BC-DX 789 05 Jan 2007 Private Verwendung der Meldun

The Independent, 13 April 2000.
See previous post about Radio Budapest. Posted: 01 Jul 2007 (from
via dxld)
At the end of the programme, the following announcement was broadcast:
"Now I would like to call your attention to the fact that as from June
30th 2007, Radio Budapest will cease to broadcast in English. Instead,
Hungarian language broadcasts will be aired on our frequencies. This is
part of changing the programme structure of Hungarian public radio in
order to have a more cost-effective operation. Thank you for having
listened to us."
(Media Network blog via dxld July 1)
Well, I guess we can "congratulate" Hungarian Radio with a perfectly
devised and executed plan for their External Service's extermination...
Here are a few invaluable lessons for those working on shutting down Kol
Israel, VoA, etc.:
- Keep your decision to get read of int. broadcasting a secret for as long
as possible.
- Make sure that the staff isn't allowed to discuss your decision on the
air. (To be nice and sensitive you can allow them to say their teary
"good-byes" during the final broadcast.)
- Do everything possible to preclude listeners, local journalists and
politicians from mounting any organized protest or inquiry.
- Don't try to do everything at once. To prevent negative backlash you can
start with closing one or two language services first.
- Money-saving tip: try canceling some broadcasts ahead of the officially
scheduled date.
As we have seen, these tactics worked very well in case of R. Budapest, R.
Tashkent and R. Georgia.
(Sergei Sosedkin-IL-USA, dxld June 30)
I already described the strange appearance of the last German broadcast:
Just a formal welcome, then music fill / backtiming with two read-outs of
the official release by MR on the closure of Radio Budapest, then
"Treffpunkt Europa" from Deutsche Welle which finally got chopped off at
the end. No farewell, although it had been announced for this programme on
the penultimate broadcast.
Today Csaba Banky, the former head of the German service who also
presented these programmes, sent from a private account a mail to
"adresses of listeners I found on the PC in our office". Herein he says
that it had been "suggested" that they "should" just read out the official
release.
His farewell talk, which could not be broadcast, can now be found at
(second item on this page).
Since mid-May he had no access to the CMS of the MR website anymore, so he
was not able to post a farewell and other material there either.
If anybody would like to write to MR ("writing to" does not mean "sending
reception reports"): Csaba Banky suggests (and asks to not refer to him
when doing so) to write to the international relations department, nki
[at] radio.hu. He assumes that mail send to the editorial offices will no