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Radio Free Europe?
A multinational group of broadcasters has joined forces to create a "European Radio Project" funded by the European Commission. Broadcasters such as Germany's Deutsche Welle and Radio France Internationale will produce "informative radio programmes on EU affairs" including daily hard news shows, weekly "magazine" features and coverage of big EU events.
The European Commission insists that the 16 broadcasters will have "full editorial independence" over their programmes: The Commission will subsidise their broadcasts to the tune of €5.8 million a year.
The station will initially broadcast in English, German, French and Polish as the main languages, but all 23 official EU languages should be covered within the next five years (more money for translators, then).
The EU Observer has the full story. Earlier this year, the Commission offered a tender for radio programming, which was won by the ERP consortium. It reports on the division of labour:
"Deutsche Welle will ensure the editorial coordination of the project, while Radio France will be responsible for financial affairs and Radio Netherlands will run the web portal of the euro-station.
"The audience is estimated at 12 to 19 million daily listeners in the EU-27 plus around 30 million in the rest of the world. The consortium hopes to increase its EU audience to 30 million through marketing."
The Daily Mail is rather more scathing. "The European commission is so set up its own radio station for distributing EU propaganda," it reveals,
"The commission claims it will not interfere editorially, though to judge by the content of its subsidized TV station, EuroNews, it will not have to.
"EuroNews, which will see its Brussels funding double from GBP3.6million to GBP7.2 from next year, produces news and features with a Euro-federalist bias. European commission initiatives get heavy coverage."
