Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Deutsche Welle will be discontinuing the shortwave broadcast

According to their press release of May 18th (http://dwelle.de/dw/article/0,,6529299,00.html) "Deutsche Welle will be discontinuing the shortwave broadcast for German, Russian, Farsi and Indonesian on November 1, 2011. For English, the shortwave broadcast will be limited to Africa. The broadcasting times for Chinese programming will be reduced from 120 minutes to 60 minutes. Starting in November, DW will only be broadcasting radio programming via shortwave in the following languages: Amharic, Chinese, Dari, English and French for Africa, Hausa, Kiswahili, Pashtu, Portuguese for Africa and Urdu."

"The shortwave program currently broadcasts 260 hours daily with DW's own or rented relay stations – with the new focus on Africa and regions in Asia that will be reduced to just 55 at the beginning of the winter season. Only the relay station in Kigali (Rwanda) will be needed for shortwave broadcasts in Africa. The stations in Trincomalee (Sri Lanka)
and Sines (Portugal) can no longer be used to capacity. The financial operation is no longer possible and the relay stations will stop being used on November 1, 2011 and closed at the next possible point in time." A very strange situation that they are going to close down their German Service completely - no shortwave broadcasts anymore for German expatriates, businessmen or tourists. (Bethge via EDXP). Cf. DX-Window no. 429. (Ed)