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Global Brief
The latest news from the international broadcasting industry
Iraq and the Middle East round-up
An extensive survey of the exceptional international broadcasting activity over the war in Iraq
is in articles elsewhere in this issue. Here are some other developments in brief:
In advance of the start of the war, the chairman of America’s
Broadcasting Board of Governors
,
Kenneth Tomlinson, was in no doubt recently that the controversial VOA introductions of
Radio
Sawa
(Arabic, on local air) and
Radio Farda
(Persian equivalent), for mainly young audiences, had
proved their worth in terms of “public diplomacy”. Two years ago, he claimed, few in the Arabic
world would have heard news about the Iraq controversy, except on “scratchy” short wave.
“Today,” said Tomlinson “the situation is very different. Thanks to the creation of Radio Sawa,
millions of people in theArab world - and most notably the people of Iraq - heard simultaneous
translations of the Secretary’s case broadcast live, with later programmes that re-examined the
evidence supporting America’s case against Saddam Hussein”.
Tomlinson also noted that theUS budget nowprovided for
anArabic-language television network
in the Middle East. “With the same spirit that built Sawa,” said Tomlinson, “we are hard at work
hoping to makeArabic television a reality as soon as possible.” During the conflict, President Bush
called for extra funding for the channel, which was expected to be in operation by the end of 2003.
But in
American international radio broadcasting
on medium and short wave, the top priority
being the war on terrorism, there had to be balancing cutbacks and the budget planned an end
to most Voice ofAmerica (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) broadcasting
to the democracies of Eastern Europe where free speech is practised and where the process of
joining the NATO alliance is under way.
The proposed 2004 US budget calls for a reduction in funding for
AIBmember Prague-based
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
causing the layoff of 46 people out of a total of
about 600 RFE/RL employees in the Czech Republic. RFE/RL will cease to broadcast in
Slovenian, Latvian, Estonian, Croatian and Bulgarian. VOA will cease to broadcast in Czech,
among other languages.
With nearly a quarter of million US and UK forces gathering in the Gulf, AIB member
VT
Merlin
began distributing programming for British troops in the region, and British PrimeMinister
Tony Blair, who has been to enormous
trouble to get his point of view across to the
public onUKTV, took part in a youth forum
about Iraq on
MTV Networks Europe
,
which also aired on MTV channels in
Australia, the Middle East, Asia, Latin
America and theUS, to a total of 300million
homes worldwide. However, the UK’s
Broadcast
trade magazine reported that the
event’s ratings fell from 42,000 to 13,000
viewers during the one hour show. MTV
said that the show was repeated twice and
had an overall reach of 500,000 people.
The Al-Jazeera
Satellite Channel was
ready to launch a fully-fledged English
language service. Aspokesman denied that
opening the service would be deliberately
timed to coincide with the outbreak of was.
He said: “However, we are bound by our
duty towards our viewers to enhance our
service as and when we can. Every news
organization is justified in placing its assets
and resources at a place where news would
be made, even if in this case, regrettably, it
would be a war,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s income rapidly increased at the start of the IraqWar, doubling its European subscriber
base. “We had 4 million subscribers in Europe and I would estimate we have added another 4
million over the last week,” said Alan Marmion, al-Jazeera’s media consultant in an interview
at the end of March.
The Arabic-language television network was banned from airing live market reports from the
Austrian international radio to end
The days of
Radio Austria International
appear to be numbered. State budget changes
mean that the central broadcasting
organisation, the ORF, had to decide without
reference to government whether or not to
have an international service. In early April
the following announcement was posted on
ROI’s web site
):
Effective 1 July, 2003, ROI, the international
service of the ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting
Corporation, will have a new structure. In
future, the ORF’s domestic radio station
“Österreich 1” - the most successful cultural
broadcaster in Europe - will be broadcast on
short-wave. The programme mixture, consisting
of information, cultural features, music,
literature, education, science and religion, has
found wide acceptance among Austrian
listeners and will thus be available to Austrian
expatriates and a global listening audience
interested in Austria. In addition, there are
plans to offer programming in English, beyond
the extent currently offered by Österreich 1
programme.
Programming in French and German will be
discontinued from July 1
st
.
Nevertheless, we are convinced that, through
this re-structuring programme, the ORF will
continue to offer interesting programmes on
short-wave.
There will be no government help with
finance, and there may not be enough will
from the central ORF broadcaster to provide
a dedicated foreign service. As ROI’s editor-
in-chief Michael Kerbler wrote sadly and
simply to the AIB “It is a pity”.
Afghanistan radio
BBC World Service
is Afghanistan’s favourite
radio station. And the BBC reported that in
Afghanistan, the first country to emerge more
or less democratised from the US “war on
terrorism” an unprecedented 82 per cent of
Afghans surveyed in the capital Kabul listen
to BBC World Service broadcasts in Persian
and Pashto every week.
AIB Member RFE/RL
has celebrated the first
anniversary of broadcasts to Afghanistan. The
station broadcasts to Afghanistan in the
Pashto and Dari languages 12 hours a day,
compared to the original three hours a day.
According to RFE/RL’s data, about 5.8m
people listen to the Afghan broadcasts. The
station now has its office in Kabul and
correspondents in eight other towns.
Iranian TV launches
Test transmissions of a new Iranian satellite
TV service called
“Al-Alam”
started. The
director-general of the network said that Al-
Alam is an international news network and
its programmes will be broadcast in English
and Arabic to North America, Asia and the
Asia-Pacific regions via Hotbird 3, Arabsat
and Asiasat satellites from 2030 to 1500 GMT.
He said that the objective of launching this
network was to interconnect the Islamic world
and to disseminate news among them, not
to propagate the policies of the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the
London studio of MTV Networks Europe
