The Washington Post today publishes an article informing its readers of the low-power AM station KGBC in Galveston, Texas, which is now a 24-hour relay of China Radio International as first reported in this Weblog on 5 January 2010. The newspaper goes into some detail about China’s huge investment in international broadcasting. It will be interesting to see if this makes any difference to the way the BBG’s budget request is handled by the politicians in Washington.
on Apr 25th, 2010 at 13:17
Well, 2.5 kilowatts during daytime and a whooping 250 watts at night, this on 1540 kHz, at the top end of the mediumwave band where groundwave performance is poor — I understand that there are still more mediumwave listeners in the USA than in Europe, but still I would call this small tranny as rather insignificant, especially since it appears to be not even the first US relay of CRI.
“They really haven’t a clue as to how to win over the foreign market.” — This statement appears to apply not only in this case. Obviously they also believe that something can be gained by leasing high power mediumwave transmitters in Europe (Albania, France, Luxembourg, Finland), certainly overestimating the remaining mediumwave listening. At the same time they terminated almost the complete cooperation with World Radio Network, thus depriving themselves of access to FM in Berlin.
But on the other hand the Xinhua and CCTV activities are presumably of much greater importance than CRI. Just like Russia Today vs. Voice of Russia, France 24 vs. Radio France Internationale (OK, same company now), the BBC World Service TV channels vs. their radio programmes (the ones that still exist at all) etc.
on Apr 27th, 2010 at 05:00
When I headed the department at CRI in 2001 to oversee domestic AM/FM relays of programs. I had almost weekly arguments with management over the stations that were broadcasting the programs. In 2002 Li Ping the then head of the English Service and Xhu Huazhen the deputy director of the English service went to the US on a fact finding mission. The day they returned I got an email from Huazhen saying we should be happy that we now have a FM relay in Seattle. and quote “everyone on the West Coast can now hear CRI”. Well it turned out to be some small community station with a range of 40KM.
One of my reasons for leaving CRI had to do with the corruption involved in these relays, which I have proof of. Millions of dollars are being spent annually by CRI with all levels of management at CRI taking a cut, including the guy (no name mentioned) who is working out these deals in the US for CRI.
I’ve kept each memo and email from that time and when I talk to my sources within CRI, they tell me the same thing is going on. Infact they tell me it has gotten worse. I’m not surprised.