Radio Canada International has "abandoned Ukraine" (03/06/05)

Radio Canada International has "abandoned Ukraine"

by Christopher Guly
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA - As Radio Canada International celebrated its 60th anniversary on February 25, the RCI Action Committee, which represents announcer-producers, journalists, news editors, technicians and support staff, has called for the restoration of RCI's Ukrainian-language service's daily programming schedule.

On January 28 - just five days after President Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration - the 53-year-old Ukrainian section stopped broadcasting on weekdays and now only produces a total of one hour of programming on weekends.

Announced by Montreal-based RCI a year ago, the cut was delayed until the end of the Ukrainian presidential election.

Gone is a 30-minute Ukrainian program broadcast seven days a week at 7 p.m. Ukrainian time - with daily news - and heard by an estimated audience of more than 2 million listeners.

Instead, Ukrainians only get to hear RCI's Ukrainian service for a half-hour on Saturday and for the same amount of time on Sunday. Since both shows are pre-recorded on Friday, there is also no newscast.

"The minute you break a habit of loyal listeners, you're going to have a hard time bringing those people back," said 25-year veteran RCI announcer-producer Wojtek Gwiazda, who also serves as spokesman for the RCI Action Committee.

"On top of that, the Ukrainian programs are no longer on short wave, which means that, in effect, RCI has stopped broadcasting to Ukraine and to neighboring countries that could pick up the short-wave signal," he explained.

Mr. Gwiazda said that Ukrainians now will have to mostly rely on either catching the RCI Ukrainian service over the Internet or on cable in major cities. But listeners will have to subscribe to the cable service, heard on National Radio Company of Ukraine's (NRCU's) Channel 3, and have a radio that supports cable transmission.

And while RCI's Ukrainian programs are also available on the airwaves, only two of the 25 regions of Ukraine (around the Kyiv area and in Chernivtsi) have transmitters that are operational.

"In effect, RCI has abandoned Ukraine. You've got a Saturday program and a Sunday program that's not heard in much of the country," said Mr. Gwiazda. "It appears that RCI is cutting away at the Ukrainian service until there are no listeners. "And then the question becomes: Why should we keep it? "

Even before the Ukrainian presidential election results were finalized, the Quebec Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress noted that it was "most definitely not a time to be cutting back" on RCI programming to Ukraine as the country was moving toward a new era of democracy.

"It is a time to increase such programming," said Rev. Ihor Kutash, president of the UCC's Quebec council.

In a November 5 letter to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, UCC President Orysia Sushko said that Ukrainians "regard Canada as an example of a truly democratic nation that encourages freedom of speech and the nurturing of one's heritage.

"They require our constant support ... which is provided by the daily RCI Ukrainian program that miraculously keeps them from giving up in their struggle for a truly democratic nation," she wrote.

However, in a February 7 letter to the Rev. Kutash, Robert Rabinovitch, president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) and its French-language public broadcasting counterpart, Radio-Canada - which oversees RCI - said the decision to reduce the Ukrainian service's schedule is "final."

Mr. Gwiazda, who hosts and produces the RCI's English-language news and current affairs program to India, would like to know "who's making these decisions" and "who's giving them this mandate to make changes."

He said that since RCI is "Canada's voice to the world," the Department of Foreign Affairs "in theory should have a say in terms of where we broadcast to," while the Department of Canadian Heritage provides funding to the CBC, including RCI.

"Both of those departments bounce it around saying, 'We're not really involved in RCI. CBC makes the editorial decisions,' " Mr. Gwiazda noted. "Yet, CBC is a domestic broadcaster and there's a basic lack of understanding of the concept of international broadcasting.

"Through our news and current affairs programming, somebody in another country who knows nothing about Canada can understand what's going on here. RCI is often the very first time people hear about Canada," he said.

Mr. Gwiazda questions whether RCI management even fully comprehends the international radio service's mission.

He said that when it was promoting its new Portuguese program to Brazil last year (launched when the cuts to the Ukrainian service were revealed), RCI announced that it was "repositioning its programming to provide listeners with a unique North American perspective."

Two years ago, the RCI Action Committee appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and called for an amendment to the federal Broadcasting Act that would outline RCI's mandate to, in part, develop "international awareness of Canada."

Another example of RCI's misplaced priorities, according to Mr. Gwiazda, is a recent contest called "Rediscover the World!" The prize: a trip to one of 18 international destinations - and "not one to Canada," the RCI Action Committee says on its website (www.geocities.com/rciaction).

"[The contest] would almost seem that the service is targeting Canadian citizens who want to travel, rather than RCI's foreign listeners who tune in to the station for Canadians news. (And yet, broadcasting to Canadians abroad is no longer part of RCI's mandate)," the Action Committee notes.

Mr. Gwiazda said that RCI's "increasingly mangled mandate" is highlighted in the cut to the Ukrainian service, which, during the 1990s, had as many as five staff members and a 60-minute daily time slot compared to its current two staff members (announcer-producers Lina Gavrilova and Luba Demko) and 60 minutes of programming per week.

Not only are Ukrainians left with far less Canadian content, they have fewer ways to hear what little content there is since RCI's Ukrainian service is no longer available on short wave, noted Mr. Gwiazda.

"It's great that we use satellite, digital and Internet technology to have access to all kinds of audience. But there are 800 million radios capable of picking up short wave around the world," he explained.

"Some people have this mentality that short wave is old technology and that we have to prove that we're modern, otherwise the federal government might think we're obsolete," he continued. "Short wave is like the telephone. It's been around forever. It still works, and it's still the fastest, cheapest way to get information from one person to another. But they just don't get it."

Mr. Gwiazda, 52, has spent more than a decade questioning whether RCI brass fully understands the international radio service's purpose. He was a member of the Coalition to Restore Full RCI Funding (renamed the RCI Action Committee four years ago), which fought attempts by the CBC to shut RCI down in 1991, 1995 and 1996.

The first round was the bloodiest.

In 1990, RCI had a $20 million annual budget and was broadcasting in 14 languages, and reaching at least 16 million short-wave listeners worldwide, compared to the current audience of between 2 million and 6 million, said Mr. Gwiazda.

In 1991 half of RCI's language services were cut, including Polish (Mr. Gwiazda's ethnic heritage), Japanese, German and Portuguese (the latter has since been restored).

RCI currently broadcasts in nine languages, including English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese and Ukrainian.

Since 1997 its annual budget has been $15 million (about $12 million U.S.) in public money - a modest amount that could, without touching programming, ensure that Canada's voice to the world is heard, Mr. Gwiazda underscored. "In a country of over 30 million people, we're talking about less than 50 cents a person - or the price of a cheap cup of coffee per year."

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