Recordings that give an idea of the sounds aired can be found in the Infinity News article and on Wikipedia Source
Launched in 1973 at the height of the Cold War, The Buzzer (as it has been nicknamed by radio amateurs and listeners) is a ghost radio station that has been broadcasting bizarre transmissions non-stop on 4625 kHz ever since. It broadcasts a sonar-like sound, interspersed with pauses, the purpose of which is not known; sometimes short voice messages in Russian are broadcast. Over the years, the community of radio amateurs and listening enthusiasts has monitored the transmissions and found technical flaws, such as when in 2010 the transmissions were interrupted for a day and two days later voices were heard in the background, as if a microphone had been left open. The Infinity News article reconstructs the history of “The Buzzer”, while other details can be found on Wikipedia.
The Dutch newspaper RedTech Tribe devotes an article to the problems of airwaves planning in Malawi, reporting several statements by operators Source
The Malawi government will review the airwaves planning that the African country’s communications regulator had initiated in 2019 to address problems generated by channel saturation. The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) had tasked the UK-based Casitel, an independent consultancy, with optimising the use of frequenciesto allow new stations to open (see our article here). But some radio stations have complained, claiming that switching on new secondary installations to reduce the power of the main one has, on the contrary, generated disturbances. Such as Radio Islam, which by reducing its power from 500 to 200 W is now suffering interference from Radio Maria on 89.9 operating in the Dedza district, which transmits on the same frequency in the Mangochi district. Joy Radio, on the other hand, is complaining about the increased cost of recalibrating its transmitter in order to change frequency.
Cuba Periodistas’ article reconstructs the history of Cuban radio broadcasting and famous voices Source
The voice-over, typical of the Cuban announcer, has become a reference model in Latin America, where it has imposed itself thanks to the professionalism and the many radio stations with an international vocation and especially the programs broadcast on short waves by Radio Habana Cuba. “The word “, writes Jorge Rivas Rodriguez in Cuba Periodistas, “is one of the professions that most touches the cultural, educational, ideological and informative formation of Cubans, has the magic of persuasion, the power to stimulate feelings and emotions through the domain of the word that has become a watermark for our ears”. The announcers, who celebrated their national day in December, are hundreds of professionals from national TV and regional offices, employed in the country’s nearly one hundred stations or working on Radio Habana Cuba‘s international programs.
The service of the periodical elplural.com contains more details on the contrasts between workers and the regional government Source
It’s been months of unrest for workers at RTVA-Canal Sur, Andalusia’s public radio and television station. At the end of November 2020, 400 workers had signed a manifesto against the budget cuts decided by the regional government. To support his argument, the president of the Andalusian junta Juanma Moreno Bonilla had stated several times in interviews that regional television was expensive. But he was defeated by a recent study by the University of Santiago de Compostela, carried out in collaboration with the universities of Valencia, Malaga, Castilla-La Mancha, Barcelona, Madrid, Vigo, Carlos III of Madrid and A Coruña. The report, “Current Panorama and Trends in Public Radio Television in Europe”, shows that the cost for Andalusian citizens is only 16.16 EUR per year, the lowest in Europe. As a whole, Spanish public TV costs citizens 44 EUR per year compared to 160 EUR in Denmark and 113 EUR in the UK.
MediaSpecs analyzes in detail the problems of independent Belgian radio stations. Source
RadioZ, the federation that brings together some 30 independent stations from the Walloon region and Brussels, has appealed to the authoritiesnot to halve funding for the transition to digital radio and to simplify procedures. Independent radio stations are a resource for the media sector: they provide information, support culture and municipal administrations, but above all they are a breeding ground for talent that can then aspire to work in more professional broadcasters. A training job that costs the state nothing, because it does not receive subsidies as, for example, in France. On the contrary, RadioZ denounces the fact that this year several radio associations were refused the annual FACR (Fund for Radio Creation) subsidy due to a lack of resources, used to finance the transition to DAB, which, however, only benefits private networks and the public broadcaster RTBF, which have been broadcasting in digital for more than a year.
In a report by El Observador magazine, more details on the rescue of the broadcaster Source
It would have switched off its transmitter on 31 December 2020, abandoning 580 kHz on medium waves. But the station made famous by its music programming focusing on tango, folklore and typical Uruguayan music continues to transmit. The decision by the owners, who wanted to continue on the web, was overruled by Pablo da Silveira, Minister of Education and Culture, who announced that the government would intervene to temporarily run the station to allow negotiations to take place with potential buyers, who have already come forward. Clarín broadcasts daily about 100 songs by Carlos Gardel, one of the most important interpreters of River Plate and Latin American song. The repertoire is limited to 488 recordings of the highest technical quality so that the same song can be heard every five days.
The magazine Newsline reported about the message displayed by Samsung smartphone to their owners before downloading the new update that would have disabled the FM radio reception Source
A boomerang effect has been caused by the governmentdecree that, in order to promote the development of DAB radio, requires radio manufacturers to stop selling devices in 2021 if they were not equipped with a digital receiver. This includes smartphones equipped with an FM tuner. Samsung (which has almost 40% of the market) has circumvented the regulatory requirement by deactivating the FM receiver with a change to its operating system. Moreover, the legislation (which applies only in Italy) would have required manufacturers to fit a digital receiver and antenna only to devices sold in Italy.
While this may seem a necessary action for newly sold devices, it seems pretty strange that it is applied to devices that have been sold before the law came into effect.
Economía digital’s article analyses in detail the situation of the audience crisis of the public broadcaster. Source
Radio Nacional de Espana has lost 190,000 listeners in just a few months, and now has around one million. It is an unprecedented collapse that emerged from the General Media Study (EGM) audience survey at the end of the third round of surveys. Compared to the first quarter (the survey was suspended in the second quarter due to the pandemic), the drop was 15%. And the drop does not only affect the flagship network, but also (although to a lesser extent) the other public networks.
An old article in the newspaper Vozpopuli also spoke of the tense atmosphere created in February in the public broadcasting networks by the redundancy campaign. Source
Economía digital (Spain’s fifth largest news group, a native of the network) points the finger at the redundancies, resignations and new appointments made this year in the TV and radio networks. Changes made by Rosa María Mateo (RNE’s interim sole director) and Enric Hernández (news director) have triggered a reaction from the trade unions.
The graph shows the contacts of the three most followed networks on the internet: while COPE is 600,000 users ahead of SER, the network in third place, Onda Cero, has almost 9 million fewer contacts. Source
SER (+241,000) and, marginally, COPE (+20,000) gained. COPE is also the first in terms of digital audience: the Cadena de Ondas Populares Espanolas (also owner of Cadena 100, Rock FM and Megastar FM brands), has exceeded twelve million unique users, outstripping rival SER by over 600,000 followers.
The report in the Argentine daily La Nación points out that Disney’s radio station has helped launch a number of celebrities, including Selena Gomez (pictured). Source
In the first quarter of 2021, the Walt Disney Company will close Radio Disney and Radio Disney Country. Opened in 1995, the station owned 23 medium-wave stations to reach a large audience of young people and teenagers, but with the spread of streaming in 2014 most of the stations (22) had been sold and the signal was being broadcast digitally, on satellite and in some HD Radio subchannels. Radio Disney Country, a secondary streaming brand launched in the autumn of 2015, was no longer on AM as of 2017 because the station broadcasting it, 1110 KDIS in Pasadena (Los Angeles) had changed its name and format, becoming KRDC. The end of broadcasting is also caused by the uncertainties of the pandemic about the future of live music events. Thirty-six employees (full-time and part-time staff) will lose their jobs and the Pasadena station will be sold off. The closuredoes not affect Radio Disney in Latin America.
The image shows the sign installed on 5 October 2020 announcing the start of work on the site that will host a new 100 kW medium wave digital DRM transmitter at Sariab Road (Quetta) Source
The PBC (Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation) has asked the government to make it compulsory for cars to be equipped with digital receivers in the next five-year plan for the automobile industry. For some time now, public radio and television have been broadcasting using the DRM digital standard in the AM and FM bands. DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), unlike DAB (which uses VHF channels in band III), is a digital broadcasting system applicable to all frequencies, from the HF bands (LW, MW, SW) to VHF (bands I, II, the FM band, and band III). And it foresees investments to complete the digital migration in the next five to seven years, to improve audio quality (claimed to be equal to that of a CD) and energy efficiency.
