bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1996) — Summer 1996 // Été 1996, pp. 26–29
In downtown Kishinev, a Moldovan technician adjusts a satellite dish to downlink a “live” signal to be broadcast on local stations throughout his country. In the Adriatic Sea, Canadian sailors tune their radio frequencies carefully. In Southern Chile, a Canadian tourist checks his watch and heads to his hotel room to get his shortwave receiver. In Beijing, students leave classes and prepare to hear the latest news from Canada. In Yakutsk, Siberia, a small businessman listens intently to a report on how Canadian merchants deal with customers.
What do all these people have in common? They are all listening to Radio Canada International and either keeping in touch with home, or learning about Canada. In either case, there is no other daily source of Canadian information available to them in their own language.
The Evolution of RCI
Radio Canada International began 51 years ago as a way for Canadian soldiers in Europe to keep in touch with home. It rapidly expanded to include several foreign languages to serve both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the decades that followed, languages were added and others dropped reflecting the changes in Canadian foreign policy and methods of projecting Canadian interest overseas. Geographic areas of the globe were added as target areas as Canada’s interests expanded into the Middle East, Asia, and South America.
Through all these years, RCI has been, and still is an integral part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and operates under the same journalistic principles as the rest of the Corporation. Its roles are defined thus:
• to attract an international audience with the purpose of further developing international awareness of Canada and the Canadian identity;
• to broadcast programs to the growing number of Canadians abroad in recognition of their need of more Canadian news and information.
Today, RCI broadcasts in Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Creole, English and French. From its headquarters a minimum of 232 hours a week, with 113 hours in English, 70 in French, and the remainder in RCT’s foreign languages.
RCI broadcasts in Russian to the countries of the former Soviet Union including transmissions in the Far East to reach Vladivostok and other such centres. Ukrainian language broadcasts originate from transmitters in Canada and Europe. In both Russian and Ukrainian, RCI broadcasts more than 14 hours a week in a format of news, information, interviews, commentaries, and mini-documentaries on Canadian events, culture, business, and lifestyle.
The Arabic broadcasts project Canada’s view into this crucial part of the world via shortwave, with a large number of letters received from listeners in Morocco to the Persian Gulf and Sudan.
Spanish language broadcasts on shortwave from Sackville, New Brunswick are heard clearly throughout South America as far as Southern Argentina and Chile.
RCI’s Mandarin language programs are broadcast on shortwave from transmitters in Korea and Japan to provide a strong and clear signal in major Chinese cities.
About 60% of the programming is RCI-produced specifically for international audiences, and includes national and international news reported from a Canadian perspective, as well as commentary by Canadian experts on issues in the news.
RCI also produces and broadcasts current affairs magazine programs designed to place Canadian issues, events, and lifestyles before a foreign audience. With input from RCI staff, freelance specialists and six regional RCI bureaus, these programs include the daily Spectrum and Les actualités canadiennes, and Report to Peacekeepers and Magazine des Casques Bleus for Canadian service personnel overseas.
Weekly programs include those covering Canadian techonology (Innovation Canada and Eureka), science and the environment (the award-winning Earth Watch and Planète) artists and performers (Arts in Canada and Vie d’artiste) and answers to listeners’ questions (The Mailbag and Le courrier des auditeurs).
Listeners also enjoy the best of CBC and Radio-Canada programs throughout the week, allowing Canadians abroad to keep in touch, and opening a window on our Canadian life to international audiences. Favorites include Best of Morningside, World at Six, As It Happens, and Sunday Morning from CBC Radio. From SRC we rebroadcast, among others, several editions of Le Radiojournal, Les Actualités, En Direct and portions of morning shows from Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec City.
Listening to RCI
RCI broadcasts on shortwave from transmitters in Sackville, New Brunswick, and, through relay exchange agreements, utilizes transmitters in Skelton, England; Wertachtal, Germany; Sines, Portugal; Moosbrunn, Austria; Kimjae, Korea; Xian, China; and Yamata, Japan; to spread its shortwave signal across the world. RCI also uses a 600,000 watt AM transmitter in Cape Greco, Cyprus, to broadcast nightly in Arabic to the Middle East, supplementing its Arabic shortwave service.
Shortwave broadcasting is used by 126 international radio broadcasters to spread their signal. It is particularly useful in reaching “closed” societies and providing additional, unbiaised information to their citizens. The technology, however, is gradually changing.
In Europe, RCI uses the Eutelsat “hot-bird” satellite providing a 24-hour a day year-round service which can be received by a 0.7 m-1.8 m dish depending on location. The “footprint” of this service reaches from Ireland in the West, to the Urals in the East, from North Africa in the South to Scandinavia in the North.
RCI expects to start a similar service on a 24-hour basis which will be received via the Intelsat 702 satellite throughout Africa with a larger receiving dish. RCI will begin shortly a similar service in Asia via the AsiaSat 2 satellite which receives from Mongolia to Australia and Japan to the Middle East.
The use of satellite to home receiver, or satellite to a local radio station in a target country for rebroadcast is slowly making its mark in international radio.
Indeed, RCI is in its third year of providing a 24-hour a day special satellite service to the Canadian Armed Forces. This service, in English and French, consists of special programs for the Armed Forces, messages from home, the best of domestic CBC and SRC programming, and — through the cooperation of private radio stations in Canada – “live” coverage of hockey, baseball, and football games.
The main overseas locations of Canadian service units are served by a satellite downlink which feeds directly into a small PM transmitter (in effect a small local radio station) which has a broadcast radius of a few miles.
Therefore soldiers on duty away from the barracks, perhaps at a road block, can tune in and listen to “live” coverage of a hockey game from Vancouver or other major Canadian cities. The service is currently operating in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti; in Velika Kledusa, Zgon, and Coralici, all in Bosnia; the Golan Heights; and is beamed to Canadians serving at NATO bases in Casteau, Belgium, Brunssum, the Netherlands, and Ramstein, Germany. RCI is, in the words of one corporal serving in the former Yugoslavia, “a lifeline with regard to information.” The audience for this service is numerically small but obviously of great individual importance.
Audience figures on international broadcasting are difficult to measure: some countries will not even allow surveys. RCI estimates it has a weekly reach by shortwave of approximately five million listeners, and that does not include China. It also does not include the satellite audience, or any of the rebroadcasting audience.
This method is also in greater use now. RCI broadcasts one hour of its Ukrainian daily via satellite to Europe where it is downlinked in Kiev and rebroadcast simultaneously throughout the Ukraine on the national radio network of that country and by cable into 11-million homes, thus increasing its audience and impact.
In Russia, several radio stations are also downlinking RCI Russian programming and rebroadcasting it in St. Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Rostov-on-Don, and soon in Kaliningrad. Russian speaking listeners also listen to RCI via satellite downlinks and local rebroadcast in Moldova, and in Sevastopol in the Crimea.
RCI expects to expand this service both in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Africa and Asia in the coming months.
To reach the potential audience by as many means as possible, RCI also produces programs in all its broadcast languages for use by domestic broadcasters in 80 countries. Language lessons in English and French, a Canadian “Pop” music service, RCI Classics by Canadian artists and orchestras, Canadian Panorama and Canada a la Carte which feature mini-documentaries, programs on “self help” and business.
What’s Cool…
Language lessons have been a staple at RCI for several years. Beginners’ and Intermediate lesson series have been produced in Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, eight indigenous languages in Namibia, in Lao, Vietnamese and Khmer. All of the language lessons inform students about Canadian business, culture, geography, people, and government.
In several countries the language lessons have been backed by home study groups, accompanying printed material in the form of textbooks, and advertising of the lessons has been widespread both on radio and elsewhere. In Ukraine, fliers were sent to local schools to let students know; in Moscow and Beijing, RCI had notices posted in the subway. In many cities RCI supplied material that could be customized with the name of the local station and times of broadcast added to an all-Canadian RCI poster.
The demand for lessons in English, and to a lesser extent in French, continues unabated. RCT’s lessons are first of all “good radio” and for that reason have gained wide acceptance. They are being broadcast, or have been broadcast, in more than 30 cities in Russia, throughout the Ukraine, in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Kirghizstan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, in 15 cities in China, in 30 cities in Latin America in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, and in Namibia in Southern Africa.
New series are planned or underway for China with a business English series, and for Vietnam, and Romania.
RCI boosts Canada’s cultural presence overseas not only by language lessons but also through music. RCI produces and distributes each month a high quality tape with the best of Canadian “pop” music for the month, usually six or seven English language songs, and three or four French. This service called Pick of the Pops is used by nearly 300 stations around the world, from Vladivostok to Santiago, Chile.
For instance, the popular commercial station in Kiev, Radio Roks, produces a special one hour program every month based on Pick of the Pops and devoted entirely to the Canadian music scene. Others use the material in concert with RCI mini-documentaries and some use it in coordination with the language lessons. Ma Jing-hua of Radio Shaanxi in Xian, China, writes us that this music is “the window for us to look into Canada.”
The classical music side is not neglected. RCI has negotiated agreements with broadcasters in foreign countries to devote one hour a week exclusively to Canadian artists and orchestras playing great classical music. In Russia, the stereo network ’Radio Orfey’ broadcasts this program every Sunday night. A similar program is heard in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, also in Beijing, Guangzhou, Xian, and Shanghai in China, in Buenos Aires, in Santiago, Montevideo and in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The music on compact disc supplied by RCI is supplemented by written continuity and the Encyclopedia of Canadian Music allowing local announcers to choose their own individual method of presentation.
The dozens of reports, interviews, commentaries, and features that RCI broadcasts in eight languages are largely about Canadian subjects and issues. They are recycled under the title Canadian Panorama or Canada a la Carte or Canada a la Carta from their first use on shortwave programs for distribution on tape to local broadcasters in the target countries. Topics include Canadian culture, industry, resources, and international relations.
Canada a la Carta, for instance, a Spanish language tape, is shipped to more than 100 subscribers in 15 countries.
There is an effort made, where possible, to tailor programs for special markets. RCI produced, with the help of the Foreign Affairs department, a series of programs in Russian on Democracy, Entrepreneurship, and the Environment. The programs received an enthusiastic reception in Russia and were broadcast in more than 25 cities plus several of the successor states of the USSR such as Moldova, Estonia, Kazakhstan, etc.
In China, RCI started in 1992 a weekly half-hour program in Cantonese to reflect the importance of trans-Pacific business opportunities and to build a link between the vital Southern part of China bordering Hong Kong and Canada. The Canadian Economy Mail News is broadcast each Saturday after the 8am major economic newscast and is broadcast throughout Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao, and the Pearl River Delta, covering an area with more than 30 million potential listeners.
Last fall, the Pearl River Economic Station in Guangzhou started weekly broadcasts in Cantonese of short documentaries about Canada (economy, history, culture, etc.).
In February, 1996 RCI signed an agreement with China National Radio and produced a series of 30 programs on Canada in the Mandarin language in cooperation with the Chinese broadcaster. This series which covers such topics as Canadian business, aerospace, culture, Nobel prize winners, Canadian artists and so on is broadcast each Monday morning at 8am throughout China on the First Channel of the National Radio. China National Radio estimates their First Channel covers an area with more than 700-million potential listeners.
The Canadian programs are the first broadcast on China National Radio from any foreign source and the Canadian Embassy in Beijing says the benefit from RCI programs in China “has been enormous”
Commenting on the latest series the embassy said,, “the contribution that this makes to our cultural diplomacy in China is incalculable.”
The Bottom Line
RCI, for all of its many activities, ranks relatively low in funding amongst international broadcasters. A recent study by Radio Australia showed that RCI’s budget of approximately $16,000,000 Canadian was below not only the major broadcasters such as Germany’s Deutsche Welle — $394-million Canadian, or Britain — $307-million Canadian, but was below about that of Radio Australia at $27-million Canadian, Radio Nederland at $73-million Canadian, and Swiss Radio International at $50-million Canadian.
The same study showed that in looking at the Average Cost per hour of Program Output in 1995 Radio Canada International produced programs more economically than Radio Australia, Radio Vatican, Radio Singapore, Radio Nederland, Swiss Radio International, Voice of America, NHK- Japan, BBC World Service radio, and Deutsche Welle.
As the world moves into satellite television and the Internet, the question is raised about the continuing value of radio. First, for shortwave there are still 600-million shortwave receivers in the world. And in many countries, such as those of the former Soviet Union, a standard radio includes shortwave bands.
As well, satellite radio is moving rapidly to the forefront in many parts of the globe and RCI is playing its part in taking advantage of this new method of getting the Canadian story and point of view known in the cacophony of radio sound. It is a competitive environment. Radio France Internationale, for example, has built and operates dozens of FM stations in various major cities of the world at considerable cost to ensure France’s message is heard.
The BBC, Voice of America, the Swiss, the Dutch, and many others are deeply and increasingly involved in satellite and digital broadcasting while retaining a shortwave capacity to serve certain audiences — Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Africa and others.
RCI realizes it will never be a broadcaster of major international size but we do believe, in the old phrase, “that we punch above our weight.” At relatively low cost, we have given graphic and sound proof that radio judiciously utilized on an international basis can return a recognition and practical benefit. The Canadian Exporters’ Association, who should know as well as anyone, says RCI is “one of Canada’s more effective mechanisms to tell the world” that “we have competitive products, services and technology to offer.” And the Business Council on National Issues has said that RCI “creates and enhances awareness of Canada” thus generating ’demand for Canadian goods and services.?
Some Canadians might be pleased to know that the Crash Test Dummies are a hit in Kiev, that Russian entrepreneurs may have learned from Canadian experience, that listeners in Buenos Aires are listening to recordings of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, that a bellhop in Xian, China, can tell a visiting RCI journalist that he knows all about ’Vancouver Island, Strait of Juan de Fuca, Victoria, and western provinces’ from RCI languages lessons he studied listening to the local radio.
It is a truly competitive world and while Canada has a good reputation and Canadians receive a warm welcome, we must remember that if no one speaks of Canada, no one will hear.
PROGRAM SCHEDULES CAN BE OBTAINED BY WRITING TO:
Radio Canada International
P.O. Box 6000
Montreal, Canada
H3C 3A8
EUTELSAT SATELLITE DATA FOR EUROPE:
“Hot Bird” Eutelsat II — F6 at 13 degrees East
Frequency 11.265 GHz (Channel 3) Horizontal polarization
Audio sub-carrier: 7.2 MHz.
Our engineers suggest a standard receiver equipped with
a 70 to 90 cm dish. Available at most major electrical outlets
for approximately 400 dollars Canadian.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1996) — Summer 1996 // Été 1996, pp. 26–29. Read the rest of this issue →
