Grid: innovation or marketing?

In the overdose of information that we experience everyday, in April i found the following news:

Coming soon: superfast internet called "Grid"

Most of the articles about Grid are based on one article (April 6, 2008) of british Times. In the article you can read the words of David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project: "With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine". It's a kind of sentence that can mean everything and nothing at the same time, it sounds like an advertising of a new product. Have scientists become expert of marketing?

Not huge difference of information since another article of Guardian (July 3 2003)
Welcome to the grid: unlimited PC power at your fingertips

another article full of hype:
The Internet's over ... here comes the Grid
Daily Mirror, 7 April 2008

What is the Grid?

A very fast speed network is obviously a positive invention but what is the
content of this network? What could be the benefit for "common" people? They
didn't tell us, but they (Ian Bird, project leader for Cern's high-speed
computing project) said "It will lead to what's known as cloud computing,
where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere".
And the privacy? Who can guarantee that corporations won't search through my
private information that i could store online?

I'm not saying that the Grid is useless, probably it could be very useless,
but could anyone explain the usefulness to normal people instead of using
trendy slogans?
Is it possible to see the day when some journalists ask simple questions, instead
of just repeating/translating what they saw on the net?

In another site, at last we can read some specific information:

The EGEE Grid consists of 41,000 CPU available to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in addition to about 5 PB disk (5 million Gigabytes) + tape MSS of storage, and maintains 100,000 concurrent jobs. Having such resources available changes the way scientific research takes place. The end use depends on the users' needs: large storage capacity, the bandwidth that the infrastructure provides, or the sheer computing power available.

You can see the blog of David Britton (don't expect much because he
started blogging 1 month ago)

Al Gore tours for launching italian Current TV

from the left: Carelli (director of italian Sky news), Al Gore, translator and Marc Goldman (US Current)

Few days ago (8th May 2008) Al Gore (do i have to write he was vice president of USA from 1993 to 2000 and he won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?) was in Rome to talk about the new tv channel: italian version of Current Tv. Bloggers met Al Gore in a theatre and asked him 15 questions about the new channel (but i think that italian director Tommaso Tessarolo will have much autonomy for italian Current); i took some pictures and i listened to the "dialogue".

The italian blogosphere is full of comments about blogger's reaction to Al Gore, if you know italian language you can read the opinion of
(my friend) Antonio Pavolini
Michele Colitti
Valeria Gentile
Kay Rush
Mario Tedeschini Lalli
Vittorio Zambardino
Francesca "LaFra" Casadei
David Orban
Telemac0

I'm not going into a deep debate about the philisophy of brand-new Current Tv Italy (is the name correct?) but i have an easy complaint: not everybody (from 18 to 34 years old) can afford an annual contract with Sky Italia; less viewers, less impact on society.

The risk is that we'll have a smarter version of YouTube, as somebody already has said.

I don't know what kind of clip (or pod, like Gore said) we'll be able to see in Italy but from the blog of Foreign Policy i saw that the american version of Current has shown very interesting clips such as:
- Lost in democracy (18 minutes)

Christof Putzel travels to Bhutan to find out how young people are dealing with democracy, westernization, and other challenges to their unique national culture
- City on steroids (almost 28 minutes)
American filmmaker Adam Yamaguchi tours the little-known megacity of Chongqing, China. Growing at a rate of nearly 200,000 people per year, Chongqing is the one of the fastest growing cities on the planet and an emblem of China's rapid urbanization. The clearly overwhelmed Yamaguchi takes viewers on a quick tour of this modern boomtown from brand new yuppie apartments to factory floors
- A civil war ends? (6 minutes and half)
Short documentary on the conflict in Uganda that includes an interview with a former top Lord's Resistance Army commander who says he has no regrets about his actions

The first 2 videoclips are Current Vanguard, which means are special video not sent by "normal" users; users are only allowed to send video from 2 to 8 minutes. If italian Current will show this kind of video (which i can NOT see from the website!), i would say: two thumbs up! Anyway, doesn anyone know what's the social impact of 3 years of Current TV in USA??

Globalization of football (soccer) ownership

This season we've seen 4 teams in Champions League: 3 english teams (Man utd, Chelsea and Liverpool) and 1 spanish (Barcelona); and we now we can be sure we'll see 2 english teams (Man utd and Chelsea) for the final, scheduled on May 21st 2008, Moscow.

Who are the owners of theese teams?

Barcelona is owned by its members, they are more than 150 thousands and every four years they have the right to vote in the club’s presidential elections.

Let's see what happened in english football in the recent years:

1997 egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed bought Fulham FC

2003 russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea FC

2005 US businessman Malcolm Glazer bought all of the shares and delist Man Utd from
London Stock Exchange

2006 US entrepreneur Randy Lerner bought Aston Villa FC

2006 irish Niall Quinn bought Sunderland AFC

2006 icelandic billionaire Björgólfur Guðmundsson bought West Ham United

2007 US businessmen George Gillett and Tom Hicks bought Liverpool FC

2007 thai businessman and politician Thaksin Shinawatra bought Manchester City

All the most important teams (except Arsenal) today are owned by foreigners, probably there's a connection between the foreign investors and the first final with two english clubs.

There are several rumours that George Soros (hungarian-born US speculator and philanthropist) is going to buy Roma ; Steven Horowitz of Inner Circle Sports has been recently seen in Rome more than once, therefore someone does want to buy the club. Some newspapers wrote Soros offered about 210 million Euro for 67% of shares, which is 2,37 Euro per shares, more than double the current price. Will it be enough for the family that now owns the club?

If you don't have any idea why people like football (or soccer, if you are from USA), you can have a look at this research:

Parity and Predictability of Competitions - 2006
(you can view and download the 6-page pdf file)
3 US researchers (Eli Ben-Naim, Sidney Redner and Federico Vazquez) studied the results of nearly all regular season competitions in 4 major American professional sports leagues (Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association and National Football League) and English Premier League; they analized more than 300,000 games in over a century.
It is hard to say whether to rely on this study (they admitted "home and away games are not incorporated into our model, but game location does affect the outcome of games") or not; anyway at the end they wrote "soccer and baseball are the most competitive sports while basketball and [US] football are the least"

Italy 2006 and 2008

Italy 2008

Italy 2006

red belongs to the regions where the centreleft coalition won for the senate, blue belongs to the regions where the centreright coalition won for the senate

the maps are taken from Wikipedia, here and here

the numbers inside of the regions: the number of senators that got elected from the winning coalition (in the specific region)

you can read the results of italian general elections here: 2006 and 2008

Pulitzer Prize winners 2008 - journalism

(Adrees Latif's photo)

April 7, 2008 - Columbia University announces 92nd annual Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, letters, drama and music.

Here you can read the winners for journalism:

-Public service

Awarded to The Washington Post for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials.

-Breaking news reporting

Awarded to The Washington Post Staff for its exceptional, multi-faceted coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, telling the developing story in print and online.

-Investigative reporting

Two Prizes of $10,000 each:
Awarded to Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times for their stories on toxic ingredients in medicine and other everyday products imported from China, leading to crackdowns by American and Chinese officials
and
Awarded to the Chicago Tribune Staff for its exposure of faulty governmental regulation of toys, car seats and cribs, resulting in the extensive recall of hazardous products and congressional action to tighten supervision.

-explanatory reporting

Awarded to Amy Harmon of The New York Times for her striking examination of the dilemmas and ethical issues that accompany DNA testing, using human stories to sharpen her reports.

-local reporting

Awarded to David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for his stories on the skirting of tax laws to pad pensions of county employees, prompting change and possible prosecution of key figures.

-national reporting

Awarded to Jo Becker and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for their lucid exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful yet sometimes disguised influence on national policy.

-international reporting

Awarded to Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post for his heavily reported series on private security contractors in Iraq that operate outside most of the laws governing American forces.

-feature writing

Awarded to Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post for his chronicling of a world-class violinist who, as an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station filled with unheeding commuters.

-commentary

Awarded to Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post for his insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity.

-criticism

Awarded to Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe for his penetrating and versatile command of the visual arts, from film and photography to painting.

-editorial writing

no award

-editorial cartooning

Awarded to Michael Ramirez of Investor's Business Daily for his provocative cartoons that rely on originality, humor and detailed artistry.

-breaking news photography

Awarded to Adrees Latif of Reuters for his dramatic photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.

-feature photography

Awarded to Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor for her intimate chronicle of a family coping with a parent's terminal illness.

Decline of reading?

On November 19th 2007 the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced the release of To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, (PDF format 3.32 MB; 98 pages) a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States. To Read or Not To Read gathers statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teenagers, and adults. The compendium reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society.

Among the key findings:

- Americans are reading less

- Americans are reading less well

- The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications

On January 16th 2008, a new study (in the UK) overturns the common assumption that the "Google Generation" - youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age - is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web. The report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (PDF format; 1.67MB; 35 pages) also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.

Steven Berlin Johnson (1968) is an american popular science author and he's widely known for his book "Everything bad is good for you: How today's popular culture is actually making us smarter"; Johnson is very sceptical about about the decline of reading described in the 2 studies and he wrote it in The Guardian:

"We've been hearing about the decline of reading for so long now that it's amazing a contemporary teenager can even recognise a book, much less read one. The US (where I am) seems to be cycling through yet another "Johnny can't read" mini-panic, sparked by the release of a National Endowment for the Arts study, called To Read Or Not To Read, which chronicles in exhaustive statistical detail the waning of literary culture and its dire consequences for society. Newspapers dutifully editorialised about America's literacy crisis.

It's the sort of "our kids in peril" story - right up there with threats of MySpace predators - that plays well as a three-minute television newsbite or a three-paragraph op-ed piece. But if you actually read the report, what you find are some startling omissions - omissions that ultimately lead to a heavily distorted view of the Google generation and its prospects." full article

Director (Sunil Iyengar) of the Office of Research & Analysis at the United States' National Endowment for the Arts and former director (Mark Bauerlein) replied to Steven Johnson:

"Steven Johnson diminished the significance of reading problems in the Britain and the United States, and misrepresented our research into the issue (Dawn of the digital natives, February 7). His biggest error was to assert that "in almost every study [the US National Endowment for the Arts] city, screen-based reading is excluded from the data." full article

Mobile tv in Europe: another step for DVB-H

Good news for DVB-H (and bad news for T-DMB ?)

July 2007
Commission proposed a strategy for promoting Mobile TV across Europe.
It included the use of the open standard DVB-H as the common standard for
terrestrial Mobile TV across Europe

November 2007
The Council of Telecoms Ministers endorsed the European Commission's
strategy on Mobile TV

Today, 17/03/2008
Commission endorses addition of DVB-H to EU List of Official standards

"For Mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology. This is why I am glad that with today's decision, taken by the Commission in close coordination with the Member States and the European Parliament, the EU endorse DVB-H as the preferred technology for terrestrial mobile broadcasting," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. The next steps for implementing the EU strategy on mobile broadcasting will include guidance on the authorisation regimes as well as the promotion of rights management systems based, as is DVB-H, on open standards"

Shall I ever read Viviane Reding saying "For digital radio to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology"??

DVB-H is an open standard developed by the open Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Consortium. It is part of a family of interoperable standards that dominate digital broadcasting around the world, together with DVB-S for digital satellite TV, DVB-C for digital cable TV and DVB-T for digital terrestrial TV

Observer: most powerful blogs

Nine journalists of Observer wrote a list of the world's 50 most powerful
blogs (from Observer, March 9 2008)

1 The Huffington Post
Huffington Post is a liberal online news site and aggregated blog founded (in 2005) by millionaire Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (1950) and Kenneth Lerer
2 Boing Boing
Boing Boing was launched in January 2000 and has had an immeasurable influence on the style and idiom of blogging. But hidden among the pictures of steam-powered CD players and Darth Vader tea towels there is a steely, ultra-liberal political agenda: championing the web as a global medium free of state and corporate control
3 Techcrunch
Techcrunch began in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups in Silicon Valley, but has quickly become one of the most influential news websites across the entire technology industry. Founder Michael Arrington had lived through the internet goldrush as a lawyer and entrepreneur before deciding that writing about new companies was more of an opportunity than starting them himself. His site is now ranked the third-most popular blog in the world by search engine Technorati, spawning a mini-empire of websites and conferences as a result. Business Week named Arrington one of the 25 most influential people on the web, and Techcrunch has even scored interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain
4 Kottke
one of the early wave of blogging pioneers, web designer Jason Kottke started keeping track of interesting things on the internet as far back as 1998. The site took off, boosted partly through close links to popular blog-building website Blogger
5 Dooce
Heather B. Armstrong (1975) is an american blogger who writes her personal blog under the pseudonym of Dooce
6 Perezhilton
Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr (1978) blogs at Perez Hilton about gossip items about musicians, actors and celebrities
7 Talking Points Memo
TPM is a centre-left political blog created (in November 2000) and run by Josh Marshall
8 Icanhascheezburger
ICHC (I Can Has Cheezburger?) was created in January 2007 and it shows lolcats (images combining a photograph of an animal with a funny caption in broken english)
9 Beppe Grillo
probably the most famous blog in Italy
10 Gawker
a New York blog of 'snarky' gossip and commentary about the media industry, Gawker was founded in 2002 by journalist Nick Denton
11 The Drudge Report
it's a US-based news aggregation site (blog?) run by Matt Drudge; it became famous worldwide when it was the first to talk about Monica Lewinksy
12 Xu Jinglei
Jinglei is a popular actress in China, who in 2005 began a blog ('I got the joy of expressing myself') which within a few months had garnered 11.5m visits and spurred thousands of other Chinese to blog. In 2006 statisticians at Technorati, having previously not factored China into their calculations, realised Jinglei's blog was the most popular in the world; the blog is in chinese language
13 Treehugger
green consumer blog with a mission to bring a sustainable lifestyle to the masses
14 Microsiervos
founded in 2001, it's a spanish-language blog run by 3 guys in Madrid
15 TMZ
entertainment news, celebrity gossip and Hollywood rumours
16 Engadget
popular blog on gadgets and consumer electronics
17 Marbury
a british commentary on the 2008 US presidential race
18 Chez Pim
Pim grew up in Bangkok and she moved to San Francisco; she travels a lot and she blogs about restaurants, recipes and anything about food
19 Basic Thinking
german-language blog, recently rated the 18th most influential blog in the world by Wikio, Basic Thinking, which has the tag line 'Mein Haus, Mein Himmel, Mein Blog', is run by Robert Basic of Usingen, Germany, who aims 'to boldly blog what no one has blogged before', and recently posted his 10,000th entry
20 The Sartorialist
fashion blog run by Scott Schuman, the blog attracts more than 70,000 readers a day and has been named one of Time's Top 100 Design Influences
21 Students for a Free Tibet
global, grassroots network of students campaigning to free Tibet
22 Jezebel
celebrity, sex and fashion: a blog like a women's magazine
23 Gigazine
japanese-language blog, it's the most popular blog in Japan
24 Girl with a one-track mind
following in the footsteps of Belle de Jour – the anonymous blogger claiming to be a sex worker – the girl with a one track mind started writing in open, explicit terms about her lively sex life in 2004
25 Mashable
created by Peter Cashmore in 2005, it's a is a social-networking news blog, reporting on and reviewing the latest developments, applications and features available in or for MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and other social-networking sites and services
26 Greek tragedy
Stephanie Tara Klein's blog allows her to 'create an online scrapbook of my life, complete with drawings, photos and my daily musings' or, rather, tell tawdry tales of dating nightmares, sexual encounters and bodily dysfunctions
27 Holy Moly
latest celebrity gossip & entertainment news for UK, Hollywood & more
28 Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin, a conservative newspaper columnist and author with one of the most widely read conservative blogs in the US
29 Cranky flier
Brett Snyder is obsessed with airports and airplanes and he gives us all the information we may ever need about planes
30 Go fug yourself
comedy blog about fashion gossip run by Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks
31 Gaping void
Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist and professional blogger, known for his ideas about how "Web 2.0" affects advertising and marketing
32 DirtyDirtyDancing
pictures from parties in London (is it a blog?)
33 Crooked timber
formed as an internet supergroup, pulling several popular intellectual blogs together, Crooked Timber now has 16 members – largely academics – across the US, Europe, Australia and Asia. The site has built itself a reputation as something of an intellectual powerhouse; a sort of global philosophical thinktank conducted via blog
34 Bean sprouts
combining diary, opinion and green lifestyle tips, Beansprouts is a blog that covers one family's 'search for the good life'. Melanie Rimmer and her family of five live in a 'small ex-council house' with a garden on the edge of farmland in Poynton, Cheshire (UK)
35 The offside
UK-based blog covering football leagues globally
36 Peteite Anglaise
bored at work one day in 2004, expat secretary Catherine Sanderson happened upon the concept of blogging. With a few clicks and an impulse she created her own blog, and quickly gathered fans who followed her life in Paris, the strained relationship with her partner and adventures with her toddler
37 Crooks and liars
founded in 2004 by John Amato, it's a progressive/liberal-leaning political blog
38 Chocolate and zucchini
it's a blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier, a 28-year-old Parisian woman who lives in Montmartre and shares her passion for all things food-related -- thoughts, recipes, musings, cookbook acquisitions, quirky products, nifty tools, restaurant experiences, ideas, and inspirations
39 Samizdata
written by a bunch of anarcho-libertarians, tax rebels, Eurosceptics and Wildean individualists, it has a special niche in the political blogosphere: like a dive bar, on the rational side of the border between fringe opinion and foam-flecked paranoid ranting
40 Andrew Sullivan - The daily dish
Andrew Sullivan (1963) is an english man living in US and he's been blogging since 2000; he supported Bush in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and he's supporting Barack Obama now
41 The f word
contemporary UK feminism
42 Jonny B's private secret diary
growing in popularity since its debut in 2003, Jonny B's diary catalogues the rock and bowls lifestyle of one man in the depths of rural Norfolk
43 Popjustice
founded in May 2000, the most famous blog about pop music
44 Waiter rant
rant isn't quite the right word for this collection of carefully crafted stories from the sharp end of the service industry in a busy New York restaurant. 'The Waiter', as the author is known, has been blogging his experiences with fussy customers and bad tippers since 2004, winning a gong at blogging's biggest awards, the Bloggies, in 2007
45 Hecklerspray
sharply written and often laugh-out-loud funny, Hecklerspray has been called the British alternative to Perez Hilton, but it's different in important ways: the emphasis here is on style and wit, with a stated aim to 'chronicle the ups and downs of all that is populist and niche within the murky world of entertainment'
46 WOW Insider
blog about the World of Warcraft, the role-playing game
47 AngryBlackBitch
Angry Black Bitch, which has the tagline, 'Practising the Fine Art of Bitchitude', is the four-year-old blog of Shark Fu of St Louis, Missouri
48 Style bubble
Susie Bubble lives in London and she blogs about fashion
49 After Ellen
news, reviews & commentary on lesbian and bisexual women in entertainment and the media
50 Copyblogger
Copyblogger was founded in 2006 by Brian Clark, who blogs about copywriting skills

London is not calling anymore (on shortwave)

The BBC decided to stop broadcasting BBC World Service to Europe on shortwave (with amplitude modulation) on 18th February 2008: after decades it's an end of an era.

This is the statement from BBC official site:

"Shortwave changes for Europe February 2008

The remaining BBC World Service shortwave transmissions* to Europe closed on 18th February 2008.

This change was made in line with listener trends in radio. Increasing numbers of people around the world are choosing to listen to radio on a range of other platforms including FM, satellite and online, with fewer listening on shortwave.

This is particularly the case in Europe, where the majority of shortwave transmissions ceased in March 2007. The current closures affect the remaining transmissions heard in southern Europe.

Please note these changes also affect English short wave transmissions to North Africa.

* Digital shortwave radio (DRM - Digital Radio Mondiale) for north-east continental Europe will not be affected "

BBC World Service (called BBC Empire Service) started on December 1932 and it gained a lot of credibility through years, becoming a real legend. In a time of dictators ruling several countries in Europe, BBC offered news in many languages (" by the time war ended in 1945, the BBC was offering programmes in 45 languages worldwide"); and the purpose of BBC was not propaganda: "unlike the american stations, for instance, the BBC did not encourage the Hungarians' failed uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956".

The Guardian wrote about the shutdown and we can read:

"There comes a point where the shortwave audience in a given region becomes so small that spending money on it can no longer be justified," the World Service said.

and

"It is a landmark in as much that the BBC and other international broadcasters have been using shortwave for the last three-quarters of a century and it is now coming to an end," said Simon Spanswick, the chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting, the industry association for the international broadcast community.

"Everybody now has to use different ways to engage listeners. Nobody in the developed world listens on noisy, crackly shortwave anymore," Spanswick added.

New York Times didn't miss the news and added:

“Europe is very developed and so is America,” said Michael Gardner, a spokesman for BBC World Service. “Shortwave is not the best way of reaching those audiences there. They all have FM, AM stations close by. Some of them have satellites, or they can pull it down on their TV screens and there are alternatives online. There are lots of ways of interacting with the BBC.”

and

Andy Sennitt, a media specialist with the Dutch public broadcaster, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, said that he got his start 30 years ago working on BBC shortwave broadcasts and had mixed feelings about the end of the transmissions.

“For die-hard shortwave listeners, this is negative,” he said. “What they don’t understand is the huge cost of powering transmitters. The cost of diesel fuel has doubled.”

Don't miss this post of a blog where there are more than 30 interesting comments.

In 1932 Christmas Message (the message was written by Rudyard Kipling) King George V used BBC saying:

"I speak now from my home and my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them".

Today people cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea do need a satellite dish or an Internet connection

European Union on the air

In April 2008 European Union will have its own network of radio stations working in a consortium. Good, but who is missing?
So far Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Sweden are out of the project. Finland and the UK don't seem very interested: their radio stations aren't proper members but only associate radio stations.
It would be interesting asking BBC and (italian) Rai why they didn't join the project.

The press release is available from the official site of Ms Margot WALLSTRÖM, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for institutional relations and communication strategy, you can see her blog here

Brussels, 26 February 2008

Europe on the air: a network of European radio stations is launched

From April 2008 on, day in and day out, 16 radio stations from 13 countries working in a consortium and 7 associate radio stations will co-produce and simultaneously broadcast programmes devoted to current affairs and society in the Europe of 27

Broadcast daily, the programmes of this EUROPEAN network will include daily news reports, interviews, debates, magazines looking at subjects in greater depth and coverage of live events. The first broadcasts will go out in April 2008.

Initially, broadcasts will be in 10 languages (Bulgarian, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish), but they will gradually expand to the 23 languages of the EU.

This network is open to all kinds of national, regional, local, public or private radio stations, and already ranges from "Radio Polskie" to "Punto Radio" (Spain), via "Deutsche Welle", "Radio Netherlands", "Radio France Internationale" and "Radio Slovenia International".

Other radio stations can join the network if they meet the rules laid down by the consortium.

The interactive nature of this daily programme lasting between 30 and 60 minutes will also be enhanced by the launch of a common internet portal in July 2008.

On 28 February 2008, Ms Margot WALLSTRÖM, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for institutional relations and communication strategy, welcomed the support which the European Commission intends to give to the European consortium of radio stations for five years from its launch.

On 14 December last the Commission signed a service contract for € 5.8 million per annum with the consortium coordinated by "Deutsche Welle" and RFI following the Invitation to Tender of 14/07/2007. The strictest respect for the consortium's editorial freedom is guaranteed by an editorial charter.

Messrs. Erik BETTERMANN, Antoine SCHWARZ and Jan HOOK, respectively Presidents of Deutsche Welle, RFI and Radio Netherlands International, stressed to the press in Brussels the unique, enriching experience which the contributions and broader perspective of the consortium partners will bring to the citizens of the 27 countries of the EU in lively, well documented programmes on questions relating to Europe.

Members of the consortium on 26 February 2008

Germany Deutsche Welle
France RFI
Netherlands Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Spain Punto Radio
Poland Polskie Radio Warsaw
Poland Polskie Radio Szczecin
Belgium RTBF
Bulgaria Bulgarian National Radio
Czech Republic Czech Radio
Greece Skai Radio
Hungary Hungarian Radio
Romania Radio Romania International
Slovenia Radio Slovenia International
Portugal Europa Lisboa

Associate radio stations (not members of the consortium who can relay whatever subject they wish)

UK CUR 1350 Cambridge University
Germany Hochschulradio Aachen
Germany TIDE Radio Hamburg Media School
Germany CampusRadioBonn - Bonn University
France Radio Campus Paris
France Eur@dionantes
Finland Radio Moreeni - Tampere University