Radio Nacional de España

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Radio Nacional de España (RNE) (National Radio of Spain) is Spain's national public radio service. Since 1973 it has formed part of Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE), the corporation responsible for the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service and which also includes Televisión Española (TVE).

Contents

[edit] Origins of RNE

Radio Nacional de España officially came into existence in Salamanca on 19 January 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and was dependent on the recently created Delegación de Estado para Prensa y Propaganda (State Delegation for Press and Propaganda). The station's studios were in Palacio de Anaya, the headquarters of the Oficina de Prensa y Propaganda (Office for Press and Propaganda) whose first directors were also those of RNE.

The first transmitter, made by Telefunken and having a broadcasting power of 20 kW, was a gift from Nazi Germany to the Francoist Estado Nuevo.

It was then that the immense propaganda potential of radio became apparent, and beginning 14 June 1937 RNE became the nationalist’s radio masthead. Until then, this distinction had been held by Radio Castilla de Burgos, which produced the information and propaganda that all of the radio stations that had fallen into the hands of the nationalist forces had been obliged to transmit.

During this era and the early years of the Second World War, until the arrival of the Allies in Italy in 1943 and the German retreat from Stalingrad, RNE collaborated with the Axis powers to retransmit in Spanish news from the official radio stations of Germany and Italy.

[edit] RNE after the Spanish Civil War

Once the Spanish Civil War had ended, the leader of the victorious Nationalist forces General Francisco Franco passed an order on 6 October 1939 which subjected private radio broadcasts to censorship by the official political party of the state, FET y de las JONS, and which furthermore granted RNE exclusive rights to the news bulletin service.

As a consequence of this order, all broadcasters (public as well as private) had to connect with RNE to transmit the daily news bulletins that the official radio channel produced. These news bulletins, normally broadcast at midday and then again in the evening, were known as el parte (The [News] Report or Bulletin), and had a militaristic tone.

Apart from these official broadcasts, the only other sources of information available to Spaniards were the Spanish language bulletins of the BBC and Radio France Internationale, and Radio España Independiente (Independent Radio of Spain) which was a radio station created by the Communist Party of Spain that had its headquarters in Moscow (although it was known as La Pirenaica as it was thought to broadcast from somewhere in the Pyrenees [1]).

Although from the time of the Civil War there had already been foreign broadcasts in various languages, it wasn’t until April 1945 that the installation of the central short wave transmitter at Arganda del Rey (Madrid) would provide 40 kW of broadcasting power, which was very strong for this period. Foreign broadcasting thus acquired a great importance, with transmissions (in Spanish as much as in English) directed especially at America.

It was from this moment on that the slow journey of Spanish public radio began, motivated by the poor quality of the media on the one hand, and the international block on the other which impeded, until 1955, the entry of RNE into the European Broadcasting Union.

The end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s saw the introduction of advanced technologies such as frequency modulation (FM) and transmissions in stereo. A parallel commercial channel, Radio Peninsular, was also created.

[edit] The development of RNE during the 1960s and 1970s

The year 1964 saw the first major restructuring of Radio Nacional. A network of territorial broadcasting centres provided strong short wave transmissions, with a broadcasting power of between 250 kW and 500 kW, which enabled coverage to the whole of the national territory and, in certain conditions, a good part of Europe. These centers usually emitted the same signal, through being interconnected with the central studios in Madrid, although there were also local studios available to broadcast information to the territories at set hourly intervals.

In November 1965 a second channel appeared that was broadcast through a network of FM transmitters. Dedicated mostly to music, this channel took advantage of the superior quality it was afforded by this method of transmission. (The channel is today known as Radio Clásica).

In 1971, RNE inaugurated a new short wave broadcasting center for transmissions abroad. This new center, which greatly exceeded that of Arganda del Rey, was situated in the town of Noblejas in the province of Toledo. The foreign broadcasting service was subject to a complex reorganisation in 1975, strengthening transmission to Spaniards throughout the world and withdrawing transmissions in Slavic languages through the Iron Curtain.

[edit] The democratic era

The arrival of democracy to Spain after the death of Franco in 1975 produced several changes. One of these was the end, on 25 October 1977, of the private broadcasters’ obligation to connect with RNE for the transmission of daily news bulletins. From then on, each broadcaster was free to determine the content of its own news programmes.

By the end of the 1970s, the broadcasts of Tercer Programa (RNE 3), which until then had only been transmitted in Madrid, were extended to the whole of Spain. RNE 3 offered educational and cultural programming, which was enlarged to include programmes on musical themes.

Throughout the Franco dictatorship a number of semi-official radio stations (autorizadas) had functioned in parallel with the private broadcasters and RNE, and belonged to organisations such as Confederación Nacional de Sindicatos (National Confederation of Trade Unions), Movimiento, and Organización Juvenil (The Youth Organisation). These stations were dissolved and in 1981 their transmitters were incorporated into Radio Cadena Española (Spanish Radio Channel). However, some of the transmitters had to be closed down because their frequencies were not included in those assigned to Spain in the international agreements covering the distribution of the radio broadcasting spectrum.

[edit] RNE today

In 1989, Radio Cadena Española and Radio Nacional were combined to produce the current format of six themed radio channels:

  • Radio 1 – Generalist channel with a broad spectrum of mostly speech-based programming.
  • Radio Clásica (previously Radio 2) – Concerts and classical music in general.
  • Radio 3 – RNE's "young station", concentrating on pop, rock, world music, folk, and allied cultural events.
  • Ràdio 4 – Regional broadcasting in the Catalan language.
  • Radio 5 Todo Noticias – 24-hour news.
  • Radio Exterior de España – International broadcasting service in short wave that has an audience of 80 million listeners (only surpassed by the BBC and Radio Vaticana). This station is also transmitted in DAB for Spain and by satellite.

These stations are also available online at http://www.rtve.es/rne/RNE_Envivo/index.html and via podcast (see External Links below).

Integrated into the state public broadcasting body RTVE (Radiotelevisión Española) in 1973, RNE today has been assigned the role of “state public radio service, which is an essential service for the community and for the cohesion of democratic societies” [2].

Unlike its television broadcasting sister organisation, TVE, Radio Nacional is wholly financed by public funds and does not air commercials in its programming.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Espa%C3%B1a_Independiente
  2. ^ Statement on the function of RNE (last accessed on 16 April 2007) (in Spanish)