Article: 18989 of rec.radio.shortwave Newsgroups: rec.radio.shortwave Path: news.cs.tut.fi!news.funet.fi!funic!nic.funet.fi!compuserve.com!70247.3516 From: 70247.3516@compuserve.com (George Wood) Subject: SCDX 2175 Message-ID: <930316133118_70247.3516_EHB45-1@CompuServe.COM> Sender: root@nic.funet.fi (The FUnny NET guru) Organization: Finnish Academic and Research Network Project - FUNET Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1993 15:31:19 +0200 Lines: 465 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: MediaScan :: :: SWEDEN CALLING DXERS :: :: from Radio Sweden :: :: Number 2175--Mar. 16, 1993 :: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Satellite, shortwave and other electronic media news from Radio Sweden. This week's bulletin was written by George Wood. Packet Radio BID SCDX2175 All times UTC unless otherwise noted. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NORDIC MEDIA NEWS: SWEDEN--When Europe makes the happy transition to Daylight Savings, or Summer Time, on March 28th, we'll be adjusting our schedule. A number of broadcasts will be shifted an hour earlier UTC, to retain the same local time, for those countries who will be shifting with us. And there are some frequency adjustments as well. Here's the new English schedule: To Europe and Africa: at 17:30 hrs on 1179, 6065, and 9645 kHz, at 21:00 hrs on 1179, 6065 and 9655 kHz, and at 22:30 hrs on 1179 and 6065 kHz. To the Middle East and East Africa: at 15:00 hrs on 15190 kHz, and at 17:30 hrs on 15270 kHz. To Asia and the Pacific: at 12:30 hrs on 15240 and 21500 kHz, at 22:30 hrs on 11910 kHz, and at 01:00 hrs on 9695 and 11820 kHz. To North America: at 15:00 hrs on 15240 and 21500 kHz, and, the only completely unchanged broadcast, at 02:00 hrs on 9695 and 11705 kHz. The broadcasts at 12:30, 17:30, 21:00, and 22:30 hrs will also be relayed to Europe by satellite, on Astra on the Sky Movies Gold transponder, transponder 26, audio 7.74 MHz, and on Tele-X on the TV4 transponder, audio 7.38 MHz. On the other hand, our medium wave transmitter on 1179 kHz is still off the air until further notice, because of fire damage. A reserve transmitter is operating on 1179 kHz, but its range is restricted. The good news is that the first of our new 500 kW shortwave transmitters is due to go on the air at the end of this month, with the second a couple of months farther away, and the third at the end of the year. TV21--A new cable-only channel called TV21 has started here in Sweden. The brainchild of Gert Eklund, creator of the TV game show Bingolotto, it's supposed to offer sports and live entertainment for 20 hours a week. It also relays Eklund's local cable station from Gothenburg. But most of the broadcast day is made up of contests where viewers dial a telephone number that costs more than a dollar a minute to call, so they can answer questions like "Where is the Golden Gate Bridge?" If they compete long enough, they can win prizes. TV21 started on March 12th, on cable in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmoe. When it is fully established later this year it will reach three million viewers in the country's 25-30 largest cities. CABLE TELEVISION--Meanwhile, there's controversy here over the case of 85 year old Martha Hoegberg, who faces eviction from her apartment in the southern Swedish city of Hssleholm, because she's refused to pay for the cable television she can't, and doesn't want to, watch. Because Martha has had a filter installed, she can't watch the cable. But her local tenant-owners association voted by one vote to include a 5 dollar a month cable subscription as part of the rent. Martha has refused to pay, and could be evicted. A former civil servant for a district court, and more recently a representative for the Green Party on a local government committee, Martha has been named Southern Swede of the Year by the local TV channel in Malmoe. (Dagens Nyheter) When cable television was introduced in Sweden, the government promised that no one would be forced to subscribe if they didn't want to. That promise has apparently not been translated into law. LOCAL RADIO--Last week the Swedish parliament passed a law permitting the country's first private commercial radio stations, the first competition to the national and local non-commercial public broadcasters. The new law goes into effect on April 1st. During the first phase, some 60 stations will be licenced in more than 20 cities. There will initially be 10 stations in Stockholm, 5 in Gothenburg, 3 in Malmoe, and the rest in some 20 smaller towns. Svensk Radio Utveckling, Swedish Radio Development, is a company supported by a number of daily newspapers planning on starting radio stations. SRU, as it's known, plans to offer network programming, advertising sales, technical support, and other services to its member stations. In the first round SRU members will be applying to licences in some 15 to 20 cities. The network will be carried over the Tele-X satellite, but home satellite monitors will be unable to tune in to the feed, as it will be digitally encoded. We met the Managing Director of SRU, Jan Friedman, and asked what format these stations would be programming? JAN FRIEDMANN: Quite a broad format...adult listeners between 20 and 50, a music format which is not too aggressive, quite a few oldies, and of course, quite a lot of newstalk and general news every hour. RADIO SWEDEN: How much of this will be networked from your organization, when you finally start? JF: That's up to the local stations to decide. They can either take the feed or take over the transmitters themselves. If they take the feed, they can have local windows, with local programs, local news, local ads. But if they take over the full program, we do the windows with national news and national ads. The law has a restriction that one third of the total hours has to be locally produced. So if you do a 24 hour service, then at least 8 hours has to be local. RS: News is one of the things that's been talked a lot about concerning your operation. How is your news going to differ from that on the public broadcaster Swedish Radio? JF: First, you have to realize that our economic capacity to compete with the national news department, with some 70 or 80 journalists, is limited. It will be unfair competition from the first day. But there are many ways around that. We'll go for a Swedish tabloid news approach. Which is not the same as the British tabloids. A little more aggressive. We'll try to campaign for the rights of the little people. And we'll tell the stories based on what people want to hear and read. So, for example, if there is a big story about a famous personality doing something, which is in all the dailies and especially in all the tabloids, and at the same time the Foreign Minister of Germany retires, we'll probably have the Swedish story first. RS: There's been a lot of debate concerning the role of newspapers controlling radio stations. The original proposal limited newspaper ownership to 40 percent, but the enacted law just says a newspaper can't control a local radio station. How will affect your activities, since your clients and owners are newspapers? JF: The law now says that ONE newspaper is not allowed to control a local station. That means that one local newspaper needs a partner, either another newspaper or some other partner. So it affects us, and it has hurt us, in the building up of the company. But we can live with this legislation. We don't like it, but we can live with it. RS: What do you think of the new radio law otherwise? JF: In most aspects it's a good law. It's one of the most liberal and least restrictive laws covering private radio in the Western world. It allows networking, it does not regulate what sorts of programming you're supposed to do, it has quite liberal restrictions on ads. It's a good start. Of course there will be quite a lot of competition, because now everybody will be allowed to go into the trade. That means there's going to be bankruptcies, because this is a very small country. There are only 8 and a half million people in Sweden. I don't think more than 50 to 75 stations that will survive in the long run, and they will basically need to go for separate formats. My guess is that we will have two or three good profitable networks dominating the market within two or three years. RS: When do you expect to go on the air? JF: As soon as possible. If the authority is ready with the licenses around July 1st, which is a date that has been mentioned, we'll be on the air at full capacity during the Summer. FREQUENCY ALLOCATIONS--An association representing would-be private stations is strongly critical of the Telecommunications Board's frequency allocations. The board says there are only 60 available FM frequencies in the entire country, while the trade organization says there is capacity for 325 channels. (TT) Compared to frequency allocations in the United States, for example, the idea that a country the size of California could only support 60 FM stations in addition to the current 4 national networks and low-powered community radio stations is a bit hard to believe. BBC MONITORING--Someone who listens to Radio Sweden every day, a captive audience, as it were, is BBC Monitoring, in Caversham Park, England. Monitoring listens to hundreds of stations in many languages, uncovering news for the BBC World Service, as well as the British government. Recently Marita Hajek of the Swedish and Finnish section visited us here at Radio Sweden, and we had to ask, why Monitoring is interested in Scandinavia? MARITA HAJEK: BBC Monitoring has been listening to Sweden and Finland since 1939. In those days the emphasis was quite different. Later there was the Cold War. Finland had a long border with the Soviet Union, there was a strong Communist Party. The BBC wanted to know what was going on. Sweden had Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was very much against the American war against Vietnam, and Sweden also reported things that the Finnish government didn't dare say. So we got a complementary picture of what was happening in Finland thanks to Swedish coverage. RS: How does your section fit in at Caversham, since there are so many languages monitored? I would imagine your section is a small one tucked away in a corner somewhere? MH: Yes, we are. There are only two of us doing it full time, and we have a third person who can help us out in emergencies or when we have big things happening. But nevertheless, it is a valued service. Now that the Nordic countries are seeking entry into the European Community, people in Europe are interested in hearing whether Scandinavians are for or against membership. RS: What about the other Nordic countries, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway? Do you monitor their broadcasts? MH: No, we don't monitor Norway, Denmark, or Iceland. But I do follow what happens there, using items from Swedish Radio about Denmark and Norway, particularly about the EC. RS: What's your working day like? MH: We start work at eight in the morning. When I first come in I read myself in, and see what has happened in the last few days. I also see what Reuters and other news agencies are covering. I then tape bulletins and listen to them at set times. I take notes, and choose what I think is important. While I'm listening to these bulletins I record them, so I can then translate them into English afterwards. And I decide also whether an item is a routine item or a flash item. RS: Many shortwave listeners must look upon what you doing as "Super DXing". But do you do a lot of dial twiddling? MH: No, not any more. In the 70's when I first joined we had to tune in ourselves. We had a list of frequencies, and we found the station, and sometimes it was wandering and you had to get another frequency. Now it's mostly on satellite, and you just plug yourself in and hear it loud and clear. RS: You must have a lot of satellite feeds nowadays. MH: Yes, we have. Some of the Swedish Radio bulletins are on satellite, some are not. The ones we listen to are mostly on satellite. RS: How has the end of the Cold War affected BBC Monitoring? It must have changed your priorities enormously. MH: Well, it means in a way that we no longer have a monopoly on coverage of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Now that these countries have opened up, you have a lot more correspondents out there. So we are perhaps in greater competition with other news agencies now. But we still cover places like Albania, and slightly more outlying areas. We have a lot of people who listen to somewhat rarer areas in the former USSR, Uzbek, Tajikistan, places like that. EUROPEAN SATELLITE NEWS: BBC WORLD SERVICE--Last week we carried yet another report that BBC World Service radio would soon be appearing on Astra, on the UK Gold transponder. Now an inside source at the BBC has confirmed the contract is about to be signed. Tests of World Service radio are to begin this week, using the audio subcarrier at 7.38 MHz. Along with it will be Radios 1, 4, and 5, all in mono, presumeably at 7.56, 7.74, and 7.92 MHz. All 4 subcarriers have been activated. WORLD RADIO NETWORK--Last week we also had a report that the World Radio Network would be returning to Astra in July. That seems to have been a bit premature. WRN's Karl Misoga tells us that they are working to start an Astra service sometime this year, but no firm date has been decided. WRN continues on Eutelsat II-F1, using the MBC transponder, audio 7.74 MHz, relaying around 25 languages from Vatican Radio and Russian from Radio Canada International. After March 28th, English from Vatican Radio will be carried at 06:30, 10:20, 16:15, and 19:50 hrs. (Karal Misoga, World Radio Network) CHRISTIAN BROADCASTERS--United Christian Broadcasters had hoped to begin broadcasts on the Sky News transponder at 7.56 MHz, but an obstacle has arisen. Another religious broadcaster called the Christian Information Service is to begin transmissions on the Sky Movies Plus transponder, audio 7.92 MHz, with the next 10 days. (James Robinson) COUNTRY MUSIC RADIO--On the Sky Sports transponder, QEFM is to start broadcasting in stereo, while their country music outlet, QCMR, is to take over 7.56 MHz, formerly used by Euronet. (James Robinson) RTL-2--On March 6th Germany's new RTL 2 took over transponder 1 on Astra, replacing Screensport. It's also carried on Eutelsat II-F1 on 11.095 GHz. CARTOON CHANNEL--Turner Broadcasting has announced that it will launch its Cartoon Network and the film-based TNT channel to Europe in September, presumeably via Astra 1C. The two will share a single transponder, with the Cartoon Network on for 14 hours a day, and TNT during the remaining 10 hours. (Reuters) ASTRA 1C--Astra's owner, SES, has announced in Los Angeles some of the channels on the coming 1C satellite. However, there are no surprises: the Discovery Channel will be moving from Intelsat, and the Children's Channel will have its own transponder (rather than sharing time on two current transponders). There will be two Spanish channels, something that's also been known for several months. The only news is that Filmnet will be operating its second channel (currently on the Tele-X satellite) to Scandinavia on 1C. Astra 1C is scheduled for launch in early May, and it's expected to go into operation in July or August, providing 16 more channels at the same position in the sky as the current 32 channels on Astra 1A and 1B. (AFP) PACIFIC MEDIA NEWS: AUSTRALIA/ASIA--The ABC has just launched its new Asian service, Australian Television International, or ATVI. It went on the air February 17th, using Indonesia's Palapa B2-P satellite, using the transponder at 3800 MHz. ATVI will be competing with CNN International, which is also on that same satellite, along with BBC World Service Television on Asiasat-1. The French satellite broadcaster, Canal France International, has just signed an agreement to use Palaga B2-P as well, beginning in May. (BBC Monitoring) Meanwhile, Australia's Aborigines, who have criticsed ATVI for not reflecting their part of Australian culture, have their own satellite channel, Imparja Television, which beams programs to 120 satellite downlinks from Alice Springs. 80 percent of programming is standard Australian fare. The aborigine programs are in 7 languages, with English subtitles. There's also a daily 15 minute news bulletin in English, concentrating on local and aboriginal issues. Imparja broadcasts on the Aussat A2 satellite at 156 degrees East. (Reuters) MEDIUM AND SHORTWAVE: JAPAN--Radio Japan has completed construction at its Yamata relay station, with three new shortwave transmitters. Radio Japan is now offering international radio broadcasting service to all parts of the world, using four 300 kW and four 100 kW transmitters. (NHK TV via BBC Monitoring) RUSSIA--Radio Art is now also on 1413 kHz, broadcasting from Moscow at 04:00- 07:00 and 15:00-18:00 hrs. ("Shortwave News" via Euronews) The American evangelist Gene Scott is now broadcasting via Radio Moscow: at 04:00 hrs to China, India, Central Asia and the Pacific on 15315 kHz (Novosibirsk) and 21845 kHz (Samara). (Dale Vanderpoel via Euronews) Radio Galaxy is back on 9880 khz at 20:00-21:00 hrs. (Dale Vanderpoel via Euronews) UK--Britain's new private pop music national network, Virgin 1215, is testing on 1215 kHz, prior to its official launch on April 30th. This station will also use 1197, 1224, and 1242 kHz (Derek Cooper via Internet News and James Robinson) UK/SOUTH KOREA--The BBC and Radio Korea will begin relays from each other's transmitters on May 1st. Radio Korea's English service will be relayed from Britain at 20:30 hrs, with French at 21:00 and German at 21:45 hrs. The BBC will be relayed from South Korea in English at 13:00-14:00 hrs and in Chinese at 22:00-23:00 hrs. Beginning July 1st, each station will add an extra hour relay, with Radio Korea's Korean service from Britain at 06:30 hrs, and the BBC's Cantonese service from Korea at 23:00 hrs. However, the frequencies have not yet been decided. (Radio Japan via BBC Monitoring) USA--It's been reported that the new Clinton adminstration will propose the merging of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty into the Voice of America. The president of the two stations, Eugene Pell, has told the RFE/RL Works Council that the proposal is for the two stations to cease operations on October 1, 1995. There have been a number of protests: the Chairman of the Latvian Supreme Council, Anatolijs Gorbunovs, has appealed to President Bill Clinton not to close the two stations, saying they have been a significant force in the process of gaining independence in Latvia, and the rebirth of democracy there is not completed yet. The US-based Nobel Prize winning Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz has also appealed for the two stations to stay on the air. Although the Cold War has come to an end, he argues, a source of sound objective information is still very much needed in the areas of central and eastern Europe hit by civil wars. (BBC Monitoring) In a commentary distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, William Pfaff, who worked for the RFE/RL supervisory organization when it was run by the Central Intelligence Agency, says RFE has recovered from "a not wholly undeserved reputation for recklessness and Radio Liberty for a reactionary and fairly mindless anti-Communism." He says that while the need for the stations in some countries with new and democratic press services has diminished, this is not the case everywhere. Ironically, he writes that RFE/RL "does its best to provide an objective news service", while the Voice of America, he says, "has never matched the credibility of the BBC", or even RFE/RL. This is ironic, because while the VOA is required by its charter to be objective, RFE/RL are not. The VOA's Audience Research Officer, Dr. Kim Elliott, has written an article called "International Broadcasting on a Budget", supporting the merger, pointing out that VOA and RFE/RL share 17 languages in common, which he says is a great waste in resources. He adds that the United States spends more than twice as much as the BBC for international broadcasting, nevertheless, employing only half as many journalists, and attracting half the audience. He also argues against the proposed introduction of a new Radio Free China, and calls for the creation of a new autonomous American international broadcaster. Dr. Elliott also points out "VOA is alone among international broadcasters in that it does not include broadcasting to its fellow citizens abroad as part of its mandate", and urges that the US government avoid competition where the private sector can do the job, a clear reference to CNN. PUBLICATIONS: The new 50 page edition 5.4 of Radio Sweden's satellite guide "Communications in Space: The DXers Guide to Galaxy" is now available free of charge. Just write to: Radio Sweden, S-105 10 Stockholm, Sweden. It's also been uploaded to data networks and computer bulletin boards, so you might find it there as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sweden Calling DXers is the world's oldest radio program for shortwave listeners. Radio Sweden has presented this round-up of radio news, features, and interviews on Tuesdays since 1948. Until March 28th, Radio Sweden broadcasts in English: Europe and Africa: 18:30 and 22:00 hrs on 1179, 6065 and 9655 kHz, and 23:30 hrs on 1179 and 6065 kHz Middle East and East Africa: 18:30 hrs on 15270 kHz Asia and the Pacific: 13:30 hrs on 15240 and 21625 kHz 22:00 hrs on 11955 kHz 01:00 hrs on 9695 and 11820 kHz North America: 16:00 hrs on 17870 and 21500 kHz 02:00 hrs on 9695 and 11705 kHz The 13:30, 18:30, and 22:00 hrs transmissions are also broadcast to Europe via satellite: Astra 1B (19.2 degrees East) transponder 26 (Sky Movies Gold/TV Asia/Adult Channel) at 11.597 GHz, audio subcarrier at 7.74 MHz, Tele-X (5 degrees East) (TV4 transponder) at 12.207 GHz, audio subcarrier 7.38 MHz. Contributions can be sent to DX Editor George Wood by fax to +468-667-6283, from Internet, MCI Mail or CompuServe (to the CompuServe mailbox 70247,3516), through the FidoNet system to 2:201/697 or to SM0IIN at the packet radio BBS SM0ETV. Reports can also be sent to: Radio Sweden S-105 10 Stockholm Sweden Contributions should be NEWS about electronic media--from shortwave to satellites--and not loggings of information already available from sources such as the "World Radio TV Handbook". Clubs and DX publications may reprint material as long as MediaScan/Sweden Calling DXers and the original contributor are acknowledged, with the exception of items from BBC Monitoring, which are copyright. We welcome comments and suggestions about the electronic edition, Sweden Calling DXers, and our programs in general. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to this week's contributors Good Listening!