When RNW gave up on shortwave in English to North America, I was told by RNW that RNW would look much more favorably on using SW to reach Spanish speaking listeners in the Americas.
This was because there was a clear preference for shortwave as the preferred method of hearing RNW broadcasts and these listeners did not have alternative methods of receiving or interacting with RNW at their disposal. RNW actively solicited listener input from North American listeners over a two-year period prior to leaving SW for English, and they found that those NA-based listeners who took the time to respond were more flexible -- they had a greater number of methods to obtain info from RNW at their disposal. English language listeners would read content at the RNW website as well as stream audio and seek out WRN. Further, RNW considered Africa a more important English language target than North America, because North American English-language media is much more diverse than African English-language media in most countries. This process followed the earlier RNW process where they solicited input from North Americans regarding the morning broadcasts that were sent our way starting in July 2001 (when the BBCWS stopped using SW for English to NA). While these broadcasts were originally received with great enthusiasm, in later years very few people indicated they found those morning broadcasts useful. So...am I saying that North American listeners shouldn't contact RNW encouraging a reinstatement of SW? No, but the decisions taken by RNW over the past couple of years suggests RNW is not likely to shift funding back towards SW for NA in English. Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Scott Royall <[email protected]> wrote: > You assume there is a massive number of HF RN listeners in NA. That has > never been known. Also, broadband is a much rarer bird below the Rio Grande, > making HF more viable there. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
