Changing frequencies

Following a change to its structure late last month, Polish Radio's (Polskie Radio) new board has announced that it wants to make the company the biggest player on the Polish radio market. Polish Radio, Poland's public radio corporation, broadcasts the One, Two, Three, Bis, Polonia and Parlament stations and the firm is now taking its first steps to broaden its stations' appeal.

First of all, Polish Radio wants to widen the geographical coverage of station One (whose focus is news and easy listening) to help it to compete with Radio Zet and RMF FM, the leaders in the radio market. Despite its status as a public radio station, One is currently available in only about a third of Poland's territory.

In order to make station One available across a broader swath of the country, the decision was made to broadcast it on some frequencies currently occupied by stations Two (cultural programming) and Bis (youth-and-education-oriented). This decision has met with an outcry of protest, however, from a number of artists, politicians and listeners who fear that it marks the beginning of the closure of Two.

Polish Radio's board has assured that this will not happen. "According to our estimates, station two could lose six to 10 percent of coverage, but the digital broadcast should compensate [for the loss]", says Tadeusz Fredro-Boniecki, Polish Radio's spokesman.

In addition, Polish Radio plans to concentrate more on new technologies. At the end of March it opened a mobile service which enables its public to listen to selected radio programs via mobile phones and to check programming or read the latest news. Also some programs, such an Esperanto-language program, have been moved to the internet. "The internet is now the most popular type of mass media. Our programs are now global," adds Fredro-Boniecki.