Radio Netherlands Signoff in Style

Radio Netherlands Signoff, a photo by Jonathan Marks on Flickr.

Just got back from watching the very last hour of broadcasting in English from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Holland's external broadcasting service which signed off today on shortwave, satellite, and the live audio webstream. Holland has no external broadcasting service as from July 1st 2012. International broadcasting is being taken out of the public mandate, made to create international and national public broadcasting. 

Dheera Sujan presented this final show, which was a farewell and thank you to listeners worldwide. Grabbed a copy from the Dalet machine as it was playing out and put it here. 

Also thought it might be nice to do a couple of interviews and run an audio recorder in the booth while the sign-off happened. So I did. UPDATE: Kai Ludwig in Germany sent me a capture from the satellite on Saturday so I mixed that in too. The results are posted on the Media Network vintage site here. 

Message at the gate of Radio Netherlands tonight

eery empty newsroom

Continuity centre - also empty

Last trasmnission in English is scheduled from the playout system

The RN Madagascar Relay Station calendar. Rather ominous date is ringed

Shortwave radio tuned to a special frequency for Europe (from Germany). Actually not for the last  English broadcast that was 6065 kHz

Let's head for the newsroom

Rob Kievit, producer for the final day in English from Radio Netherlands

Almost the end. 5 minutes to go.

waiting for Dheera Sujan to sign-off before adding a live ending

Jonathan Groubert closes the station for the last time

fader closes for the last time

one quick last toast of champagne

then its scrambling through the empty car park for the last train

RNW earlier this year

The RNW building has come in to land (looks like an aircraft from the air).

I thought they might video the event, but apparently the public relations department didn't think it was worth it. Oh well. There are photos on Flickr instead.