Station director Bob Springer, who was one of the speakers at the Rotary Club meeting yesterday, said they will stop broadcasting operations at the end of the year.
“27 years after we started broadcasting, we just realized that the world is changing and it is changing rapidly. Government deregulation and advances in communication technology have significantly reduced the demand for shortwave broadcast,” Springer said.
He recalled that when the station went on air in 1984, the program ministry was very significant to the people in China and the then-Soviet Union.
He said with four transmitters, they started broadcasting to China, the USSR and Southeast Asia.
“At the height of our broadcasting efforts, we broadcast in 24 languages and dialects, and received tens of thousands of responses from our listeners through letters, emails, phone calls, internet contacts, and text messages,” he added.
Springer said, China now has 450 million active internet users and the number is growing rapidly.
“For the last two and a half years, FEBC studied the trends in technology and the listening habits of the audience and it showed we should cease broadcast here and continue in our other facilities,” Springer said.
He said FEBC is not alone as other broadcasting giants like the Voice of America are also impacted by the new trend in technology.
Springer said he visited China in June and noticed that almost everybody has a smart phone which can download applications used communication.
“There is no more broadcasting, especially in the urban areas. Not so much in the rural areas yet, but we can expect that soon,” Springer said.
“We enjoyed the 27 years of operating here on Saipan, and the commercial side of things had been good to us. I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else, and it’s hard to leave but we know that we need to do that. We are sorry to go but we will continue broadcasting operations in the Philippines,” Springer said.
Founded in 1945, FEBC is a non-denominational, international Christian radio network that broadcasts the Good News in more than 130 languages from 128 transmitters located throughout the world.
