Polish Radio carries the following announcement on its English website: “From Sunday 25 March, the English Section of Polish Radio External Service is changing its broadcast times and the nature of its transmissions. As of Sunday, the English Section will NOT be available on Short Wave, ending almost 80 years of broadcasts on this spectrum. Many thanks to all our listeners who tuned in via these means over the years.
“However, the English Section is continuing ALL its transmissions via satellite and online, with podcasts also available via our RSS feed and through the iTunes platform. Additionally, the English Section of Polish Radio External Service is available in London on DAB Spectrum 1 daily at 1900 local time.
“Major changes are our LIVE transmission at the time of 1400 CEST (1200 UTC), with our main broadcast moving to 2000 CEST (1800 UTC). Our flagship production, News from Poland, will move to the time of 1400 CEST, with a second edition at 2000 CEST. All magazine premieres will also air at 2000 CEST.”
The new schedule is detailed on this page.
(Source: thenews.pl)
on Mar 23rd, 2012 at 21:35
Very smart of Polish radio to wait until the last moment to announce such a news. This way the listeners won’t have a chance to protest. Other international broadcasters that still use SW might find this example helpful, as they are developing strategies for getting rid of the hated medium.
on Mar 23rd, 2012 at 22:10
The risk of such an approach is that others may announce it for you. This happened in this very case where German, Ukrainian and Hebrew will be taken off shortwave as well. It appears that the German service announced it yesterday for the first time, at a time when the news was out in Germany already for three days. Ooops.
on Mar 24th, 2012 at 00:19
Stations like Polish Radio and other Eastern European that left SW is not surprising. They don’t have any relevance. There just not needed. What does Polish Radio offer the audience? When you consider their target area, they can better serve them by using other means. If these stations wanted to remain relevant, they would have re-targeted there programs to East/South East Asia, Pacific, Africa and part of Latin America. But these broadcasters have only themselves to blame in targeting regions where SW audiences have dropped off.