Finally - Off On Holidays

Guess where we are going?

We are off to Alaska. We just needed a get away and where better to go than on a cruise. We have never been to Alaska or on a cruise for that mater so it's going to be an adventure. Of course, we have never been to Beirut or anywhere in Africa either but don't plan on going there any time soon.

What's Ricefield Radio going to be doing when we are gone?

We hope that it will continue on automatically. That's the wonder of the new Radio automation software it's almost robotic. We have it set to a playlist of over 1250 select songs from creative commons so they will only repeat every 6 or 7 days.

What programs will I miss?

DemocracyNow! will not air unfortunately. We have tried everything possible but we cannot automate the download of DN. You can however follow this link to their website at http://www.democracynow.org/ where you can download all the programs.

What about News and Weather?

We will have Free Speech Radio News, our regular syndication, at the top of every hour as usual. Thai headline news is not available
during our vacation. We did look into satellite time to download an audio file but felt that 26.8 Baht a minute was a bit excessive for our budget.

We have however figured out a way to automatically give you Up to date periodical Temperature and Humidity announcements throughout the day.

More Government Censorship

Drawn from an Editorial in the Bangkok Post - Published: 15/05/2009 at 12:00 AM the following was broadcast on RFR's Thai News One Today.

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The National Telecommunications Commission requested Wednesday for permission to govern the content of every community radio and satellite TV station.

The commission proposes to place a whole new set of public broadcasters under its control, including monitoring and censoring the broadcasts themselves.

It is disturbing that the government has apparently leapt to support the commission's request, without any public input or parliamentary discussion.

The country has the word of the PM's Office Minister Sathit that the NTC would only take action if broadcasters used "politically incendiary" statements.

Well NTC, if you are bothering to monitor our little station we have this to say.

We have talked to other community stations and they all agree. This is another case of government interference and they are trying to stifle the thoughts and actions of the community stations by putting in more vague rules that they can use to force community broadcasters, that don't agree with them, to toe the government line or be shut down. It is totally unacceptable in this day and age. It is a breach of the constitution and out right violation of our and our listeners rights.

Radio stations have to have the right to report what is happening, Now, in the community without interference or approval from the Government before we air newscasts or weather alerts.

Ricefield Radio now to Rebroadcast Democracy Now.

Today we inked an agreement and Ricefield Radio has been selected as the first radio station in SE Asia to rebroadcast the award winning Democracy Now.

Democracy Now! is helping to build a truly public media, while producing consistent, quality journalism. A daily one hour TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 750 stations Worldwide, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S. Ricefield Radio will rebroadcast Democracy Now at 11:00pm Tuesday to Saturday (Thai Time).