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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The last days of Kol Israel, English on shortwave radio

Kol Israel will air their final English shortwave broadcast this weekend. The last day of service is schedule to be on March 30. It is not known at this time if there will be a special closedown announcement on the 30th or 31st. Said to be their "final decision," this follows several years of budget and programming cuts, as well as announceing they would leave the air.

an excerpt from an earlier from the Jerusalem Post article;
"Four million shekels have been allocated in the IBA's budget to spare Israel Radio's budget-threatened shortwave Farsi broadcasts, which are widely listened to in Iran, and are regarded as a crucial bridge to the Jewish community there.

But the radio respite has not been extended to the IBA's other foreign language broadcasts, including English, which will no longer be available to radio listeners outside Israel after the end of this month. The broadcasts will continue in Israel on the Reka channel, available on medium wave and FM, but the shortwave broadcasts will cease, silencing Israel Radio's English, Amharic, French, Spanish, Yiddish and other foreign language overseas transmissions for the first time in decades. Would-be listeners will henceforth only be able to hear the programs via the Internet."

To monitor the final days from Kol Israel in English, the following schedule remains current:

All times UTC - programming is targeted to various world regions

0430-0445 6280 7545 17600
1030-1045 13855 15760
1830-1845 6985 7545 9345 15640


On March 28, Israel will adjust their time at 2 AM Israeli time, so except a time shift. (Israel
UTC + 2 hours ( + 3 hours March 28 - Oct 5)

As of April 1, the station will be available via on-demand audio at: http://www.intkolisrael.com/ . Recordings are maintained for 24 hours.

Current streaming audio of Israel National Radio is available at: http://www.int.kolisrael.com/

Kol Israel no longer verifies reception reports, however general correspondence may be addressed to:
Israel Broadcasting Authority
P.O. Box 1082
Jerusalem 91010
Israel
(Gayle Van Horn, Freq Manager/Monitoring Times-SW Guide)
address via World QSL Book