Pages

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Algeria launches new radio channel in four languages


The Director General of Algerian National Radio (ENRS), Azeddine Mihoubi, has announced that the new international radio station in four languages commenced broadcasting at 1100 UTC yesterday. The launch coincided with the 45th anniversary of the ceasefire in 1962 which brought an end to the eight year war of independence from France. According to the website of Algerian National Radio, the new station is called Radio Algeria International.
The station, which broadcasts for ten hours a day in Arabic, French, English and Spanish is available on FM and satellite. The ENRS runs three national radio networks in Arabic, Berber and French, and 37 regional stations. Mihoubi said that by 2008, each of the country’s 48 wilayas (regions) will have its own station. There is also a Koran network that broadcasts verses from the Koran 24 hours a day.
(Source: AFP)
Andy Sennitt comments: This is not really a new station, but the rebirth of an old one. Radio Algeria International operated until about 10 years ago in these same four languages. At that time, mediumwave, longwave and shortwave were used. The website of the station was operating very, very slowly when checked this morning, and some of the links don’t work. But we were able to see that the service is on five satellites - Hotbird for Europe, Nilesat and Arabsat for the Arab world, NSS7 for Africa and Galaxy for North America. There is also streaming audio.

(R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)