In a year during which most international broadcasters continued to experience financial pressures, the new media, and particularly the Internet, offered increasing opportunities for stations to reach new consumers of their products. Around the world, new digital radio and TV services came on air or were announced for 1998. And digital technology could also hold the key to ensuring the longer-term future of international shortwave broadcasting. Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring's Foreign Media Unit has this roundup of the year:

Although financial pressures continued to weigh heavily on international broadcasters this year, many of them seized the opportunities offered by the new media to develop or extend their presence on the Internet.

Broadcasters now see the Net as a valuable extra resource allowing them to reach new consumers of their products. Most international broadcasters agree, however, that shortwave will continue to be their main medium of propagation - but for how long?

International broadcasters

BBC World Service continued to seek new ways of reaching audiences in addition to shortwave. It signed agreements on local rebroadcasting on FM in countries including Jordan, Qatar, Uganda, Kenya.

The potential threat to international broadcasters who rely on local rebroadcasting was illustrated in March when Albania cut off FM relays of BBC and Voice of America (VOA) programmes - forcing both stations to add extra mediumwave and shortwave transmissions - and again in December, when the authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo briefly banned local FM stations from relaying BBC, VOA and Radio France Internationale programmes.

In Africa, in what may be the start of a new trend by governments to try to tighten control over their domestic media, relays of foreign radio or TV broadcasters were banned in several countries, among them Swaziland, Zambia and Burkina Faso.

The BBC launched its News Online service on the Internet, providing the text of World Service news stories as well as audio content of World Service output, including a five-minute news bulletin in English updated every hour.

In the UK itself, the BBC announced three new TV channels - BBC News 24 (already available in two million homes with cable and during the night on terrestrial BBC1), BBC Choice and BBC Learning - with a link to interactive and online services to support those programmes.

The BBC's package of new, free-to-air digital services will supplement its existing analogue channels, and will be available through satellite, cable and terrestrial distribution. The BBC also entered into a joint venture offering several additional commercial channels.

Meanwhile, both BSkyB and British Digital Broadcasting are planning to launch multichannel digital TV services, by satellite and terrestrially respectively.

Within a year, consumers in the UK should have a choice of several hundred digital channels, most of them funded by subscription and advertising revenues. The BBC will spend almost one billion pounds in the next five years on developing digital broadcasting, but BBC governors say in the corporation's annual report that "the commercial tail will not be allowed to wag the public service dog".

The UK Radio Authority, meanwhile, confirmed the timetable for digital commercial radio, intended to bring these new services on air by 1999.

Plans were announced to move the Voice of America (VOA) and its fellow broadcasters Worldnet TV and Radio/TV Marti - the latter directed at listeners and viewers in Cuba - under the State Department in the planned integration of US government organizations over the next few years.

As part of the US pledge of more support for broadcasts to restricted societies such as China and Iran, Congress gave an extra 50m dollars to boost radio broadcasts to China and North Korea, with most of the money going to the US surrogate broadcaster Radio Free Asia.

There were proposals in Congress that "Radio Free Iran" and "Radio Free Africa" services be set up, modelled on Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - but VOA's head does not believe there is a need for such services, saying its current services already meet those needs.

In October VOA started an Internet e-mail news service to subscribers in China. VOA sees this as an attractive new medium for the international dissemination of news, because in its view e-mail has become so important for domestic and international commerce that no government would jeopardize trade by blocking Internet e-mail services.

Radio Free Asia itself added broadcasts to Burma, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos and Cambodia during the year, and reported jamming of its Vietnamese and Chinese services.

Radio France Internationale in January dropped most of its shortwave French broadcasts to Europe. France's TV push into the Arab world suffered a setback when Canal France International, a programming bank of French TV programmes, was thrown off Arabsat after an erotic film was inadvertently transmitted on CFI's Arabsat channel.

Deutsche Welle faced budget cuts of ten million Deutschmarks, but its programme budget for radio and TV was nevertheless increased. In April, Deutsche Welle revamped its English output, but it will drop radio broadcasts in five European languages in January 1998.

Lack of funds forced Voice of Russia, the external broadcaster, to cut Russian-language transmissions from 18 hours a day to 10 hours. In Russia itself, a presidential decree merged the Mayak and Yunost stations into one state-owned station, retaining the name Mayak. State-owned radio stations faced drastic budget cuts, forcing them to cut programming.

Radio Australia was saved from total closure, which had been feared at one stage, but the cabinet cut funding by more than half, and three language services as well as the Darwin transmitter site were silenced.

Radio Canada International was more fortunate. After facing total closure a year ago, it was promised more money by the Canadian government.

And at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), management consultants recommended sweeping staff cuts and reduced programming; 1,400 jobs went, with SABC Radio particularly hit by departure of experienced journalists and producers.

Broadcasting and politics

In Asia and the Middle East, governments showed growing concern about the use of the Internet by dissidents. In the words of Amnesty International's Asia director, some Asian countries are trying to exploit the new technology, while limiting the political and social consequences.

Lebanon closed several private radio and TV stations, and began to censor news and political programmes intended for satellite TV transmission by Lebanese broadcasters. Iraq and Syria stopped hostile radio broadcasts against each other as political and trade relations improved.

Iran officially launched international satellite TV broadcasts in December, to coincide with a global Islamic summit in Tehran. To spice up radio programmes for listeners inside Iran itself, Youth Radio was launched in February "to meet the intellectual and cultural needs of younger listeners".

In Iraq, a weekly published by President Saddam Hussein's son Uday surprised readers by advocating the lifting of curbs on satellite dishes and Internet access. And Arab entrepreneurs based in London launched an Arabic-language satellite TV station to the Middle East, saying it would be independent of funding or influence by any Arab government.

Africa saw a proliferation of private radio and TV as governments deregulated or announced their intention to do so. Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe all talked about licensing private broadcasters in the future, although actual progress on this front was slow. The use of shortwave for clandestine broadcasts saw new opposition stations begin broadcasting against the governments of Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, among others.

In Russia, large industrial conglomerates such as Gazprom and Lukoil extended their print and broadcasting interests and consolidated their media empires. A new station with aspirations to become a national network, TV-Centre, was launched as a vehicle for the presidential ambitions of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov in the elections in 2000. Russia, where all TV was state-controlled six years ago, now has at least six quasi-national TV networks.

In Eastern and Central Europe, as media privatization continued, several new privately-owned commercial TV stations were launched. Bosnia saw a continuing struggle over control of Bosnian Serb TV transmitters between hardline Bosnian Serbs and NATO-led forces who accused them of broadcasting inflammatory material in violation of the Dayton peace agreement. Washington sent three specially equipped aircraft to stand by in Italy to jam Bosnian Serb TV if necessary.

Coming up in 1998

Several broadcasters across Europe already have Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) services up and running, and receivers went on display at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin in August - the first sets were digital car radios. DAB receivers should be in the shops in Europe around the summer of 1998.

The first test firing of a rocket in Boeing's Sea Launch project to put broadcast satellites into orbit is due in June 1998. The plan is to launch the satellites from a semi-submersible, self-propelled, remote controlled rocket launch platform in the Pacific, on the Equator near Hawaii.

The project, which has World Bank funding, also involves firms from Russia, Ukraine and Norway.

Mid-1998 should see the launch of the first satellite for WorldSpace, the Washington-based company which plans to deliver digital audio broadcasts, in the first instance to Africa.

WorldSpace said in March it had raised almost 1bn dollars to fund the project, intended eventually to bring digital radio broadcasts by satellite to a potential audience of more than 4.5bn people in the developing world.

And in the longer term, several international broadcasters are cooperating within the Digital Radio Mondiale consortium to develop a single world standard for the use of digital technology in international shortwave broadcasting - a solution which would retain their global reach while achieving great improvements in audibility.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©