[HCDX] VOA Urdu Expands to 12 1/2 Hours to Cover Pakistan Emergency

["Alokesh" <alokeshgupta@xxxxxxxxx>]

VOA Urdu Expands to 12 1/2 Hours to Cover Pakistan Emergency

PRESS RELEASE -  Washington, D.C., November 7, 2007 - The Voice of America's
Urdu Service has expanded its radio news broadcasts to 12.5 hours daily from
five hours in response to the crisis in Pakistan.
"The Pakistani government has shut down all independent media inside
Pakistan," said VOA Director Danforth Austin. "We find ourselves, along with
the BBC, among the only international broadcasters currently heard inside of
Pakistan."
VOA's Urdu Service is now broadcasting an all-news format on radio in
response to the Pakistani government's crackdown. VOA's two television
affiliates-GEO TV News and Aaj TV-are off the air inside of Pakistan.
However, VOA continues to reach the audience via radio and the Internet.
Today, VOA Urdu added an additional radio broadcast from 11:30 a.m. to 12
noon Pakistan time to supplement its 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Pakistan time
live news and current affairs programming.
Some highlights of coverage include live interviews with Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif, two former Prime Ministers of Pakistan, who were guests on the
VOA Urdu program Roundtable Discussion, as the news blackout was being
imposed in Pakistan. VOA Urdu also interviewed many Pakistani opposition
figures, including Iftekhar Gilani, spokesperson of Benazir Bhutto's party,
and religious leaders such as Qazi Hussain Ahmad, along with
man-on-the-street reaction in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, and
Islamabad.
In addition to VOA Urdu, VOA's six-hour Deewa Radio, live broadcasts in
Pashto to the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, also switched to an
all-news format to cover the crisis. Deewa has also provided extensive
coverage including the U.S. and international reaction and has interviewed a
large number of political, religious and tribal leaders inside Pakistan who
are under house arrest.
The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia
international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the
Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of
news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an
estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people. Programs are
produced in 45 languages.

For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 203-4959,
or e-mail publicaffairs@xxxxxxxx

http://voanews.com/english/About/2007-11-08-voa2.cfm
------------------------------------------
Alokesh Gupta
New Delhi, India.

---[Start Commercial]---------------------

Preorder your WRTH 2007:
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/redirect2.php?id=wrth2007
---[End Commercial]-----------------------
________________________________________
Hard-Core-DX mailing list
Hard-Core-DX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/
_______________________________________________

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
published by Michael Stutz at 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html