BBC World Service News

Through the end of September WCPE will continue to offer, live from London, BBC News 10 times a day. The BBC, known world-wide for its exellence in objective reporting, has been aired on WCPE since our inception in 1978. Listen to 5 minutes of BBC World Service News on WCPE at these times: midnight, 3am, 6am, 7am, 8am, noon, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 10pm (Eastern).

August 30, 2002

Dear WCPE Listeners,

In July of 1978, WCPE Radio pioneered the broadcasting of the BBC World Service News in the United States. "Auntie" was part of this station from day one. In those early days, WCPE received the BBC via shortwave radio, and WCPE became one of BBC's official relay partners. I can still rattle off the list of frequencies to which we tuned our R-390 shortwave receivers.

Of course, WCPE had a written agreement with the BBC to allow these unique rebroadcasts. We became friends with many of the BBC staff, and several times, announcers from the BBC visited WCPE and even recorded announcements and promos for WCPE.

The BBC news was read live, and mistakes that happen on live radio can't be covered up: A news reader once said "It is a minor injury, though; the bullet is in her yet." Another announcer, fighting incipient laryngitis that you could hear getting worse by the minute, finally fell silent and could not voice the word "news" as he heroically attempted to conclude the newscast with "That's the end of the world news."

Despite the rare tongue-twister and sometimes unreliable shortwave reception, the BBC World Service News became a valued part of this station. So valued, in fact, that other stations across the nation began to consider the BBC news for themselves. When a high-quality feed became available to the US about ten years ago, our shortwave problems ended, and taking our lead, other public stations decided they wanted the BBC, too.

Several years ago, the BBC became partners with a radio programming distributor here in the United States. We understand that their new agreement gave the distributor sole rights to the BBC in the United States, and no new US service could add the BBC without making arrangements with this distributor.

It is important at this point to review how WCPE operates: WCPE plays all of our music programming here at our studios directly from compact discs, and live announcers host our programming and run the station around the clock. Today, this is unique in radio. Call almost any station after weekday business hours; you'll likely get an answering machine.

Because we don't believe in having a computer host your music, and because we do all of our own work, we have no reason to pay a public radio network to do for us what we do better ourselves. As more people discover WCPE, we prove to be a fresh voice to them. Would it benefit anyone if we were just an echo of the same radio programming that you can hear everywhere else?

We share WCPE over the Internet, with home satellite listeners, and with cable listeners. We even share WCPE with other community and non-profit organizations by allowing them to rebroadcast our station without charge or obligation. We don't really know how many people listen to WCPE on these new outlets, but anywhere in the USA, WCPE is available one way or another.

This growing national listenership of WCPE has made it necessary to defend the validity of the near-thirty year old BBC rebroadcast agreement several times during the past few years. Even though the BBC News is a part of WCPE's programming, and even though all who carry WCPE retransmit us identically as one hears us on 89.7 FM in North Carolina (they hear the exact same WCPE as everyone here in Raleigh does) it has become increasingly difficult for WCPE to defend our old agreement with the BBC.

The old friends we had at the BBC are gone; one of our greatest proponents on the staff of the BBC died earlier this year. We've given much effort to finding a solution to this problem but our best offer was just declined. We have too many new listeners on cable systems and radio stations across the USA and in the Caribbean and that seems not to please some people.

Now that WCPE is the most-listened-to internet public radio station in the world (according to MeasureCast) we worried that it was only a matter of time before someone would upset the apple cart and our old one-page agreement would have its "notice of revocation" clause activated.

I really started worrying when the BBC dropped shortwave service to the United States a year ago. Whether that is related or not is speculation. Regardless, in a few days, the BBC News will no longer be heard on WCPE. The notice of revocation of permission to rebroadcast BBC as we have been was given to me on August 13th; it takes effect at the end of September, 2002.

I suppose some good will come of this: We'll be able to bring you an extra hour of Great Classical Music every day in place of the news summaries; and we won't have to worry about the length of a symphony as we cross the top of the hour, and we can devote all of our efforts and talents to bringing you Great Classical Music 24 hours a day where ever you may live or travel.

But it will be hard to say goodbye to an old friend when I hear the last time on WCPE -- "That's the end of the world news".

Sincerely,

Deborah S. Proctor
General Manager

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