Mailbox
In this week's edition: Radio Prague's frequencies in Italy; Radio Prague's annual contest and monthly quizzes; a factual mistake in a Radio Prague programme. Listeners quoted: Mario Durante, Brian Evans and Steve Price.
"I live in Italy and recently I spent a holiday in Prague. So I had the opportunity to listen often to your broadcasts in English. I would like to listen to them also at home, in Italy. Could you kindly tell me on what frequencies can Radio Prague be listened to in northern Italy: I tried to tune to the frequencies you display on your site, but unsuccessfully."
Well, no one can answer that question better than our short wave expert, Olda Cip. So Olda, what can our listeners in Italy do to get a better reception?
"First of all I have to say that none of our time slots in English are directed to the Southern part of Europe, to Italy in particular. Most of our directional antennas we use for the programmes in English are directed to North-Western Europe and some are to Africa and to Scandinavia. So in theory, at least some of these programmes could be heard in Italy, but sadly, not in very good quality. So the only advice I can give to Mario is that he should try carefully all the frequencies that are available in English in Europe and he should concentrate especially on the lower frequencies that can propagate more easily to a relatively near target area in Italy."
So we wish you good luck tuning in to us. But, please don't forget that you can always listen to Radio Prague on the internet if you miss a programme or the reception is too poor. The website is www.radio.cz.
We also received an email from Brian Evans who, unfortunately, did not say where he was from. He is commenting on last week's Czech Music programme:
"I hope you don't mind me correcting you but in your article about Dvorak's music being taken to the moon - it was in fact 1969!"
Of course, you are right, it indeed was 1969, and we apologise for that mistake. To be completely fair, it was our guest in the programme who made that mistake and it also appeared in transcription on our website. It has now been corrected. In any case, on July 22 we broadcast another programme about the 35th anniversary of the first lunar landing where we, of course, got our dates right.
And finally our listener Steve Price from the United States asks:
"Will there be another contest?"
Well, Steve, what we call the Radio Prague annual contest, takes place every year, as is obvious from the name. Listeners who tune in to programmes in any of the six languages that Radio Prague broadcasts in send us short essays on a given topic and then the winner is chosen from all those. This year, the winning entry came from Helmut Matt from Germany, and it was announced in June. So, Steve you have to wait for another year for the big contest. Meanwhile, each language section at Radio Prague has their monthly competitions. We announce ours here in Mailbox, and with 2004 being Year of Czech Music, all the questions are related to Czech music, musicians, composers and so on.
That brings us smoothly to the question for the month of August, which is:
"What is the name of the famous jazz composer who was born in Prague in 1948 to the family of a famous jazz singer and a jazz musician and left Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion to make an outstanding music career in the United States?"
If you still aren't sure, I can give you a clue: he also wrote the music to the US TV series Miami Vice. I'll say no more.
Please send your answers to us by August 31st. Send them as usual to the Radio Prague English Section, 120 99 Prague 2, the Czech Republic or by e-mail to [email protected]
