Thursday, July 17, 2008

Radio Netherlands Worldwide to air Spanish programs to U.S.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) has closed a deal with two prominent new partner stations to broadcast its Spanish language programmes in the United States. Public broadcasters in Atlanta and Puerto Rico will transmit radio programmes produced by RNW. This brings the total number of Spanish-language partner stations in the US to 26 radio stations in ten states.
Owing to the large Spanish-speaking community in the US, RNW has been broadcasting its programmes not only in English but also in Spanish for several years now. Last year, RNW closed a deal with the US’s National Public Radio (NPR) whereby a 24 hours signal with full Spanish language programming would be broadcast in several areas of the country. This included Los Angeles and Houston, where approximately 50 percent of the populations speak Spanish.

In addition to this, RNW also worked with Radio Bilingüe, the oldest Spanish language public radio network, with more than 50 stations in the US and Mexico.
Atlanta and Puerto Rico
In Atlanta, RNW will work with the NPR station ‘WABE Atlanta’, the eighth biggest public radio station in the US. In Puerto Rico, the US island with 3.6 million Spanish-speaking inhabitants, RNW will work with the Puerto Rico Public Broadcasting. In both locations, news and current affairs programmes, as well as (classical) music programmes, will be available via radio and Internet.
Latin America
In Latin America, Spanish language broadcasts have been available via approximately 650 partner stations for many years now. In addition, RNW also broadcasts throughout Latin America on shortwave (in particular for Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia), satellite and the Internet. The editorial staff in Hilversum is responsible not only for news and current affairs programmes, but also for music programmes and special radio series. Together with the BBC’s World Service, RNW is Latin America’s most popular international radio station.
For more information, visit www.informarn.nl.
(Source: R Netherlands Media Network Weblog