Media News - Tuesday, February 19, 2008

BBC ends shortwave service in Europe

The BBC World Service, which started its scratchy shortwave transmissions to listeners cut off by ‘desert, snow and sea’ 75 years ago, ended its last English-language shortwave services in Europe on Monday. The British public broadcaster has been reducing its shortwave transmissions over the past seven years, eliminating services to North America and Australia in 2001 and South America in 2005. Last March, the BBC started reducing European transmissions, finally cutting off a transmitter that reached parts of southern Europe on Monday. The quiet ending for the service was a contrast with its celebrated arrival. Seventy-five years ago, King George V helped promote the new technology from his small study in the British royal family's Norfolk retreat, Sandringham. In a speech written by the poet Rudyard Kipling, the king extolled radio as a way to reach out to men and women isolated by snow and sea. All of the world's largest international broadcasters, based in the United States, France, Germany, England and the Netherlands, are cutting back on shortwave or reviewing the deployment of their resources. (International Herald Tribune)

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