Saturday, July 25, 1998 Published at 11:19 GMT 12:19 UK

Radio New Zealand International cuts hit Pacific services
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/138809.stm

The beginning of August will see cuts in staff and broadcast output at Radio
New Zealand International. Evening broadcasts will be dropped and replaced
with relays of domestic radio and there will be a reduction in special
programming for the South Pacific.

Steve Metcalf of BBC Monitoring's Foreign Media Unit has the details:

Radio New Zealand International has announced cutbacks to take effect from
August 3.

The service, which currently broadcasts 19 hours a day, will see its evening
broadcasts dropped and replaced with relays of domestic radio.

Daily broadcasting for audiences in the South Pacific will be reduced from
11 to five hours, special programmes in Pacific languages will end and three
of the 12 full-time staff will lose their jobs.

Funding review

At the start of this year, the radio's very future seemed to be in doubt,
with reports that a funding review undertaken by the Treasury and the
Foreign Ministry might recommend closing down the service.

In the event it survived, with limited guarantees about its future. But its
budget for the financial year which began on 1st July was reduced to just
under $700,000, a cut of about 13% on the previous year.

While government officials argued that this cut reflected one-off
expenditure in the previous year, broadcasters said that after fixed costs
had been set aside it would effectively amount to a one-third reduction.

Pacific service

RNZI's shortwave service began in 1945.

At the end of the 1980s it was doing little more than relaying domestic
programmes.

But the censorship imposed in Fiji after the coup of 1987 prompted a
re-examination of New Zealand's attitude to the South Pacific, and in 1989
control of funding was passed from Radio New Zealand to the Foreign
Ministry.

The following year a new 100KW transmitter went into operation, providing
effective coverage of most of the Pacific basin.

Closure protest

News that the government might close the service prompted a wave of protest
from leading politicians and others around the South Pacific.

The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association pointed out that "no other
international broadcaster focuses on the Pacific in the way RNZI does" and
that surveys had shown that it had "significant audiences for shortwave
broadcasting" in the region.

The radio's role in providing warnings of cyclones and other severe weather
in the region was also highlighted.

Future 'safe'

Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said at the end of June that the service's
future was "certainly safe for the next couple of years" and that the
government wanted it to continue.

An RNZI official said that the funding arrangement had been agreed for one
year, with an "underlying, unofficial" commitment that it would probably
continue for a further year.

McKinnon also said that once the cabinet had decided in principle that the
service should continue, it had then looked at the possibility of dropping
the shortwave transmissions and moving to satellite-only delivery. But that
option had been rejected because some areas of the Pacific were unable to
receive satellite transmissions.

Meanwhile, at the end of June the New Zealand government announced that, in
view of the Asian economic downturn, it had decided to cut its overall
budget spending by at least another 150m US dollars, although it had not yet
decided where those cuts would be made.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in
southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television,
press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70
languages.

http://CBC.am/ wrote

Saturday, July 25, 1998 Published at 11:19 GMT 12:19 UK

.... and it only took you five years to notice. Some radio ham YOU are...

- Dave
--
Lowering the tone of Usenet since 1997...

Please send replies to New Zealand instead of Zanzibar.
Sorry, but the spam is just getting a little too much...

RNZI should have had a 2nd SW transmitter by 1994.

I believe they are still off air due to a transmitter fault.


Saturday, July 25, 1998 Published at 11:19 GMT 12:19 UK

... and it only took you five years to notice. Some radio ham YOU are...

- Dave
--
Lowering the tone of Usenet since 1997...

Please send replies to New Zealand instead of Zanzibar.
Sorry, but the spam is just getting a little too much...