
readjustment of broadcast transmitters and the services would be relayed
through powerful transmitters to improve the signals of the broadcasts"
unquote, it was thought Radio Pakistan external services will reduce the
transmission of World Service (Urdu) and will utilize the 250 kW
transmitters of World Service for the external services.
Instead they have decided to discontinue Tamil, Turkish, Turki, Nepali,
Sinhali, Russian, Arabic and some English transmissions, while the
retained services will continue to be transmitted through API-3 (100 kW).
Frankly speaking the services which have been discontinued, do not deserve
even an obituary. In recent past when certain state broadcasters stations
decided to discontinue their external services the listeners' outcry
forced them to reverse their decision. But in case of Radio Pakistan the
foreign language services discontinued w.e.f 5.01.2008 had already lost
any listenership which they had in past owing to faulty and worthless
transmitter, inappropriate timings and poor program content.
Here I would like to point out the sorry state of affairs of Turki
language service. Ironically Turki language (may not be confused with
Turkish) had only a handful of speakers in Afghanistan but this service
was on air from Radio Pakistan since last many decades. The Sinhali,
Russian and Nepali services were newer ones but failed to gain any
listenership. Obviously very few listeners could afford the risk of
Hearing impairment by listening to horrible buzz of API-3.At least the
discontinuation of these services enlisted above is an admission that the
transmitter signals of API-3 are not capable of going much beyond Pakistan
borders. The retained services are primarily those which are directed for
neighbouring countries.
Coming to the Transmitter API-3,which has been retained for "Powerful
transmission" it could undoubtedly be declared as the worst transmitter
being used by any external service at the moment. I have been monitoring
the shortwave broadcasts of more than 100 stations since last many years
in my region but have yet to find such a poor transmitter being used by
any broadcaster.
Radio Pakistan seem to be unaware of three pre-requisites for an external
service for gaining listenership on shortwave, which are effective program
content being of target audience' interest, strong signals and appropriate
transmission timings. In case any of the above elements are missing the
service proves to be waste of time and resource as is the case with Radio
Pakistan.
Interestingly the duration of some of the retained services like Hindi,
Dari, Persian have been increased. I wonder what good Radio Pakistan
intend to achieve by increasing transmission time of these external
services, if these are to be transmitted through API-3. It is still not
understood why they could not wait till 2009 for complete installation of
two new shortwave transmitters (100 kW) coupled with High Frequency aerial
system at Landhi Karachi. We can surely conclude that when it comes to
absurd decisions, no one can beat Radio Pakistan External Services.
(Aslam Javaid-PAK, dxld Jan 19)
Radio Pakistan Hindi Service 1030-1130 UT at 7445 kHz.
I monitored the Hindi Service on Jan 19, 2008 from 1030- 1130 UT at 7445