Radio Eden .:Radio With A Difference:.
Coverage: The main coverage of Eurobird 9 is for all of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, please refer to the map below:EB 9 is co-hosted with three other satellites Eutelsat has positioned at 13 degrees East. The Satellites are Hotbird 6, 7a and 8. Eutelsat is encouraging the option to receive satellites at the two positions with one dish using two slightly offset LNB’s (see graphic below). The main target audience are private households and cable companies who would feed programmes from the fleet into their networks. A huge number of media services are offered at this position. Please refer to the list below to evaluate the countries that can find services on either EB9 or the Hotbird satellites positioned at 13 degrees East in their native language.
At the moment Eutelsat is encouraging the use of the dual feed dish. As capacity has reached it’s limit on Hotbird 6,7a and 8 any additional service providers are forced to use EB9 instead. It is anticipated that the capacity of EB9 will be filled up shortly. This in turn will attract further use of the dual feed system. Kits to modify existing single feed dishes to dual feed are commercially available. Countries within the reception area of EB9:
Estimated population in coverage area: 1 Billion in 70 Countries The number of services offered at the Eutelsat co-location of 9 degrees and 13 degrees East are 1985. Of these services about 650 are radio stations with the remainder being TV stations. Over half of the services are free to air and can be received with any digital satellite receiver. The fact that 1/3 of the capacity at this location is filled up by Radio stations suggests that people do listen to satellite-radio. The station will be heard in broadcast quality at any time throughout the coverage area. The languages covered on EB9 and Hotbird 6,7a and 8 are: English, Italian, German, Arabic. Kosovan, Russian, Greek, Albanian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Portuguese, Thai, Urdu, Farsi (Persian), Chinese, French, Hungarian, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Slovenian, Bosnian, Polish, Armenian, Goergian, Belo-Russian, Khirgiz, Hindi, Malayan, Turkish, Somali, Romany, Kurdish, Tamil, Korean, Berber (North African Arabic Dialect), Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Azerbeijan, Catalan, Vietnamese, Korean, Tschec, Japanese, Punjabi and Hebrew The 45 different language services which are used suggest the people groups which can be reached by the satellites at this position in the sky. It is worthwhile to remember that most people groups will have at least a limited understanding of English. Amongst the younger generation in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East English has found wide acceptance. Issues and Opportunities: 1. who will listen to the programs 2. tuning to the station - how will people know where to find the station 3. other services 4. linking into national cable networks and local radio stations 5. coverage area 6. multi-language coverage i.e. offer airtime for languages other than English within the coverage area 7. bypass to censorship 8. why Eurobird 9 9. ethos 10. access to airtime 11. cost 12. final comments 1. Potential Listeners As stated in the lists above there are about 45 different languages used by the four satellites and over 70 different nations within the coverage area of EB9. The existing programmes are tailored to these groups. This suggests that representatives of all 45 languages are listening to this satellite position. It will be possible for anyone capable of receiving EB9 to tune in to the proposed radio channel. It is important to consider that the use of satellite receivers is more common in the Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa than in Western Europe and in the USA. Especially in countries with repressive regimes Satellite TV and Radio allow people to consider a different point of view to the one offered by the restricted press within the country. Furthermore, Internet use is strictly regulated and a lot of websites are blocked hence trying to reach these people groups with your message may only be achieved by wireless broadcasts either through shortwave radio or satellite transmissions since they cannot be blocked. Satellite receiving equipment has come down in price. A simple satellite receiver with a dish will cost about the same as a good Short Wave receiver. The cost can be as low as $100 for a system. 2. Tuning to the station Eutelsat advertises the stations broadcasting via their satellites – see the link below: http://www.eutelsat.com/deploy_tvLineUp/struts/loadSimpleSearchRadio.do Potential listeners will get the information to where the satellite is located i.e. on how to point the dish and the frequency for each service. Once the dual feed dish is set up, all of the 1985 services become accessible. All of Europe, most of the Middle East and North Africa can access EB9 using a small dish 75cms/ 28inches. Hence standard low cost satellite receivers and dishes can be used to access the services on EB9. Obviously your service can be advertised on the Radio Eden website and possibly on the websites of the different organisations who wish to have a presence in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. More importantly people can tune in by chance. A typical satellite receiver will recognise the transmission of the proposed Radio Station on the satellite and list the service in it’s program line up. 3. Other services Airtime to organisations using languages other than English, e.g. Spanish, French, German and Russian will be offered. We intend to reserve certain timeslots for languages used within the area. At the moment we are planning coverage for German, Russian, Arabic and then of course English. The station will be opened up for niche broadcasting i.e. broadcasts for special interest groups. So far we have invited Amateur Radio or HAM Radio organisations, Writers Clubs, Counselling Professionals and Christian Ministries to broadcast through Radio Eden. 4. Linking to cable providers and local radio stations Cable companies can be encouraged to use the contents of the radio station for their cable network free of charge. Especially in third world countries like India and possibly in the Middle East i.e. Lebanon, Egypt small private companies who have a dish farm run their own small cable networks for a neighbourhood district. There may be a chance that these providers and pipe the contents into their local media networks. 5. Coverage Area The coverage area is huge. At the periphery of the reception area a 1.8m dish is necessary which means that the most likely users on the edge of the footprint would only be cable network providers rather than private households. Most of the coverage area can be achieved by using a small 75cm dish. 6. Multilingual Area The airtime will be available for more than one language. Certain timeslots for certain languages will be offered on a weekly basis. To reach out to the Middle East the Thursday night slot is considered to be prime time. This slot is equivalent to the Saturday night slot in Europe. Hence we will broadcast in Arabic for a limited time on a Thursday night. If you are interested to reach out to the Arab world please contact us. Due to the timeshift of the footprint which is of up to 11 hours from the most western point to the most eastern point, prime time broadcast slots shift across the coverage area resulting in over 70% of the airtime to be broadcasting primetime in at least one part of the footprint. To illustrate: at 3am UK time a service catering for 7am morning programme in Pakistan can be run. If you have a specific target area please inform us so that we can find the best time for you to run your programme. 7. Censorship bypass Many countries that can be reached do apply Internet censorship, stopping materials from getting through to their citizens. Examples are: Syria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Iran and possibly some of the new states which used to be part of the former Soviet Union. Whereas Internet access can be regulated it is difficult to stop access to Satellite transmissions. If you target a particular country you can be assured that your broadcast is getting through regardless of restrictions imposed on the local media. 8. Why Eurobird 9 EB 9 is the latest pioneering project from Eutelsat. At the moment Eutelsat is actively pushing to fill up the capacity. There is a window of opportunity to establish a service on EB 9. Space on alternative satellites e.g. from Intelsat and Astra will be less effective due to the low usage and limited amount of media services they offer and the smaller footprint of the signal hence the potential audience would be a lot smaller. This satellite location is by far the most effective for most of Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East due to it’s program variety and wide coverage. The location of the satellite and it’s footprint are unrivalled. As services and airtime are filling up access will become more difficult in the future. Therefore if you have radio projects and you would like to work with us please get in touch soon to book your time slots and secure airtime. 9. Ethos Radio Eden is an ethical broadcaster and platform provider adhering to Christian principles and we are looking for like minded organisations to join us in making use of our platforms. It is our aim for our listeners to find a wealth of information and wholesome entertainment on our stations. We are committed to education, information and empowerment . We do invite and encourage educational, medical programmes, Christian or community radio projects which would be of interest to a wider audience or may be targeted to one country only. 10. Access to air-time If you are a broadcaster and you do have educational programmes or radio projects and you are looking for a platform please contact us to discuss your project. If you are based in the United States or Canada please contact Pan American Broadcasting on Tel.: 800 7262620 or 925 4269800 If you are based in Europe or the Middle East please contact Radio Eden on: Tel: +44 1226 341777 11. Cost Trying hard to keep costs down, we are fairly confident that the cost to you will be surprisingly affordable. Even if you are a small organisation access to airtime will be within your reach. Please contact us to discuss your project. 12. Final Comments As we are starting this project we are fairly flexible about airtime access, languages you use to cover the area, your preferred timeslots, frequency of your programmes, contract length and the contents you provide. In time we anticipate that our programming will be filled up and particular time-slots will become unavailable. Be in amongst the first wave of broadcasters to join our platform. The dishes below are waiting for you. (The photo below is taken over the roofs of Cairo, Egypt) We are looking forward to be on air by 1st September 2008.
English Spoken (well) English (Second Language) Other countries
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Radio Eden Ltd. – PO Box 324 – Wombwell – GB - S73 0ZT www.radioeden.com
