John Plimmer wrote:
Deutsche Welle notified from Bonn as follows:-
"As of October 29th Deutsche Welle will cancel the coverage of North America
with it's German language radio broadcasts on analogue shortwave. In future
you will be only able to listen to DW Radio in German via satellite in
direct-to-home reception (as is the case already with our English Service),
via different cable stations, and, above all, on the internet either as live
stream or on demand."

"Starting on 1st January 2007 DW will cancel using the station Wertachtal
(Germany) for its transmissions. Instead the transmission stations of the
British service provider VTC-Communications (Merlin) will be used."

"January 1st 2007 will also be the date on which our radio broadcasts in
Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Polish, Romanese,
Serbian and Turkish will be taken off the shortwaves (still available via
satellite or internet though)."
_____________________________________

Thankfully for me DW broadcasts in English, German, Portuguese and French to
Southern Africa are expanded.

Here on the East Coast of North America I can still hear Deutsche Welle
quite well even though they supposedly stopped transmissions to North
America.

I suspect, that just like the BBC, I am catching the fringe of a
transmission meant for some third world country.

What I was hearing yesterday afternoon (from a very NOT PRIME listening
location - my office in Washington DC) sounded like a basic German
instructional tape, very slow pronunciation, much repetition, etc. And
it was coming in very clearly.

I personally think that broadcasts intended for the third
world/underdeveloped countries are far more interesting than those
intended for fat american consumption. Although Radio Taiwan and Radio
China International and Radio Australia have some interesting English
formats, almost like "drive time" chatter in the US but about
international issues.

Tim.