Saturday, May 20, 2017

Minor Schedule Change to GCR1 Friday/Saturday Programming

Due to "restructuring" at United Nations Radio, the weekly segment Global Perspective is no longer in production. In its place, GCR1 has moved the weekly segment American Cafe from Voice of America to Saturday afternoons at 1:50 PM Eastern. UN Radio will continue to offer its other weekly segments, UN and Africa, and Gender Focus, which will continue to be heard on Saturdays at 1:30 and 1:40 PM Eastern, respectively, along with UN Daily News, Monday to Friday at 9:05 AM, and UN News in Brief, Monday to Friday at approximately 5:27 PM Eastern.

American Cafe's former time slot of 4:50 PM Eastern will now be occupied by another Voice of America weekly podcast, The Game Room. Each week, The Game Room presents some of the most interesting stories from the week in international sports.

Why do we keep changing our programming?

GCR has no desire to drop any of its existing programming. We feel that all of our programming on both streams is of the highest quality. We are proud of our program lineups, and don't want to see them change. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of our programming providers, like UN Radio, VOA, DW, and a host of other networks, radio stations, and producers from around the world. They are the ones who decide whether or not a particular program stays in production. A program may be cancelled for a variety of reasons, most of them either of a financial or personal nature, and Global Community Radio often has no say in these decisions. In the case of UN Radio and Global Perspective, GCR did take part in a recent programming survey offered to us by UN Radio, in which we gave very high praise to all of UN Radio's program offerings. Our guess is that, unfortunately, the overall response to that particular feature was not sufficient to justify its continued production.

As always, we appreciate the continued support and understanding of our partner stations and our listeners as these changes are made. We will always keep our programming schedules accurate and up to date, and you can always watch this space for the latest programming news, and other station developments as they happen.

Jason Longwell
GCR Station Manager