Radio Austria reduces Airtime on Shortwave

For a while, Radio Austria International’s (Radio Österreich International) shortwave service went on air three times a day – in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. By now, it seems, it has fallen behind pre-Ukraine-war airtime, with only one morning broadcast left, from 05:00 to 05:33 UTC.

Mon through Sat
Time UTC (start)	Time UTC (end)	Frequency
05:00	05:33	6155 kHz

I was a bit disappointed of the QSL card I got for my reception report in April 2022, It featured St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and must have been a beautiful card while they didn’t run out of it – what I got was a QSL letter with the photo printed on it. Wouldn’t have been too bad that way either, but how about a verification stamp? The way it was, I might have printed it out of my mailbox just as well.

But I shouldn’t be ungrateful – they still confirm reports at all. Many European broadcasters have stopped doing so.

And if you understand German, you’ll get an excellent morning news edition of twenty to twenty-five minutes, with (or so it seems to me) everything you need to know. Every morning, except Sundays, which is dead-air day.

Radio Austria expands Shortwave Transmissions

Radio Austria expanded its German-language broadcasts on March 1.

The morning program runs from 06:00 to 07:20 UTC from Monday through Friday and from 06:00 to 07:10 on Saturdays and Sundays, on 6155 kHz.

The two newly-added programs run from 11:00 UTC to 12:00 UTC on 13730 kHz (Monday through Sunday) and from 17:00 to 17:25 on 5940 kHz (only Monday through Friday).

It appears that the transmitters work omni-directionally, as Austrian radio says that the programs can be heard all over Europe, including Ukraine.

Their press relase also points out that shortwave remains available for listeners even if mobile-phone networks and other communications don’t work anymore.

Austrian radio press release, march 1, 2022

Update
The German program at noon includes an English-langague news bulletin, from about 11:54 to 11:57 UTC.

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“In a different World”

First of all, don’t worry. The world hasn’t really changed that much, but the above is a quote. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll be in a different world when the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, passes a property tax to finance the rebuilding of our army, the Bundeswehr.

Also, the Chinese foreign minister says that “the cold war has long gone”.

Chinese worries (“Guanchazhe”, Shanghai, Febr 26):
Is the crying man really pro-Kiev,
rather than pro-Russian?
Are the Western media lying again?

But Twitter would be a useless distraction if I didn’t keep an account of what I learn there. So here goes.

February 22	Demonstration in Prague
Thousands of people gather on Prague’s Wenceslas Squareshow their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, Radio Prague, the Czech Republic’s foreign radio station, reports the following day. Ukraine’s ambassador Yevhen Perebyinis thanks them, and says that ” it really means a lot to us because we see that we are not alone.”
–
February 23	“No plans to leave Kiev”
Andreas Umland, a political scientist who has lived in Kiev for about two decades, is currently in Germany, but plans to return to Kiev on Saturday, he says in an interview with Polish foreign radio’s German service, broadcast on February 23. He doesn’t expect an attack on Kiev.
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February 23	“China is watching us”
Latvia’s defense minister Artis Pabriks tells a TV station that “if we weren’t members of NATO and also of the EU, we would definitely be in the positon of Ukraine now – I can guarantee that,” and that “we have nowhere to retreat, because others are watching us. China is watching us.”
–
February 23	“Nixon’s visit changed the world”
China is certainly watching the U.S. China policy. At 22:05 local time, party-affiliated tabloid “Huanqiu Shibao” publishes an editorial titled “Washington must not fall back from Nixon’s diplomatic legacy”, and quotes Nixon himself as referring to his visit, from February 21 to 28, 1972, as “world-changing”. The editorial speaks about “overall stability” in Sino-U.S. relations despites “ups and downs”, about “mutual benefit”, and “double-win”. 此后50年，中美关系虽然历经风雨但保持了总体稳定，成就了两个大国长达半个世纪的互利共赢。.It wasn’t true, “Huanqiu Shibao” argues, that only the USSR,considered an enemy by both at the time, had made Nixon’s initiative possible, as that alone couldn’t explain the comprehensive and rapid development, nor the amazing vitality that kept erupting once the ice between China and the U.S. had been broken. Those “old stubborns” who had “once opposed Nixon” seemed to be coming back to life, “Huanqiu Shibao” deplores. 当年反对尼克松的老顽固们仿佛纷纷复活了，历史和美国兜了一个大圈子。
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February 23	Own nukes for South Korea?
Seven out of ten citizens support the idea, reports South Korea’s foreign radio station KBS World, citing a Hankook Research survey. While tensions around Ukraine are rapidly rising in Europe, North Korea, of course, keeps testing missiles which run as a kind of background noise to South Koreans daily routine.Asked froom where they see the greatest threats to South Korea now, most respondent name North Korea,followed by China, Japan, and the U.S.. Asked which country would be the gravest threat in ten years, 56 percent name China.
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February 24	“Everything suggests that this is a large-scale invasion”
Austrian Radio’s Moscow correspondent states that “everything suggests that this is a large-scale invasion” (“alles deutet auf eine groß angelegte Invasion hin”). Austrian radio’s coverage in general follows this diction.
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February 24	Czech arms industry prepared to supply Ukraine
The Czech Republic’s arms industry is prepared to supply Ukraine with military material if the Czech government makes a decision in favor of that, Radio Prague’s German service quotes Jiří Hynek, chairman of the country’s arms industry association.
–
February 24	“Pleasantries are no strategy”
Christoph Heusgen, a former foreign-policy and security-policy advisor who served Chancellor Merkel from 2005 to 2017, says that while it had been right to keep channels with Moscow open, they had always underestimated Putin’s brutality and unscrupulousness. That’s how Radio Poland’s German service quotes Heusgen in their daily press review.
–
February 24/25	South Korea and Taiwan will join sanctions
Both South Korea and China announce that they will join international sanctions against Russia. South Korea’s foreign ministry says on Febr 24 that “South Korea, as a responsible member of the international community, will support and participate in international efforts, including economic sanctions, aimed at curbing Russia’s encroachment and resolving the situation peacefully.” On February 25, in a speech at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, announces Taiwan’s participation in the sanctions, saying that “Taiwan is ready to do anything that might help achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict”.
–
February 24	Finland and Sweden
“It is important for Finland and Sweden to be involved in the Nato meeting, due to the situation in the Baltic Sea region, for example,” Yleisradio’s (Finland) English website quotes its country’s foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto. He reportedly also says that “we consider it important that Nato continues its open-door policy and that we can apply for membership if we wish.”
–
February 24	Taiwanese citizens in Ukraine
There are still 33 Taiwanese citizens in Ukraine, reports Radio Taiwan International’s German service, despites requests from the Taiwan government to leave the country.
–
February 24/25	Vietnam’s reaction
Vietnam’s foreign radio station’s foreign language programs are focused on the development of a strategic partnership with Singapore where state president Nguyen Xuan Phuc is visiting. There is a notice from a spokesperson of Vietnam’s foreign ministry however, on February 24, suggesting that substantial numbers of Vietnamese citizens are in Ukraine, and offering them help if needed.
–

I’ve left the well-known newsitems (SWIFT cuts, arms supplies to Ukraine from other European countries, Nordstream 2 etc. out because they are well known. Think of this blogpost as a diary entry.

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Related

Sweden’s Donation, FoarP, Febr 27, 2022
No Quadriga for Nobody, July 18, 2011

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China Radio International: And Now, No News

There are basically two kinds of program formats carried by China Radio International (CRI) now: those with, and those without news and current affairs coverage. Regionally, you can (roughly) draw aline between East and West, with only the former still getting CRI news in regional languages.

They still do speak English

The mention of target areas does not imply that there may not be other target areas for certain languages, too. As for Esperanto, for example, I only listened to the broadcast to Europe, but Europe may  not be CRI Esperanto’s only target area.

This list is not at all exhaustive; there are many more CRI language services I haven’t recently listened to.

Language	Target areas	News
Vietnamese	Vietnam	Yes
Indonesian	Indonesia	yes
Malaysian	Malaysia	yes
Japanese	Japan	yes
Filipino	Philippines	yes
Khmer	Cambodia	yes
Bengali	Bengal	yes
Thai	Thailand	yes
Mongolian	Mongolia	yes
Urdu	Pakistan, India, Nepal	yes
Hausa	Niger, Nigeria	yes
Pashto	Afghanistan, Pakistan	yes
Esperanto	Europe	no
Romanian	Romania	no
Italian	Italy	no
Bulgarian	Bulgaria	no
Czech	Czech Republic	no
Polish	Poland	no
Serbian	Serbia & regional	no
Hungarian	Hungary & regional	no
German	Austria & regional	no

Programs without news / current affairs are usually filled up with music. Some language services without news add explanatory announcements to their music programs, but others run completely without spoken words.
Language services that may be considered global ones – Chinese, English, Russian, or Spanish, still have news in their programs, and maybe cultural programs, too, but CRI’s Portuguese service hasn’t.

Esperanto broadcasts a cultural program with lots of talk, but no news or current affairs either.

The mere-music programs may run without day-to-day updates. The genres vary, however. You get some revolutionary opera on frequencies that were used for Serb programs in the past, or rock and pop music on what was once the Czech service.
The replacement for the German service is particularly mean: typical “China restaurant” dining music.
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Related

Program reductions, Nov 25, 2019
CCTV, CRI, CPBS, March 30, 2018
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Useful links

Shortwave Info
Kiwi SDR
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Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Navel-gazing Rogue in the Broadcasting Room

Why, sure …

 

Canada’s parliament declares China’s persecution of Uighurs a “genocide”? Cool, but who in China cares when Canada doesn’t speak to the world, including China, and explains the declaration?

If the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) critics state their case correctly, that’s the state of Canada’s foreign broadcasting. Not only will CBC, reportedly, violate the Broadcasting Act by cutting Radio Canada International (RCI) down further. It would also be sort of privatizing it, by shifting its focus to domestic minority broadcasting, thus competing with private ethnic radio operators – and, according to the “RCI Action Committee” – to newcomers to our country”, “engaging with its target audience, particularly newcomers to Canada”, and making this new content “freely available to interested ethnic community media”.

The idea that publicly-funded foreign broadcasters (or media platforms) should shift their attention to migrant communities at home, at least to some extent, is nothing new. Germany’s Deutsche Welle has been doing this for a number of years now, and so has (it seems to me) Radio Sweden.

But that’s not RCI’s mandate, writes the Action Committee.

CBC’s supervisors appear to be fast asleep, while there is “a rogue elephant in the broadcasting room”, according to Peter Menzies, a former Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) vice chair.

According to the “RCI Action Committee’s” blog on December 4 last year, RCI, after what CBC calls its “modernization”, won’t run its own website any more, and the Spanish, Arabic and Chinese services will be basically closed – cut from three editors each to only one editor per language remaining, to translate content from the CBC and Radio-Canada websites. And the English and French programs, it seems, will cease to exist completely.

Menzies, a signatory to a letter calling on senior government officials to get CBC executives to put their latest plans on hold and give RCI employees a few weeks to come up with an alternative restructuring plan, also gives a short account of Radio Canada International’s history, from the final days of world war 2 to 2012, when RCI’s budget was cut into by 80 percent, two-thirds of staff laid off and RCI ceased shortwave and satellite transmission, becoming internet only.

Will CBC listen to its critics? Not if its supervisors remain silent. In fact, RCI staff has often put up resistance and creativity against budget and program slashes, but never successfully, at least not in the long run.

Radio Canada International has been a shadow of itself since early this century, and it had seen cuts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, too.

Radio Canada International once ran a German service. It was one of the most popular shortwave programs among German listeners both in East and West Germany until it was closed in late 1989 or early 1990. At the time, new language services such as Arabic or Chinese were said to be the reason for terminating the daily half-hour German programs.

Gunter Michelson, one of the Radio Canada International German service’s editors who had left or retired before the department was closed, said in a telephone interview at the time that

This is a strange issue. The German programs’ termination is explained by the launch of broadcasts in Chinese. The idea of a Chinese service in itself is up-to-date and very good. China will, after all, be one of the world’s greatest markets. But the same logic demands that Canada broadcasts in German, to the European-Community, which is going to be the world’s biggest trading block in the foreseeable future, with 340 million consumers and 60 million people within the EC and 80 million in central Europe speak German. You can’t simply ignore them.[…]^*)

Sure thing: you can, just as you can ignore a potential billion-and-a-half Chinese audience. OK – many of them were lost when the shortwave broadcasts from Canada ended, anyway.

Thirty years later, the budget slashes are coming full circle – it’s the Chinese service’s turn to be (nearly) eliminated. To whom is Canada talking when its parliament passes a resolution concerning China?

Probably to itself. Be a human-rights advocate and feel good about it.

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Note

^*) Michelson, August 27, 1989: Das ist eine außerordentlich befremdliche Sache. Begründet wird die Einstellung des deutschsprachigen Programms mit der Aufnahme von Sendungen in Chinesisch. An sich ist die Idee eines chinesischen Dienstes aktuell und sehr gut. China wird ja eines Tages einer der größten Absatzmärkte der Welt sein. Aber die gleiche Logik erfordert auch, dass Kanada auf Deutsch ins EG-Gebiet sendet, das ja in zwei oder drei Jahren mit 340 Millionen Verbrauchern den in absehbarer Zeit größten Wirtschaftsblock der Welt darstellen wird. Und über 60 Millionen Personen im EG-Gebiet, um 80 Millionen in Mitteleuropa, sprechen ja Deutsch. Die kann man nicht einfach ignorieren. […]

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Related

RCI “effectively retired”, April 9, 2012
Advocacy journalism not the problem, Jan 26, 2012
Opinion leaders, May 20, 2011

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Wolf Warrior Diplomacy on Vacation, while Party expects Returns on Investment

Twitter can be fun, but would be a waste of time if all the information you can get passes by without some reflection on it. Learning by repetition. Here goes.

China’s recent diplomacy has been referred to as wolf warrior diplomacy (戰狼外交) in recent months – or in fact for years (as Sweden can tell) -, but it has become a much more frequently used term with the COVID-19 crisis.

As Washington and Beijing traded accusations and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 origins during the first half of 2020, Beijing’s propaganda machine continuously switched gears between angry statements and more or less funny cartoons on “social media” platforms like Twitter, depicting Trump administration officials as dorks or hypocrites. Chinese foreign ministry (FMPRC) spokesman and communications director Zhao Lijian as well as Chinese media outlets like CCTV-English, People’s Daily in English, Xinhua news agency etc. took leading roles in “anti-American” (反美) enunciations.

But wolf warrior diplomacy apparently didn’t lead to results that would have satisfied Beijing after all. On Tuesday (August 4), China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, told an NBC anchor and a wider online public that

The normalization of relations between our two countries and the growth of this relationship over the decades has served the interests of both countries and the world very well. It’s quite clear to all of us are still enjoying the positive outcome, the benefit of this growth of relationship. Nobody can really deny this.

Societal differences should provide opportunities for mutual learning, Cui suggested.

Cui himself didn’t have to make a u-turn to emphasize the “positive outcomes” of Sino-US relations – he had never been a wolf warrior diplomat anyway, and Washington wouldn’t have been the place to test these fruits of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era / Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy anyway. And when he made the essential swipe – there needs to be one in every Chinese representation to Americans these days, to show that the speaker is not afraid of his audience -, he smiled as if he wanted to apologize for what he was saying.

Click picture for video

His boss, foreign minister Wang Yi, didn’t have to turn everything upside down either. But to show that Xi has always been a great supporter of dialogue, he inaugurated a Research Center for the Guiding Role of Xi Jinping’s diplomatic Thought at the FMPRC on July 20.

According to “Radio Free Asia” (apparently not safely verified), fifty-centers have been told to switch their messages from “anti-American” to “double-win” (click picture for details)

Thusly illuminated, foreign minister Wang addressed an online forum of American and Chinese think tanks (including Henry Kissinger and Kevin Rudd, apparently) on July 9, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas in a video conference on July 24 (not without informing his colleague in Berlin that the problems in Chinese-American relations are all created by America), and, most recently, the readers of Communist Party organ “People’s Daily”.

Chances are that US secretary of state Pompeo and his network have struck the right note in communication with Beijing during the past months, and distancing from China could become a bipartisan American policy. However, the Trump administration may not be able to take traditional allies as far along in their cause as they would like to.

Australian foreign minister Marise Payne told a press conference with US secretary of state Michael Pompeo that “we make our own decisions and we use our own language”, and that “the relationship with China is important and we have no intention of injuring it”.

Sydney Morning Herald correspondents wrote on August 1 that Joe Biden, the US Democrats’ presidential nominee, was

expected to be closer to what Australia is trying to do: transition to a multipolar region where Beijing is accommodated but counterbalanced by regional powers including Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam and the US.

At times, Trump and Pompeo’s approach seems to be an attempt to maintain the US as regional hegemon – something Canberra quietly gave up on a few years ago.

[Lowy Institute executive director] Fullilove says in some ways a Biden administration would be tougher on China and may make requests of Australia which are harder to refuse.

The correspondents also pointed out that both Japan and New Zealand, while basically following the US / Australia lines, had kept a rather low profile, thus protecting their trade interests with China.

Germany wasn’t exactly the first country either to throw a gauntlet at Beijing, or to publicly take note of China’s internment policies in East Turkestan, or its breach of international law by imposing its “national security law” on Hong Kong. Berlin’s position was further complicated as Germany’s leadership currently chairs the EU in a rotational arrangement, having to find as much common ground among Beijing-leaning EU member states and more resilient members.

Only when Hong Kong’s government announced a “postponement” of Legislative Council elections by a year, ostensibly because of the special administrative region’s COVID-19 crisis, Germany joined other countries and suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong. On August 3, French foreign ministry sharply criticized Beijing’s “national security law”, and halted ratification of its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, which had been in process since 2017.

A few days earlier, and five days after his conversation with Germany’s foreign minister, Wang Yi had been on the phone with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian,

Austrian public radio ORF‘s China correspondent Josef Dollinger arguably provided one of the more succinct summaries of European policies. Asked on July 29, the morning when the EU governments presented their agreed reaction to Beijing’s Hong Kong policy, if Washington’s chances of isolating Beijing could be successful, he said that conflicts with China could not be painless, and that while

you can ride a tiger gone wild without getting bucked off – difficult as that may be -, you shouldn’t keep shouting “I’ve got him, I’ve got him.”

Man kann zwar auf einem wild gewordenen Tiger reiten, ohne abgeworfen zu werden – auch wenn’s schwierig ist -, aber man sollte dabei nicht ständig rufen, “ich hab’ ihn, ich hab’ ihn”.

In the EU, disappointment about stalling talks on a comprehensive investment treaty with China have likely added to a hardening position.

And while America’s allies have resisted Pompeo’s calls to join them on the warpath, it does appear that China underestimated the impact of its Hong Kong policies, at least in democratic countries.

All the more, Wang Yi himself, too, tries to stick to a script that would paint China as the natural and predetermined victor to emerge from the beginning struggle. Among some double-win promises, he also threatened America with history’s pillar of shame (恥辱柱).

No matter how much, or little, pressure China may feel as a whole, Beijing’s diplomats are having a tough time of it. It is one thing to open a Xi-Jinping shrine at the FMPRC. To deliver on hard issues is another. The leadership and its personality core have significantly raised investment in diplomacy. They will expect more than just damage control in return.

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x

Radio Austria International’s shortwave broadcasts as of 2020

As traditional as the medium: a Radio Austria International QSL card, 1987

Reportedly, the company operating the shortwave transmission site in Moosbrunn has announced the closure of the site by 2020 “at the latest”

is how I quoted a bimonthly local paper for Moosbrunn, published by the Austrian People’s Party,  in April last year. I might have given a more accurate translation, though. What a leading member of Austria’s public radio ORF had told Moosbrunn’s mayor and some other Moosbrunn representatives was this, according to the paper:

Dabei wurde den Gemeindemandataren mitgeteilt, dass der Betrieb der Sendeanlage aus heutiger Sicht bis längstens 2020 weitergeführt wird. Damit gehören senderbedingte Störungen hoffentlich bald der Vergangenheit an.

On the occasion, the elected municipal officers were told that operation of the transmitting site would, from today’s point of view, only continue until 2020 at the latest. Therefore, interferences^*) will, hopefully, be a thing of the past, soon.

If an end to the transmissions is planned for 2020, the most likely days for that would be March 29, October 25, or December 31. Frequency and time schedules traditionally change on the last Sundays of March and October, and December 31 would be another obvious breaking point.

ORF has kept to its broadcasts on 6155 kHz, with a signal in here this morning that left nothing to be desired. Scheduled times are from 06:00 to 07:20 UTC from Monday to Friday, and from 06:00 to 07:10 UTC on Saturdays and on Sundays.

All programs are in German.

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^*) No description of the interferences is given, but the paper’s local readers may be familiar with them.

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Related

Christmas program, Nov 11, 2019
Return to full morning bcs, May 17, 2018
Austria leaving shortwave?, April 11, 2018
Win-win flattery, April 7, 2018
ORF frequencies, ORF, April 17, 2017
Austrian DX Board, frequently updated

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Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Christmas Program on Shortwave

As every year, Northern German Radio (NDR) has scheduled a four-hours Christmas program on shortwave – “Gruß an Bord” (greeting all ships) – for December 24, from 19:00 to 23:00 UTC. The program usually begins with a news broadcast of about five minutes at 19 UTC, and the actual Christmas program would start right after that.

[Please mind the updates underneath – Dec 18, 2019]

Leer Reformed Church weather vane, archive / edited

All messages will be pre-recorded, in Leer, a town in northwestern Germany, on December 8, in Hamburg on December 15, and at NDR broadcasting house (where letters and emails will be  accepted until December 15), and be read out on December 24, from 22:15 UTC, according to the NDR schedule. Sometime during the first three hours of the program, a one-hour religious service is usually transmitted.

Radio Berlin-Brandenburg’s (RBB) media magazine has published the broadcasting schedule as follows¹⁾:

19:00 – 21:00 hours UTC

transmitter site	kW	direct	kHz
Nauen, Germany	125	west	6080
Nauen, Germany	125	south- east	9720
Moosbrunn, Austria	100	east	9570
Issoudun, France	250	south- east	9800
Update, Dec 18	125		9740
Issoudun, France	250	south	11650
Noratus, Armenia	100	Europe	6030

21:00 – 23:00 hours UTC

transmitter site	kW	direct	kHz
Nauen, Germany	125	west	6145
Nauen, Germany	125	south- east	9720
Moosbrunn, Austria	100	east	9675
Issoudun, France	250	south- east	9590
Update, Dec 18	125		9740
Issoudun, France	250		9830
Noratus, Armenia	100	Europe	6155

The Nauen site is said to be the oldest continuously operating radio transmitting installation in the world. There was an interruption of about a decade, however, from May 1945 to 1955. By the end of the 1950s, it was also one of Radio Berlin International‘s (RBI) two transmission sites, thus carrying East Germany’s official programs for an international audience.

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Notes

¹⁾ as at November 1 (which seems to suggest that changes aren’t ruled out)

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Updates (Dec 18, 2019)

See Deutsche Welle reference to the NDR program for latest frequencies

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Related

Program history, Dec 25, 2017