Dear GCR1 Listeners and Partner Stations:
Recently, the World Radio Network (WRN) published their new program schedule for the North American service, which is what we use for most of our overnight/early morning world news programming. This new schedule is a bit more diverse, and we are looking forward to offering the new programming lineup to all of you. Unfortunately, it does mean some rather significant changes. These changes are as follows:
Israel Radio has expanded their time on WRN to a full hour every night at Midnight Eastern/9 PM Pacific. We will now air their "News at 8" program during that hour.
The hours between 1 and 4 AM Eastern/10 PM to 1 AM Pacific, remain intact.
At 4 AM Eastern/1 Am Pacific, WRN is again offering the world news bulletin from Vatican Radio as part of their daily lineup. at 4:15/1:15, you can hear the daily news bulletin from Radio New Zealand Pacific (formerly Radio New Zealand International). This will be followed at 4:30/1:30 by the daily program from Radio Prague.
The hours from 5 to 8 AM Eastern/2 to 5 Pacific remain intact.
The biggest change comes during the 8 AM/5 AM hour. WRN is now offering KBS World Radio from South Korea during this time. We want to keep KBS World Radio as part of our world news offerings. So, we are now airing it during this hour.
Sadly, we are dropping programming from Channel Africa until further notice. We regret having to do this, as we would like to bring you news directly from the African continent. But, we have been considering dropping this programming for some time now, as we rely on their daily podcats for broadcast, and these podcasts are not always updated in time for us to bring you a new show. We did look into picking up their live web stream from 2 to 3 AM Eastern, and we reached out to their tech department to ask if this was possible. Unfortunately, their web player URL is not compatible with our automation software, Zara Radio, and so we have no choice but to discontinue their programming at this time. If a solution can be worked out where we can connect to their live web stream on a daily basis, we will seriously consider bringing Channel Africa back to the GCR1 lineup. In the mean time, you can still hear developments from Africa on the program Africa Link, from DW in Germany, Tuesday to Saturday at 2 AM Eastern.
Lastly, we are swapping out VOA news at the top of the 9 AM hour for the full five minute newscast from Feature Story News (FSN).
Please make adjustments to your respective program schedules and make the necessary updates to your websites to reflect the above changes. As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for listening to and/or partnering with Global Community Radio.
Sincerely,
Jason Longwell
GCR Station Manager
