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Vienna (pte025/19.02.2003/12:16) - Short wave associations around the world have joined in a common initiative http://www.radio-portal.org to protest against the shutting down of Austria's world service Radio Austria International (ROI) http://roi.orf.at.
In an open letter to the founding council of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), the listener associations in German-speaking countries, Europe, North America, Asia, East Africa and the South Pacific are demanding that the committee prevent ROI's scheduled closing by the end of March 2003.
They say the arguments presented by the Austrian government and the ORF head office for taking ROI off the air are wrong, and that financing is possible and should be secured. The letter requests that the members of the committee vote against the closing and confirm this by e-mail. Up to now, none of the 35 council members has reacted to the initiative.
Should ROI be forced to shut down, Austria would become the only country in Europe (with the exception of Andorra, San Marino and Liechtenstein) without its own short wave voice. The letter also asserts that short wave is not an old-fashioned medium - instead it offers listeners a free, mobile, dependable and widely available medium that cannot be replaced by the Internet.
Critical voices from NGOs such as the development organizations "Horizont 3000" or "Doctors without Borders" have affirmed this point of view. There are many regions of the earth with poor Internet access, yet radio is a mass medium in Africa, where mobile devices are readily available.
The existence of ROI has become threatened because the government has refused to provide financing, and the ORF does not consider ROI part of its core competence. But many listeners abroad enjoy the services of ROI, and listener associations say Austria is the only country in the world whose world service is not publicly financed. As a solution, they have proposed that the costs of running the station be divided between the ORF and the government.
Plans to shut down ROI have already provoked criticism from many NGOs and Austrians living abroad, as well as Austria's opposition parties.
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