WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News

listeners in rural areas of Africa and Asia, but Gardner says the increase
amounted to existing listeners who were surveyed for the first time in
Myanmar.
David Hollyer, former managing director in Spain for the U.S. govt's Radio
Free Europe and Radio Liberty, is wistful about the long-term consequences
of mothballing and destroying SW txs.
The txs in Spain, he argued, could have been deployed to broadcast to
Central Asia to reach a Muslim population.
Instead, with the changing political climate, U.S. authorities closed the
station in 2003, ended its lease, and turned over the towers to Spain.
When Hollyer watches the amateur YouTube video of the familiar towers
crumbling in clouds of smoke, it reminds him of an Edwin Markham poem.
"To paraphrase," he said, "the towers went down with a great shout upon
the hills and left a lonesome place against the sky."
By Doreen Carvajal International Herald_Tribune September 24, 2006 Paris
See:
(via Mike Terry-UK hcdx and dlxd Sept 24)
I will go one step further. I submit that international broadcasting is
the one that is dying and that the retreat from Shortwave is just
symptomatic. If international broadcasters think that technology is going
to help get them more listeners, they are foolhardy.
Next month, Germany's public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, will end its
German-language SW broadcasts aimed at Canada and the United States.
"The future of SW radio is quite clear," said Guido Baumhauer, director of
strategy and distribution for Deutsche Welle, or DW, in Germany. "It's all
going down when it comes to the consumers."
With the average age of its SW listeners hovering at about 50, DW expects
to save more than ?10 million, or $12.78 million, a year by reducing SW
sces, according to Baumhauer, who said the money would be invested in
other sces like Internet radio and podcasting.
The state-subsidized broadcaster is phasing out SW programs for North
America and the Balkans and reducing daily txions of SW programs to 160
hours from 200.
"In the U.S., if people are really into German they have so many other
ways to get consumer information," Baumhauer said. "Considering the costs
related to the txion, there's no point in continuing."
(Bill Harms in hcdx and dxld Sept 24)
I agree with that, and I would like to add that it sounds familiar to me.
More or less the same could be heard already 10, 15 years ago, just
referring to satellites as the bright future of international
broadcasting. Instead Deutsche Welle simply shut down its programs in
Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. Even more
interesting: Their French sce now officially aims at Africa only, although
it's still available in Europe via satellite and Internet. In my humble
opinion this circumstance speaks volumes. By the way, did you note that
the statement from Guido Baumhauer does not mention DRM at all?
Probably it went by a little bit in the Wertachtal story, so here's again
what we figured for DW foreign lang sces after Dec 31: Polish, Croatian,