Hurricane damage to Radio VECA

HCJB Global engineer Steve Sutherland, who directs HCJB Global Voice’s international transmitter site near Quito, Ecuador, will this week be travelling to Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua to help make repairs to the Radio VECA (La Voz Evangélica de la Costa Atlántica—Christian Voice of the Atlantic Coast)tranmission system.

The radio station suffered severe damage when Puerto Cabezas was hit almost head on by Hurricane Felix, a category 5 hurricanein a hurricane, on September 4th.

Felix’s winds sent the station’s tower crumpling to the ground, but in four days of downtime - when the electricity supply was also off-line - they managed to weld the tower together and get it standing vertical again. During that time they had also managed to persuad the authorities to get the electricity supply reconnected and so, after four days, the station returned to the air.

However, the power of the station’s signal had to be reduced to 600 watts due to the temporary nature of the repairs.

Steve Sutherland arranged for a friend to locate spare parts in Miami while a Radio VECA staff member sourced new coaxial cable in Managua.

But making contact with the station manager, Pastor Salvador Sarmiento, continues to be difficult with the Nicaraguan telephone system still in turmoil.

An amazing variety of people groups listen to Radio VECA. 150,000 people live in jungle settlements around Puerto Cabezas, many of them descendants of Indians, European settlers and African slaves. They live by fishing, farming and mining.

Miners take their radios to listen to Radio VECA while they work as do the farmers, people in at military posts and people in jails do. Programmes in the local Mískito-language programs are popular with the indigenous people.

Hurricane Felix caused more than 130 deaths while nearly 10,000 homes have been destroyed and another 9,000 severely damaged. An additional 120 people are missing, and an estimated 50,000 people have lost everything they own.

Challenges to TV News

One in three Scots watch BBC Scotland’s flagship news programme, Reporting Scotland, at least once a week.

In five years’ time, it is expected the number will be one in five.

The news and current affairs of BBC Scotland have the consolation of a massive growth in the number of people getting their news from the BBC Scotland website.

Speaking at the Scottish Society of Editors’ conference on Friday, Atholl Duncan, head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland, said that, while 80 per cent of the UK population will “consume BBC news at some point in the week”, programmes such as Reporting Scotland can no longer be considered “king” of news scheduling.

“It is continuous news, now,” he said. “During Reporting Scotland’s heyday, a bottle of champagne was opened every time we hit the one million viewers mark - and that used to happen quite often. Now, if we get half a million, we are happy.

Today, more than 60 per cent of Reporting Scotland viewers are aged 55 and over.

Unique visitors to the BBC Scotland website has increased from 800,000 last year, to 1.4 million this year. And over 50 per cent of our online audience is younger than 40.

Duncan added: “Reporting Scotland is not alone. A downward trend in viewing numbers is being experienced by all TV news programmes, because of multi-channel and the ‘digital revolution’.”

Comment

• Perhaps only one UK Christian TV channel is even trying to do some news reporting.
• Who is trying to provide reliable and authorative Christian news comment online?

The Importance of Logging

Radio stations in the United Kingdom are required by their licence conditions to maintain a recorded log of their broadcasts.

The importance of simply having this facility and ensuring it is in operation has been highlighted recently in a complaint made about a part-time radio station.

Ofcom has released details of the complaint against Hilltown FM in Dundee. Four complaints were received about swearing during daytime and evening programmes.

Ofcom were unable to listen to the remarks in question, because the station did not have a functional logging system, and therefore the complaint could not be investigated.

The regulator found the Restricted Service Licence station to be in breach of condition 8 of its licence, and will hold it on record, should any further problems recur.

Belfast-based Féile FM also had complaints against it for swearing around a year ago, but again failed to provide a recording of the output and was also found to be in breach of condition 8 of their licence.

RSL stations, as with full time broadcasters, are required to record and retain a copy of their output for 42 days.

WBRJ - Baton Rouge

A new Christian radio station, WBRJ-FM, “The Word for Baton Rouge,” is on the air.

Located at 105.7 on the FM radio dial, the nonprofit, noncommercial station is a ministry of Jefferson Baptist Church.

The station features 24-hour-a-day Christian music and newscasts.

Licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as a “low-power” station, it broadcasts at 100 watts but can be heard all across the Greater Baton Rouge area.

On the church campus, WBRJ-FM went on the air Aug. 10, according to Rev. T.C. “Tommy” French Jr., but church leaders didn’t want to make a public announcement until they got all the bugs worked out of the computer programming.

“We want to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ and present quality educational programming from a Christian perspective,” French said. “We also provide wholesome music.”

WBRJ’s format is contemporary and traditional Christian music with hourly newscasts from United News International and weathercasts from The Weather Center. The digital music library includes more than 1,500 songs chosen by Alan Shoumaker, Jefferson’s minister of music, and volunteer program director J.D. Perry has so far programmed more than 800 of them into the station’s computer system.

When the station’s small recording studio is finished in the next few weeks, church leaders plan to produce local programming such as interviews and talk-shows, French said. They will also simulcast the church’s Sunday morning worship service and “stream” it on the Internet.

Money for the station’s initial funding, such as filing for government permits and paying attorneys, came from the family of now-deceased, longtime church member Dr. Richard Englerth.

French said Jefferson Baptist applied for the FCC license in 2000, but paperwork delays and Hurricane Katrina postponed the project until this year.

The station’s building, transmitter, antenna and other equipment cost around $100,000, French said, and it has all been paid for by church members. “We’re debt free,” he said.

Elephant Media of California, a Christian company specializing in low-power radio stations, provided all the equipment. John Boyd, Elephant Media’s owner, came to Baton Rouge in mid-July to install it. His voice can be heard on some of the station’s identification spots, but French plans to add local volunteers’ voices for public service announcements and programming.

The station is outfitted with a back-up transmitter and generator and is connected to the Emergency Broadcast System and other emergency communication systems, French said. “If a hurricane knocks the power out we’ll still be on the air to let listeners know what is happening.”

The church plans to eventually add remote broadcasting equipment so it can broadcast local activities such as school sporting events.

Baptists sell FamilyNet broadcast unit

At its peak, the Southern Baptist Convention produced a remarkable number and variety of radio and TV programs, ranging from preaching to documentaries to animation.

The Southern Baptist Convention's network hit its peak in the 1960s.

SBC broadcasts won an Emmy and many other awards, and by 1969 generated so much mail — almost 1,000 letters and cards a day — that the headquarters in Fort Worth had its own ZIP code.

But Southern Baptists' broadcasting fortunes began to dim years ago. And now it's time to fade to black.

Faced with financial losses, SBC leaders have agreed to sell what's left of the denomination's broadcast operation — FamilyNet, a TV network and satellite radio channel — to In Touch Ministries of Atlanta.

The remaining 36 employees will get generous severance, and the 80,000-square-foot headquarters in West Fort Worth will go on the market, said Tim Patterson, a Jacksonville, Fla., pastor who chaired the task force that recommended selling FamilyNet.

• Read more about this in the Dallas Morning News