MN.21.06.1995 Lichtenstein & Isle of Man Plans

In this edition: Chris Greenway of BBC Monitoring reports on RFE-RL moves from Munich to Prague. Paul Rusling has an idea for a longwave radio station from the Isle of Man (Atlantic 252 for grown-ups) and Wolf Harranth reports on plans to revive a radio station in Lichtenstein. In other news here in Holland the PTT, quote media and the De Telegraaf newspaper have launched internet access for the general public. You pay 20 dollars a month for 6 hrs access. Meanwhile in London the BBC is in talks with Compuserve with the view to providing news and information to customers of this American online news provider. And in Israel, English programmes on shortwave are being cutback again as from July 1st. But the 19 hrs UTC transmission is being restored to a full half hour. However the feature programmes will not come back because Israel radio is closing its English features department at the end of June 1995. This week European Digital Radio changed its name to Radio E, ready for a test DAB launch in late August. Thats a group of stations including the BBC, RFI, Deutsche Welle and Radio Netherlands. Does this mean there’s a trend away from individual international broadcasters. You see smaller stations clubbing together and larger ones starting to talk more and more about their own region. There is always a danger than when public money is tight policy makers simply want to broadcast news about their own country, saying that regional news from other parts of the world is too costly to collect. It was a point that our correspondent Victor Goonetilleke raised at the EDXC conference a few weeks back.