BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

10/05/2006

Broadcasting for young Belarusians

Visit a quite special radio station, a Belarusian one based in an office apartment in Warsaw. In Belarus, it is not possible to run an independent radio station due to the repression of the government. Belarusian radio journalist Maria Sadovskaya will show us the European Radio for Belarus - an independent station aiming at young people.

Report by Gabriel Stille

It's a quite ordinary office apartment, in a quite ordinary office block in central Warsaw. The only difference is the state of the art recording equipment that dominates the largest room. Otherwise, it is a quite spartan place - all resources are focused on getting the programs to the listeners. Right now, four journalists are working by the computers to prepare tomorrow's programs for broadcast. Maria Sadovskaya, the coordinator, gives us a tour:

You are now in our studio where we have all our recordings, where all our news presenters are sitting, and this room is a room for administrative stuff, also our musical editor sits here, he is absent now, he went to Belarus. Aslo, you see several nice posters here, for example Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolitas initiative to show how the freedom of word is in Belarus, with all those black holes. Here we have also our national flag. Over here is our room wich is also some kind of studio, you can also listen what is now playing on our wawe... rather slow music.

European Radio for Belarus, is despite its name, not a foreign station broadcasting into Belarus. Rather, it is a Belarusian station just temporarily coordinating its operations in Warsaw. There is also an office in Minsk and correspondents all over Belarus. Operating since February 2006, European Radio for Belarus is funded by the United states and Czech governments, and the European Commission.

We have been asked frequently by other journalists, that are you like Radio Svoboda, Radio Free Europe which said that when democracy comes, it closes the next day. And we say that it is not our goal. We are doing vice versa, we hope that when changes come, we can return there and work as a professional, attractive radio station with balanced information and education content which would be really recognisable by people in Belarus. I think this is the main difference of our project and other pro-democracy projects around Belarus.

Music is - as with any radio station directed at young people, the most popular feature on ERB. Many popular Belarusian artists are forced into exile, and the amount of popular music played in the state-controlled Belarusian radio is also limited. But this doesn't mean there is less effort put in the journalistic side - on the contrary.

We are trying to introduce more entertainment. I mean, we broadcast 24 hours already by satellite and internet, and we will of course expand our FM broadcasting when possible. And what we are trying is to show them attractive things, music which they cannot listen to at home. This is one thing. The other thing that the information, the news that we try to do, is more or less of attractive content. For example, the program "Window on Europe", which we are broadcasting daily for an hour, includes European news but also news of European fashion or music, reviews of possibilies for education or for travelling and other things like that. We will introduce more musical content, and all those things will at the same time be balanced by really professional news from Belarus, which would and are telling about political and economical realities in Belarus.

The European Radio for Belarus uses all possible means to reach its audience. FM, AM, Satellite and - the Internet. The net is the premier way for the audience to access ERB, since most of Belarus, including Minsk, cannot be reached by the FM transmitters based in Poland and Lithuania. But Internet usage is growing in Belarus, now 20% of the population has access through the national service provider. On the ERB website the young listeners can get all the news in text format, and also give instant feedback to their favorite station. Being available in many formats also means that the news service is harder to block for the government, something that was important for example during and after the presidential election in April.

Most of the reactions have been positive. We even had cases when young Belarusians rebroadcasted our program free of charge in their local computer network, and they put a link and said, OK, if someone doesn't want to pay traffic for listening to the radio, please join our home computer network. So that was quite encouraging. And we got especially many comments during the election period of course, because it happened that while many other informational channels were blocked, our radio functioned and we were the first source for example for several Live Journal communities, to get some news about what was happening in the streets.

In only little more than two months, European Radio for Belarus, have gained a small but growing and faithful listener base. Something that is important in the mission of contributing to the shaping of the civil society. And the operations carry on, with transmissions 24-7, relentless, as for now from an office block somewhere in Warsaw.

Source:

http://www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=36377&j=2