Mike Terry wrote:


I'd like to begin by clarifying something that came up on the newsgroup
rec.radio.shortwave earlier this week. Someone asked whether Radio
Netherlands had stopped carrying news bulletins. We have, but only in our
evening English broadcasts to North America. The recent budget cuts by the
Dutch government forced us to make some difficult decisions. The overnight
live news/continuity shift had to be abolished to save money. Unfortunately,
that encompasses our midnight, 0100 and 0400 UTC English transmissions to
North America. We discussed whether we should replay older news summaries,
but it was felt that our listeners in western North America particularly
would get a poor deal, with a bulletin that was 7 hours old. We came down on
the side of offering expanded current affairs analysis, something that has
been requested by many of our North American listeners.

I figured it was to save money. I sympathize with the fact that 0400 UTC
is 6am in Hilversum, but I still appreciate Radio Exterior de Espana's
news bulletin at 0000 despite the fact that it's several hours old.

Our 1100 UTC transmission to North America still includes a news summary,

Unfortunately, 1100 UTC is in the wee hours of the morning in western
North America. Perhaps you can add an extra morning transmission to
western NAm by getting rid of the 0100 tx to Central NAm, which I've
always viewed as unnecessary because the two time zones are only an hour
apart, as opposed to four hours difference between the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts.