[Swprograms] Fwd: [ODXA] Press Release from HCJB World Radio

["Richard Cuff" <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>]

What I find especially interesting in this HCJB item is that the
language they're using, as they evaluate the role of shortwave in
Latin America, is remarkably similar to language being used by the BBC
World Service.  A religious organization as well as a public service
organization are wrestling with the optimum mix of programming
delivery options -- as well as their strategic intent -- and, faced
with different motivations and different agendas, are approaching
matters in the same way.  We're talking about Latin America here --
not the USA -- yet the issues remain the same.

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alokesh Gupta <alokeshgupta@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 3:59 PM
Subject: [ODXA] Press Release from HCJB World Radio
To: Alokesh-Hotmail <alokeshgupta@xxxxxxxxxxx>


MessageRecvd this press release from HCJB today.

Regds
Alokesh
----------------
----- Original Message -----
From: Harold Goerzen
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 9:05 PM
Subject: Press Release from HCJB World Radio

April 8, 2006

Voice of the Andes Begins Antenna Removal, Scrutinizes Shortwave's Role

Even as HCJB World Radio has begun dismantling shortwave radio
antennas at its Ecuador broadcast site in Pifo, strategic
opportunities for spreading the gospel via radio are emerging for the
mission.

To accommodate new international airport construction near the capital
city of Quito, missionary engineers and national staff have lowered a
two-antenna curtain array that Radio Station HCJB, the "Voice of the
Andes," formerly used to air programs to the South Pacific and Europe.
In 2003 the mission switched to local and regional AM and FM
broadcasts in these regions while refocusing its Ecuador-based
international shortwave outreach on Latin America.

Other antennas will also be dismantled in accordance with the
mission's late-December agreement with the Quito Airport Corporation
(CORPAQ) which is compensating the mission for labor, but not
providing funds for new site construction.

"We know that 30 towers at the Pifo site have to come down by December
2007," explained Jim Estes, director of HCJB World Radio's Latin
America region, referring to antenna systems that could obstruct the
approach of landing planes. Pifo is a town about 15 miles east of
Quito.

Of 48 towers sustaining 32 antenna systems on the 110-acre site,
another 18 lower-height antennas-whose signals do reach Latin
America-will not impede approach. But those too will be dismantled by
the time airport operations are expected to begin in 2009.

Mission leadership has determined that the station will not risk
potential radio interference to future air traffic communications once
commercial flights begin. Barring unforeseen circumstances, all
transmissions from the Pifo site (including Spanish, Portuguese,
German, Low German, English and various indigenous languages,
including Quichua) are expected to end sometime in 2009.

Beyond that, Estes and Radio Director Doug Weber are considering
various options, including the idea of building a new, smaller site in
Ecuador as the mission reviews how shortwave radio in Ecuador fits
into its objectives of reaching the world for Christ. Other options
include buying airtime from other broadcasters or placing transmitters
at other sites owned by likeminded missions.

"We're going through a process right now with our engineering crew of
studying all three of those options to see what the cost is," Estes
said. "And cost is one of the issues for us. We're trying to be as
economical as we can be."

A 100-kilowatt transmitter has already been shipped from Pifo to HCJB
World Radio-Australia's shortwave site at Kununurra. That facility
began transmissions in mostly Asian languages (in addition to English)
in January 2003. Staff at the Australian site expect the transmitter
to be on the air by early April.

Ten shortwave transmitters remain in Ecuador where Radio Station HCJB
began broadcasting from Quito in 1931. The international transmitter
site was later moved to Pifo in the early 1950s. Four of those
transmitters were designed and built at the HCJB World Radio
Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind., including a powerful 500,000-watt
unit.

Changes at Pifo are not expected to diminish the mission's
participation in the World by Radio (previously known as World by
2000) effort begun in 1985 whereby Christian international
broadcasters committed to make gospel broadcasts available in all the
world's major languages.

Of the 28 World by Radio languages involving HCJB World Radio, those
that once aired from Quito have since been shifted to other locations,
including a shortwave site in the U.K. that reaches the Euro-Asia and
North Africa/Middle East regions.

Of more than a dozen languages that air from Australia, two-Bhojpuri
and Chattisgarhi, both spoken in India-are World by Radio languages.
Still other World by Radio languages are aired by local stations and
networks worldwide.

"We're involved in radio all around the world, but our involvement is
much different than what we've done historically here from Ecuador,"
Estes said. "It's more of an involvement where we're helping local
people develop their radio ministries to reach their own people.

"Here in Latin America we've helped [radio ministries] everywhere from
Buenos Aires up to Havana with such things as studios, equipment,
technical advice and training on how to do radio," he added. "It's
quite exciting to see." Since the 1990s the mission has aided local
Christian radio endeavors in some 300 cities in more than 100
countries while facilitating network programming via satellite in all
but one of its five global regions.

Assistance to local partners is facilitated by the engineering center,
and the center's pioneering work in digital shortwave radio also
presses on, with continued development and testing of Digital Radio
Mondial (DRM) equipment -digital broadcasting for the shortwave
transmitters produced there.

The Pifo site is part of that project, said Weber, who also heads the
DRM task force for HCJB World Radio. "We have participated in DRM
tests from down here with the DRM consortium, and we will continue to
do tests over the next few years," he explained. "We are very much
monitoring DRM in its development in Latin America, hoping that we can
eventually use that technology and be a pioneer within Latin America,
not only in digital shortwave but in digital AM."

An announcement 10 years ago had alerted the mission's engineers that
Quito's long-awaited new airport might be built just six miles from
the mission's shortwave facilities at Pifo. Impending changes looked
more certain by mid-1997 when aviation authorities said that due to
potential interference, HCJB needed to dismantle its Pifo
installations.

Subsequent plans to dismantle and move the Pifo installation to
Ecuador's coast were first tabled in 2003 by mission leadership, and
later scrapped due to concerns about increased energy costs.
Electricity for the high-powered transmitters has been generated at a
mission-built hydroelectric plant in nearby Papallacta.

For more information contact:
Communications Director Jon Hirst
HCJB World Radio
1065 Garden of the Gods Rd., Colorado Springs, CO 80907
(719) 590-9800; fax: (719) 590-9801
jhirst@xxxxxxxx




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