Russia: Audience for Foreign Radio Stations Falling

Text of report by Russian news agency RIA

Moscow, 9 August: A recent public opinion poll shows that foreign radio voices broadcasting to Russia have lost most of their audiences.

Radio Liberty is the only one keeping afloat, reports Comcon-2 [Russian media and market research company] on the results of a June radio monitoring survey. It is 28th on the list of popular radio stations in Moscow (1.2 per cent of the audience).

The other radio stations are quickly approaching zero: The BBC Russian Service is only 33rd (0.5 per cent) and the Voice of America, 36th (0.4 per cent).

When the Iron Curtain was lifted, the foreign radio voices failed to find a new niche in conditions of harsh competition with the Russian media.

The simplest explanation is technical: Foreign radio stations mostly broadcast not in the popular FM and VHF bands, which have been divided between Russian radio stations, but in the MF [mediumwave] band.

But there are also other reasons. In particular, Russia is fighting terrorism now, and the audiences here are offended by the choice of words by Western radio stations and their allegedly neutral attitude to crimes of terrorism. In particular, they described the terrorists who took hostage children and adults in a Beslan school in September 2004 as “rebels.”

The radio voices have ceased to be objective sources of information, and the catastrophic loss of their audiences is the inevitable result.