Radio Taiwan International

Radio Taiwan International (RTI; Chinese: 中央廣播電台; pinyin: Zhōngyāng Guǎngbò Diàntái) is the English name and call sign of the international radio service, the Central Broadcasting System (CBS) of the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan. It is a government-owned station that broadcasts in 13 languages around the world, with a majority emphasis on Mandarin and Taiwanese-language broadcasts over shortwave into China.

Radio Taiwan International
中央廣播電台
TypeRadio network
Country
 Republic of China
AvailabilityInternational
OwnerRadio Taiwan International
Launch date
1928
Former names
CBS, Voice of Free China, Radio Taipei International
Official website
Radio Taiwan International
Radio Taiwan International
Central Broadcasting System (the white architecture) and The Grand Hotel
Traditional Chinese中央廣播電台
Simplified Chinese中央广播电台

History
Central Broadcasting System microphone plate

The Central Broadcasting System was founded in 1928 as the voice of the Kuomintang (KMT) government quartered in Nanking on mainland China. During the Second Sino-Japanese War the KMT was forced by Japanese advances to relocate the radio station, along with the capital city, first to Hankou in the central Hubei Province and then to Chungking in south-central China.

After the conclusion of the Second World War, which saw the surrender and withdrawal of Japanese forces, the KMT and the Communist Party of China resumed their civil war. The defeated KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and the Central Broadcasting System moved with them.

See also: Broadcasting Corporation of China

Current status

After undergoing restructuring during the period 1996–98, CBS broadcast to mainland China and the rest of the world under the call sign Radio Taipei International and the Voice of Asia. Radio Taipei International essentially replaced the international radio services of the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), known as the Voice of Free China. Radio Taipei International broadcast to China and to an international audience; by contrast, the Voice of Asia was broadcast to the Asia-Pacific region only and offered a lighter format than RTI. In 2002 the Voice of Asia call sign was dropped to leave Radio Taipei International as the sole broadcasting name for the service. This was in turn changed to Radio Taiwan International, to avoid confusion on the part of listeners, who had trouble associating Taipei with Taiwan.[1]

In addition, via domestic AM radio and shortwave, CBS also broadcast three different "networks" in Chinese (mainly Mandarin and Taiwanese) to the mainland. These networks were the News Network (a news and information-oriented service), the Variety Network (a music and features-oriented service, also known as the Mandarin Programme, Taiwanese Programme, Perspective Program, or the Pop Network Programme), and the Dialect Network (programming aimed at the minorities of China). In time, the Variety Network was renamed the General Network, the News Network became the Mainland Network, and eventually the Mainland, General, and Dialect Network were merged in with Radio Taiwan International. One consequence of this was that CBS could no longer broadcast domestically over AM radio.

Broadcasting details

Radio Taiwan International broadcasts to the following countries and regions:

Programming is carried in Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Spanish, German, French and Russian (previously also in Arabic, Burmese, Mongolian and Tibetan).[2]

As of 1 July 2013, RTI terminated its shortwave broadcasts to North and South America due to budget cuts caused by the closure of WYFR, a Christian religious shortwave station which RTI leased airtime from and whose Florida transmitter RTI used to broadcast to the Americas. RTI programming was broadcast on WYFR at 5.95 MHz and 9.61 MHz between 17:00 / 18:00 hrs. Eastern until 03:00 / 04:00. After that point, Family Radio continued to host RTI's audio service to the Chinese community in the New York City area on a digital subchannel of Family Radio's television station, WFME-TV; this would end in October 2013, when the station was revamped into an international ethnic station, WNYJ-TV.

Radio Taiwan broadcasts daily in Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Taiwanese (Minnan or Hokkien), Hakka, Cantonese, English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Korean.[3]

Programs
  • Groove Zone, a general wide-ranging discussion on social matters

See also

References
  1. Official Radio Taiwan International (RTI) Website Archived 2009-02-08 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. "Radio station to target foreign community". Taipei Times. 2005-02-10. Archived from the original on 2008-12-02.
  3. "Über RTI". Radio Taiwan International. 2021-01-02.
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