Von: BueschelW@web.de im Auftrag von Wolfgang Bueschel ...

"Shortwave is one of the basics of international broadcasting. That is
what I think and what I want to fight for. Because despite all of the
digitalisation and all the new platforms and so on and modern means of
communication, Internet and so forth; international broadcasting, very
much especially outside Europe, is based on short wave."
Even so, Radio Prague has not been putting all its eggs in one basket.
Although hopes that digital shortwave would provide a cheaper, higher
quality option have faded out, other technological options have come along
and been grabbed. Mr Krupicka:
"There are, of course, other means of broadcasting which we have been
using for years. It is satellite broadcasting; it is internet
broadcasting, both live streaming and on demand, and pod casting.
Podcasting seems to be one of the ways, very modern and very effective
ways, of spreading audio. The number of podcasts downloaded from the Radio
Prague website is about 500,000 a month. It is a great number and it is
growing. So I am very much in favour of pod casting and investing in
podcasting and I see it as one of the very important platforms for the
future for broadcasting audio content."
Another big broadcaster out of Prague is the US-financed station Radio
Free Europe-Radio Liberty broadcasting to 20 countries. Julian Knapp
describes how shortwave fits into its options to get the message across.
"Like everywhere, we adapt to our consumers. As consumers move more
towards the internet, television, towards online video and towards these
media, we adapt. So shortwave is on the decline overall. But in some
markets such as Afghanistan where we have 50 percent listeners in the
country - it is still very much a radio nation and radio market -
shortwave is still popular although we do have FM and other wavelengths.
But in some rural areas you can only reach with shortwave. So in these
countries shortwave still has a big role."
He adds that shortwave came into its own when the Georgian government
starting blocking other broadcasting during a state of emergency in 2007
and in contemporary Russia. There, local stations have been leaned on to
discontinue re-broadcasting arrangements so shortwave is again in vogue.
If shortwave is still part of the broadcasting picture for the moment, the
question seems to be how long will that continue to be the case?
Simon Spanswick is the chief executive of the Association for
International Broadcasting, an industry group covering radio and
television. He sees an ever declining role.
"It is still very useful in some parts of the world. But a lot of the
world has moved on, immensely far. And if you walked outside Czech Radio
or go down into Wenceslas Square and asked half a dozen people when they
last used a shortwave radio and then repeated that in Dubai or in Accra,
Ghana,
I think you will find a very small proportion of the people you ask
respond positively about shortwave. Increasingly people want easy access
to news, information and entertainment and shortwave radio is not the
easiest to tune into, whereas a local FM station blasting out of small
transistor radio is a lot more easy to find."
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