EU to fund pan-European radio station

Radio fans will from next year onwards be able to tune in to a new pan-European station, to be set up by a multinational group of broadcasters and funded by the European Commission. The ‘European Radio Project’ (ERP) – a consortium of 16 radio stations from 13 member states – will from April 2008 onwards bring programmes ‘from a European point of view,’ according to plans seen by EUobserver.

The project, to be officially signed off this Friday (14 December), will see the ERP group jointly producing daily half-an-hour EU ‘hard news’ shows, weekly magazines and coverage of big European cultural events.

The programmes will be broadcast on the usual frequencies of the participating radio stations, as well as through a new ERP internet site, which will be in the air from June onwards.

Participants include internationally operating public broadcasters such as Germany’s Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Radio Netherlands Worldwide, as well as Poland’s Polskie Radio and Spain’s Radio Punto.

Belgian, Czech, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Slovenian channels are also taking part in the scheme, which is open to further participants in future.

Original content for the radio shows will initially be produced in five ‘core’ languages – English, French, German, Spanish and Polish – and will be translated into Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese and Romanian.

More core languages and translated versions will be added in the coming years so that by 2012, all official 23 EU languages should be covered.

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.

Source: EU Observer via today’s EJC’s Media News