The CNN report was illustrated with a work by Michelle Ortiz inspired by illegal immigration. Accessing the article, which offers further details, you are greeted by a video with a short interview with the artist Source
In order to stem the pressure of migrants on the Mexican border, the USA is also using radio advertising. A State Department spokesman told CNN that more than 30,000 advertisements are aired each month on Central American stations. The aim is to counter the misinformation spread by traffickers and the idea that President Joe Biden is softer on immigration. Up until the spring, 28,000 were broadcast, but this number has risen to over 30,000 due to the ‘discounts’ offered by the broadcasters on the ‘packages’ purchased by the American administration. The radio medium was chosen to reach the largest number of people, and religious leaders and public figures were also involved in the production of the releases. The monthly budget is $600,000. The announcements, broadcast in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, are in Spanish and five indigenous languages and last 40 seconds.
The Afghan Ministry of Information reported that four television stations and 11 broadcasters had been seized at Laskhar Gat, including the BBC World Service, which operates on 89.2 MHz Source
The American military disengagement has left the field open to the Taliban, who have resumed their ground offensive in three large cities in the south and west of the country: Herat, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar. In the course of the advance, the terrorists occupy the radio stations, using some of them to rebroadcast their radio signal, and intimidate the others, forcing them to switch off.
In the tweet by Chris Greenway of BBC Monitoring (which echoes that of Zahid Khan, an Afghan activist and journalist), the frequencies that are being retransmitted by Radio Voice of Sharia and the deactivation of the BBC World Service, which operated in the city on 89.2 MHz, are indicated Source
As happened on 2 August 2021 in Lashkar Gah, a city of 200,000 inhabitants in the south of the country, capital of the province of Helmand, which has been under attack for days by the Taliban, who now control several neighbourhoods. The Taliban started to broadcast Radio Voice of Sharia (Shariat Ghag) on 95.0 and 105.2 MHz of the former state radio station and switched off all other stations.
In a report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, freelance journalist Raksha Kumar examined the situation of the Afghan media Source
Before the American intervention, when the Islamic State controlled 90% of the country, there was only one radio station controlled by the Taliban, which broadcast religious messages. In the last twenty years, however, information has opened up to pluralism: television stations, 170 radio stations and over 100 newspapers have been set up. An interesting report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism takes stock of the situation. More than 50% of the population (a total of 38 million) is under the age of 19, and around 6.5 million Afghans are active on social networks.
The former director of Radio Panamá, Edwin Cabrera, in an interview with La Prensa, talks about the sale of the station and the ongoing tug-of-war with the owners Source
We reported (March 2021) on the sale of several foreign holdings by the Prisa group (see here). The company, which is present in 24 countries, owns brands such as Santillana (prints 106.5 million books that reach 34 million students in Latin America every year), El País (Spain’s largest daily newspaper), Los40 (founded in 1966 as a programme of Cadena Ser, since 1979 a network in Spain, it is present in several Latin American countries), and Cadena Ser (the radio network listened to by four out of ten Spaniards).
In Central America, the elimination of the editorial staff ofRadio Panamá (27 people, including the staff of Los40) and the consequent suspension of broadcasting is not going unnoticed. The former director of information services Edwin Cabrera told the Panamanian newspaper La Prensa that the owners had wanted to get rid of the journalists for some time and had challenged the dismissal. He doubts the reasons for the opaque operation and speculates that behind the economic issues there may be an exchange of favours with political power to silence an uncomfortable voice.
Roger Schawinski, a radio entrepreneur and director of Zurich-based Radio 1 considers the switch-off to be premature and contrary to the freedom of reception guaranteed by the Law on Radio and Television. Source
More than 60,000 Swiss citizens have signed a petition to hold a referendum to block the switch-off of FM radio channels, scheduled to start in 2022. Switzerland was following in the footsteps of Norway, which was the first country to choose to migrate to Dab in 2017 (although there are currently more than 100 FM radio stations and 552 transmitters on air in the Scandinavian country). The initiative’s promoters cite an article published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung by media expert Urs Saxer, which states that SRG SSR, as a public service, has a clear mandate to guarantee a basic service to the entire population, and switching off FM would have no legal basis. The switchover is planned to take place in two stages: the public broadcaster SRG SSR will switch off its transmitters in August 2022, while the private broadcasters will have time until January 2023. According to a survey conducted last year by the Swiss branch of the market research institute GFK, only 29% of Swiss listen to terrestrial radio (FM and/or DAB) and only 13% of the Confederation’s citizens use analogue FM radioonly.
Some pictures of the devastation caused by the flames at some of the sites in Punta Badde Urbara Source
A fire that broke out on Friday 23 July 2021 in the province of Oristano devastated Punta Badde Urbara, one of the island’s nerve centres, interrupting many radio and television signals broadcast in central and northern Sardinia. Audio and video links to important stations such as Monte Limbara, Monte Ortobene, Monte Oro and many secondary stations departed from the mountain in the Oristano area, with the result that many stations were mute and the TV signals were absent. The most difficult situation occurred on Saturday evening, when even the RAI signals disappeared for a few hours, while private broadcasters had to wait until Monday morning to return to normal.
Satellite images posted on the Radio Macomer Centrale website show the extent of the fire, which has been described as the worst on the island in 100 years Source
As the images from the site and satellite analysis show, the entire Badde Urbara broadcasting centre was surrounded by flames, with the buildings outside closest to the vegetation having the worst of it. The problems were probably also exacerbated by damage to the power lines, and the emergency generators held out until they ran out of fuel. For the radio stations, the interruptions lasted only a few minutes. On Sunday, Radio 105’s 99.30 MHz, Rai GR Parlamento’s 106.70 MHz, Radio Planargia’s 88.60 MHz and Radio Barbagia’s 99.90 MHz were occasionally without a signal.
Images posted on Twitter by the fire brigade show the situation in Santo Lussurgiu, the municipality where the Punta Badde Urbara transmission centre is located (960 m above sea level) Source
The television situation is more critical, with more consistent interruptions: first to disappear Saturday evening, along with the mux1 of RAI, were the channels hosted on the multiplex Videolina. On Sunday, several broadcasters throughout central and northern Sardinia disappeared: among them Canale 9, Telesardegna, Paramount, Real Time, RTL 102.5, Giallo, K2, Frisbee, Boing Plus, Super!, Spike, DMax, HGTV, Motor Trend, Supertennis, Alma TV, VH1, Deejay TV and Radio Italia TV. The emergency lasted until Monday afternoon.
In the press release published on its website, the San Marino broadcaster does not mention the two radio stations that broadcast from Monte Titano: Radio San Marino (102.7 MHz) and Radio San Marino Classic (103.2 MHz): will these also be broadcast on digital terrestrial TV? Source
RTV San Marino will get frequencies from Raito cover the Italian territory. During a meeting of the board of directors of the Italian public broadcaster, held on June 30, 2021, the proposal to transfer frequencies to the San Marino station was unanimously approved. The general manager of RTV San Marino, Carlo Romeo, recalls that thirty years ago it was the then general manager of Rai Sergio Zavoli who aired this possibility. The agreement between the two governments is now awaited, essential for the decision to become operative. It will probably have to wait until 2023, when, with the passage to DVB T2, Rai’s increased availability of transmissions will allow it to host the San Marino station in its multiplex, thus enabling it to serve the peninsula.
On the Wirtualnemedia website, you can listen to a recording in which the jingles of RM and RMF are compared. Source
The world of radio has accustomed us to the craziest stories. And this one certainly deserves a prominent place. Accomplice technology and probably… a tourist. Wirtualnemedia, a Polish site specializing in media and broadcasting, has discovered that Tunisian broadcaster RM FM had infringed copyright by using jingles from Polish radio station RMF. And in a very detailed report the site interviews an audio producer who explains technically how the infringement took place: the jingles, perfectly identical in melody and singing, are one second shorter, as the final part of the song has been cut to remove the F of RMF, since the Tunisian station is called RM. You can also see that the sound is compressed, a sign that the jingles were recorded from the net or downloaded from YouTube (where they are available) or from the site of the prestigious American production studio that made them.
A few days after the article RM no longer aired jingles
Wirtualnemedia monitoring the audio streamed by RM, and a few days after the article was published, they discovered that the counterfeit jingles were no longer being aired. So it approached the Polish network to see if it had warned the Tunisian station, but the station would not provide details. RMF is Poland’s largest network, with 30.1% of listeners between March and May 2021, according to the Radio Track survey conducted by research institute Kantar.
Radio M’saken RM FM is a station in eastern Tunisia that broadcasts on 99.8 MHz FM from Zeramdine, a town in the governorate of Monastir SourceRMF is based in Krakow and on its website it offers a summer game that has a prize pool of 520,000 zlotys (over 115,000 euros) Source
El País article analyzes the financing model of public television, currently devoid of advertising, and presents the union’s proposals Source
The UGT (Sindicato Unión General de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de España) has formally asked public broadcasting to modify its strategic plan, providing for new measures to plug budget losses. RTVE lost 31.6 million euros in 2020, and by the end of April 2021, the debt had reached 184 million euros. The main demand concerns advertising, which the union is asking to reintroduce, at least in a limited way, also to re-establish competition, today very limited because in fact 95% of the market is controlled by a duopoly. An article published in the economics section of the newspaper El País goes into the details of the proposal, analyzing the similarities with the “French model”, which inspired the financial law of the Spanish government, which provides four channels of financing for public radio and television.
On the website of the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) several pages remind listeners that in July the licence fee must be paid. One of these pages mentions the father of the country, Nelson Mandela, and one of his famous phrases Source
The image and the quotation of the famous phrase “it always seems impossible until it’s done” by Nelson Mandela, hero of the fight against apartheid and first South African president, are not enough to convince public radio and television listeners to pay the fee. The citizens of South Africa do not want to pay the 265 South African Rand: at today’s exchange rate they correspond to little more than 15 Euros, but it must be considered that income is not equally distributed: blacks receive on average less than one-fifth of the salary of a white person.
Difficult situation
The South African, one of the most widely read sites in the country, devoted an article to the SABC’s situation, and calls this attempt to make ends meet “desperate.” Source
So at the beginning of this year the SABC, in a severe budget crisis, expanded the number of subscribers to include all those who could receive streaming programs on laptops, tablets and cell phones. But it has already cashed the stop of DStv, a platform that offers programs via satellite or streaming: executives have refused to charge its subscribers, saying that they cannot act as collectors and that public broadcasting must devise other ways to finance itself.
How are public broadcasting executives elected? A comparison of the procedures adopted by six European countries
The image of the BBC’s London headquarters opens the article by Vozpópuli, ‘independent and liberal digital medium’ Source
In recent months, when the top management of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE) was being renewed, a debate was opened in the country on the mechanisms that govern these choices. An article in the periodical Vozpópuli compared the Spanish situation with that of five other European countries: the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany. In Spain, the president of RTVE is chosen from a shortlist of ten candidates, six of whom are appointed by the Congress of Deputies and four by the Senate.
In Germany, the TV channel ZDF enjoys greater autonomy from political forces and the executive, in order to focus on the professionalism of the management.
