DX LISTENING DIGEST 00-27, February 19, 2000 edited by Glenn Hauser WORLD OF RADIO ON WWCR: Hello GH, 9475 World of Radio via WWCR suffers from new V. of Russia Spanish service to SWEu/Spain on superpower 9480, S=9+60 dB. 9475 only S=2 here in EUR. Tried to hear WoR opening Thursday at 2130, but gave up. Even my best Collins 2.3 kHz filter is powerless. So let`s hope for the scheduled freq change from 9475 to 15685 on March 2nd (Wolfgang Bueschel, Germany, Feb 17) MUNDO RADIAL ON THE WEB. Hi Glenn, Just a note to let you know that I've uploaded the last three Mundos Radiales to your site on freespeech. Funny thing tho, you must use the address http://www.freespeech.org/hauser/index.html to get the updated index page. If you don't use the "slash index.html," you get an old version of the page without the new links. Very strange! (Joe Bernard, RFPI, Feb 19) ** AFGHANISTAN. Radio Kabul have changed frequency from 7002 to 7073 and its programmes too, heard 14.35 and was still on the air at 17.50. No English and Urdu program has been heard at that time but it would be interesting to note that there was less religious talk and songs; instead there was talk on Islamic Conference and half an hour talk on Kashmir. Time pips every half hour then ID as Afghanistan ....... Kabul just before news bulletin in its different programmes and at no moment the word Shariah has been mentioned; also from time to time the station has been jammed (by whom ?) 19 February 2000 (Mahendra Vaghjee, Mauritius, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** AFGHANISTAN. May be it`s obvious for most of us, but the recent move of Kabul based Voice of Sharia to v7002 kHz might be connected to the activities of opposition voice Radio Takhar on v7000 kHz. So, take care when trying to identify which of the Afghan voices you actually hear ;-) As it seems, Kabul authorities take Radio Takhar quite serious. vy73 (Harald Kuhl, Germany, Feb 19, hard-core-dx via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** AUSTRALIA. The draft legislation setting up a licensing regime for international broadcasters to transmit from Australia (and designed primarily for the Darwin site) has been referred to a Senate committee for further scrutiny. The Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill (No.4) 1999 will be studied by the Senate's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee. The committee will present its final report by 4 April 2000. The committee's inquiry will focus on the powers conferred on the Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Bill. (Basically, the Bill gives the Minister to approve or decline international broadcasting licenses on national interest grounds.) Submissions can be made to the Committee by 6 March 2000. Public hearings may be held as part of the inquiry. For more information, contact the Secretary, Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, Parliament House, Canberra, ACT 2600. Phone (02) 6277 3535. Fax (02) 6277 5818. Email fadt.sen@aph.gov.au (Matt Francis, Australia, Feb 19, via Tim Gaynor, swl@qth.net via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** COSTA RICA. After several weeks off, RFPI Mailbag returned Feb 18, with James Latham and Joe Bernard. VISTA is in preparation and expected to be in FORFPI mailboxes as close to March 1 as possible. With James Latham back, Global Community Forum resumes Feb 24, new season with guests, call-ins, Far-Right Radio Reviews (the live time is UT Fridays 0200-0300), and Millennium Dreams will also return. http://www.rfpi.org is again being updated daily, including Progressive News Network. RFPI streaming via SW pickup in Maryland is best at night when 6975 is on. By April, hope to have digital line installed to feed studio quality RFPI audio direct to Charlie Wilkinson (notes by Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** EQUATORIAL GUINEA. A technical delegation from PR China visited this country to advise the government on improving transmissions of R. Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (4926 and 5005v from Bata with 50 kW, and 6250v 10 kW from Malabo), as well as on their studios and links between the capital Bata and Malabo, the second most important city. Also a new transmitting centre of 400 [sic] square meters will be built to improve quality of low and high frequency transmissions. Source: newscast on R. Bata, Estacion Continental, 5003.5, at 0600 UT Feb 7 (Santiago San Gil, Venezuela, Banda Tropical, Club Diexistas de la Amistad translated by gh for DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** ISRAEL. Sharansky increases daylight saving time By Haim Shapiro and Nina Gilbert JERUSALEM (February 17) - In a move which could arouse the opposition of the religious public, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky yesterday announced that daylight saving time this year is to last a record 191 days. But in an apparent effort to deflect religious opposition, Sharansky said he based his decision on a supreme Jewish religious principle, pikuah nefesh, the saving of life. In addition, he linked the dates to the religious calendar, with daylight saving time to start on the first day of Pessah, when Jews stop saying the prayer for rain and begin saying the prayer for dew, and to end on Shmini Atzeret, when the prayer for rain is resumed. In fact, daylight saving time is to begin on Thursday night, April 14, almost a week before Pessah, but that is because the date was fixed in advance and the interior minister by law must set the date at least six months in advance. However, it is to end on Sunday, October 22, Shmini Atzeret... (Jersualem Post Feb 17 via Bill Westenhaver) This of course, always has a bearing on SW broadcasts from Israel shifting one UT hour earlier (DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** LIBERIA. Glenn, On Feb 19th I did hear ELWA Liberia on 4760 with a solid ID. Sign on was right at 0600 UT. Signal was fair (better at times, it faded up and down), but the modulation seemed weak ?? Yes, more of that same "old" programming . Regards, (David Zantow, Janesville, WI, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** MEXICO. Radio Educación, 6185 KHz tiene un programa llamado ENTRE MEDIOS, donde leen los informes de recepción de oyentes de diferentes paises y también tiene un segmento dx denominado ESPACIO - DIEXISTA. Captado el Sabado 12/02/00 a las 08:40 - UTC con una entrevista desde Coahuila con el diexista Leopoldo Lemus. Ofrecen una linea telefónica para llamadas al programa al numero: 5-575177. ¡Confirman con QSL y envian un banderin!. (Jorge Garcia Rangel, Banda Tropical, Club Diexistas de la Amistad, Venezuela via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NETHERLANDS [non]. Why the hell is there a bubble jammer on 9790 in the 0900-1100 UT timeframe? I never noticed this before Feb 17, when I awoke in the middle of the night and tried to listen to RN. I realize this is not targeted to here, but it often has a good signal (at least listenable) for the 0930-1030 hour at least and I normally listen then to the first airing of Media Network or other RN programs on other days. But today, especially annoying because the RN signal was strong and otherwise clear, this damn bubble jammer was dominating the frequency. Surely no jamming nation cares about RN in English! Did some other broadcast suddenly begin on 9790 somewhere else in the world, something that has inspired this jamming, which then has the side effect of screwing up RN? God, I hope this is a one-time frequency punch-up error or something like that on the part of the jammer. If it is not, and continues, I hope that RN will have the sense to change off 9790 to some other 9 MHz frequency for this broadcast right away, and not wait for the next seasonal change. After all, 9790 is not listed in the printed ``On Target`` anyway, having been a change from the original 9820, so there is no real reason for RN not to shift to avoid the jammer. I wonder what the jamming effect is in the target area; I hope that it is bad enough that it forces RN to change frequencies right away (if it continues). (Will Martin, St Louis MO, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NETHERLANDS. On this week`s Media Network, Jonathan Marks remarked that for the new A-00 schedule, starting last Sunday in March, Newsline would become a half-hour programme. This would seem to imply that all the features including Media Network would become less than half an hour, unless the 55-minute blocks are being changed as well (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** OKLAHOMA. Public radio KOSU-FM, 91.7, Stillwater, has a new less neglected website, http://www.kosu.org which according to station news therein was opened Jan 1. The previous site was at an URL I could never remember involving ``okstate`` since Ohio State got to ``osu`` first. Now even offers streaming via Media Player and RealPlayer. Check the program schedule in case KOSU offers anything otherwise unavailable to you or at a more convenient time. BTW, classical KCSC-FM 90.1 Edmond/OKC has now started RP streaming as well; see http://www.kcscfm.com (Glenn Hauser, Enid, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U K O G B A N I. I also heard the edition of "Write On" that Tim Hendel referred to. If I am not mistaken, the person to whom he refers is Penny Turek, who is the Head of the English Network for the World Service. I agree with Tim that what she said was rather hard to understand. But I *think* that the gist of it is as follows. BBCWS is dropping "The Farming World" because it wants to incorporate farming stories into the "One Planet" programme. This in turn is due to the fact that management wants to broaden the listenership of the programme, and thinks that this can best be done by putting it under the "umbrella" of a more general interest programme. My interpretation of that? BBCWS wants to broaden and increase its listenership, and thus is reducing and eliminate some speciality/ niche programmes (e.g. "The Farming World", "Anything Goes", etc.). The thinking is that a series of general interest, broadly based programmes will attract listeners more than a series of discrete, specialised programmes. The CBC has taken the same approach to radio programmes here in Canada. 73, (Peter Bowen, Toronto, Canada swprograms via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U K O G B A N I. From the March edition of BBC On-Air: "April will see the final step in a three year project to organise BBCWS programmes to suit the local time in most parts of the world and end the six monthly programme changes that listeners find so confusing. The process started with the introduction of "The World Today" as a breakfast time news programme for Europe, Africa and Asia. [In April] the rest of the news programmes will be arranged so that wherever you are listening you can get a comprehensive briefing in the early morning, at lunchtime and in the evening. "Science, features, music and all the other programmes that make up the full BBCWS menu will also be easier to find. They will be grouped in two or three hour blocks in the mornings, afternoons and evenings scheduled consistently so that, for instance, the arts programmes are always at the same times across the week. There will be some newcomers and some programmes dealing with similar topics will be amalgamated to cover a broader range. Overall the aim is to make sure that the maximum number of people get the chance to hear everything the BBCWS has to offer at the right time of day." Details will be available in the April "On-Air" which will be mailed to subscribers on March 8. (John Figliozzi, swprograms via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U S A. WBCQ`s new pair of Saturday night music shows are apparently an hour later than given in DXLD 00-25, according to the TimTron substituting for Allan Weiner Worldwide UT Sat Feb 19 at 0100. At 10-11 pm EST (UT Sun 0300-0400), Doctor X with Hear Now; at 11 pm-midnight (UT Sun 0400-0500) Bitter Sweet with Le Bon Bon Club. Both are supposed to feature ``independent music, and interviews``, on WBCQ-1 7415. Also said the the 5 pm to 2 am block (weeknights only? 2200-0700 UT) MAY have been sold on WBCQ-2 which still plans to start 9340-CUSB Feb 21 at 1300, for M-F 1300-2200 religious broadcasts. Allan and Elayne are on vacation near Melbourne, Florida, escaping the minus 20 temps at WBCQ (notes by Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) [Later: Dr X confirmed starting at 0300] ** U S A [and non]. The Voice of America is trying to cope with the coming loss of 51 broadcasting jobs, the result of a review of VOA language services by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the highest authority of U.S. international broadcasting. The scheduled broadcasts of nine VOA European language services will be eliminated or reduced on March 26th, the weekend Europe changes to summer time. Some of the VOA European services will become multimedia Internet and affiliate feed services. I hope to have some details about that next week. Reductions and changes to VOA East Asian language services will take place April second, the weekend of our change to daylight savings, or summer, time here in the United States. I will list all of the East Asia and European language service changes in the script for today's program at the Communications World web site. [See below.] To give you an idea of how severe these cuts are, of the 59 broadcasting positions in the VOA Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Slovene services, only fifteen will remain in a new, combined, multimedia unit. VOA Polish will be reduced from fifteen to three staff members, VOA Hungarian from fourteen to three. Mind you, Radio Free Europe already closed its Polish and Hungarian services, so the entirety of U.S. international broadcasting in the two languages will be three broadcasters each. The Broadcasting Board's language review was guided largely by audience research data. As the domestic media in a target country become freer and more diverse, the incentive to tune to foreign broadcasts is much reduced, and audience numbers plummet. This, apparently, is what has happened in six formerly communist countries of Europe. [Some affected VOA employees have set up a web site protesting the reductions: http://members.aol.com/savevoa/index.html ] [not .htm] Amid these cuts, one VOA language service is expanding. VOA Uzbek, which was 1500-1530 daily and 1530-1545 Saturday and Sunday only, changes to 15 to 1545 daily as of Monday. The frequencies are 9745 via Kavala and 11740 and 11850 via Morocco. Democracy and press freedom have not flourished in Uzbekistan. U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin described the January ninth presidential elections in Uzbekistan as "neither free nor fair." U.S. funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague, continues broadcasting four hours per day in Uzbek. All U.S. broadcasts in the language are transmitted on shortwave as rebroadcasting opportunities to not presently exist in Uzbekistan. RFE/RL is also required by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to reduce some of its services as a result of BBG language review. RFE/RL has not yet made a statement about cuts, but a memo distributed last week to VOA employees about the reductions included the information that RFE/RL will reduce its output in Bulgarian, Romanian, and Serbo-Croatian, convert its Estonian from a feed service to an Internet service, and end its medium wave service in Slovakia. Indeed the Slovak newspaper Sme, via BBC Monitoring, reported that the RFE medium wave frequency in Slovakia, 1287 kilohertz, will be available in June. At RFE/RL, attention continues to be focused on the fate of that station's correspondent Andrei Babitsky. Mr. Babitsky, a Russian citizen, reported on the war in Chechnya until he disappeared on January 15th. On January 28th, Russia said he was traded to the Chechen rebels for three Russian prisoners of war. Since then, he has not been in contact with his wife or colleagues at RFE/RL. On Tuesday, RFE/RL president Thomas Dine said he will support efforts of Mr. Babitsky's wife to press the Russian government to provide information about the reporter's whereabouts. And this via BBC Monitoring: On Thursday, an aide to Russian acting president Valdimir Putin, interviewed in a Russian newpaper, said that RFE/RL has been exploiting the Babitsky case to raise the station's profile. [See the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty web site for updates on the Babitsky story.] The following VOA language cuts are to be effective with the European Time Change Sunday, March 26, 2000, Daily u.o.s.: CANCEL Polish 0500-0545 UTC CANCEL Polish 2200-2300 UTC CANCEL Hungarian 1400-1415 UTC CANCEL Hungarian 1500-1515 UTC CANCEL Hungarian 1600-1615 UTC CANCEL Hungarian 2000-2030 UTC CANCEL Czech 2000-2030 UTC CANCEL Czech 0430-0500 UTC CANCEL Latvian 1530-1545 UTC M-F CANCEL Latvian 0445-0500 UTC M-F CANCEL Lithuanian 0400-0415 UTC M-F CANCEL Slovene 1730-1745 UTC M-F CANCEL Albanian 1400-1415 UTC CANCEL Croatian 1830-1900 UTC CANCEL Serbian 0430-0500 UTC The following program changes are to be effective with the Eastern Time Change Sunday, April 2, 2000: CANCEL Khmer 1430-1500 UTC Daily CANCEL Lao 1300-1330 UTC Daily CANCEL Burmese 1200-1230 UTC Daily CANCEL Vietnamese 1230-1300 UTC Daily INSERT Burmese 1430-1500 UTC Daily INSERT Bangkok MW for Vietnamese 1300-1330 UTC Daily (cancelled from Lao 1300-1330 UTC above) INSERT Bangkok MW for Burmese 1430-1500 UTC Daily (cancelled from Khmer 1430-1500 UTC above) (Kim Elliott, VOA COMMUNICATIONS WORLD Feb 19 via John Norfolk, OKCOK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U S A. Answering my question about Sunday 1200-1400 on AFN: Tom Joyner: ABC syndicated radio show.. urban.. real feed also.. goradio.com has all the abc stations and shows in Real Audio. Was the fly jock.. did mornings in Dallas.. flew to Chicago did afternoons.. several years back.. mainly located in Dallas. (Lou Josephs, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** VENEZUELA: Esta es la lista de emisoras venezolanas que operan en onda corta para el mes de Febrero del 2000 según frecuencias y horarios UTC: 4830 Khz Radio Táchira, San Cristóbal, Edo. TáChira. (10 Kws.). 10:00 a 14:00 UTC y 21:00 a - 04:00 UTC. Confirma con QSL. 4940 KHz Radio Valera, Valera, Edo. Trujillo. - (1 Kw.) Emite irregularmente. 4940 KHz Radio Amazonas, Puerto Ayacucho, Edo. Amazonas. (1 Kw.). 09:00 a 04:00 UTC. 4980 KHz Radio Ecos del Torbes, San Cristobal, - Edo. Tachira. (10 Kws.) 09:00 a 04:00 UTC. Confirma con QSL. 5000 KHz Estación YVTO Observatorio Naval Cagigal, Caracas. Estación Utilitaria: Hora Legal de Venezuela. (1 Kw.) Confirma con QSL. 9540 KHz Radio Nacional de Venezuela, Antena Internacional, Caracas. (50 Kws.) Emisiones de una - 1 hora en español en el siguiente esquema: 11:00; 14:00; 18:00; 21:00; 00:00 y 03:00 UTC. Confirma - con QSL. 9640 KHz Radio Ecos del Torbes. 12:00 hasta las 22:00 UTC para evitar interferencias de emisoras - internacionales. (10 Kws.). (Banda Tropical, Club Diexistas de la Amistad, Venezuela, via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ###