The voice of Czechia that circled the globe: A look behind the scenes at Radio Prague International (8)
Czech Radio’s international service is celebrating its 90th anniversary. What is Radio Prague International like today? How has it changed and who are the people behind it?
Radio Prague International has been the voice of the Czech Republic around the world for 90 years. In previous instalments, we explored in detail its rich and often turbulent history, which reflected the tumultuous events of the 20th century. But what is the service talking about today, and how? Who actually prepares the daily radio programmes, and what challenges does the service face in the age of modern technology and geopolitical upheaval? We went straight to the heart of the action to capture the authentic atmosphere of the morning editorial meeting, interview the heads of the individual language sections and find out for whom these reports are often the only reliable source of information. Join us for a fascinating tour of the place where the media image of our country is shaped in seven different languages.
Morning editorial meeting: seven languages around one table
It is nine in the morning and an editorial meeting is underway on the fourth floor of the Czech Radio building. Representatives of all the language sections – Czech, German, French, English, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian – are sitting around the table. Station editor-in-chief Klára Stejskalová quickly takes the floor and sets the work day in motion. Within moments, topics ranging from Czech Olympic medallists and the restored version of Věra Chytilová’s Panelstory to an interview with a Mexican stand-up comedian performing in Prague are flying around the room.
Each of the services has its loyal listeners, for whom the radio is often the only solid source of verified information from Czechia. “When something happens, like during the Covid period, when there are floods, when something current is happening, our website traffic rises significantly... be it in German, Spanish or French. At such a time we are definitely a very unique source of information about the Czech Republic,” explains editor-in-chief Klára Stejskalová.
The editors’ task is not simply to skim over the facts, but to provide deeper context for neighbouring countries as well as more distant nations. “We report a lot on Czech-German and Czech-Austrian relations, which I also enjoy, because there is no other medium that broadcasts regularly, or even daily, from Czechia to Germany or Austria,” says editor Ferdinand Hauser, adding a lighter example of his work: “I am currently working on a piece about the testing of sirens, which is something of a Czech phenomenon... This doesn’t happen in Germany on the same scale, every month across the whole country.”
Anna Kubišta also speaks about the complexity of explaining Czech realities. According to her, international broadcasting cannot go into as much detail as domestic news. “We try to explain the situation, to sum it up, to make some kind of synthesis; we have to explain it to them in some way,” she points out, referring to the specific nature of an international audience.
From shortwave nostalgia to censorship
For an incredible 90 years, the radio has been an invisible link reaching into very distant corners of the world. While the internet dominates in Europe, Spanish remains one of the last languages whose signal is still transmitted to Latin America via traditional shortwave. It is received and rebroadcast by a station in Miami.
“Because of that, people still listen to us on shortwave even in Argentina... I recently dealt with two people who are the grandson or great-grandson of some Czech who emigrated there 100 or 80 years ago, and they are looking for other relatives here, or they simply want to tell their story,” explains Daniel Ordoñez, head of the Spanish service, describing the moving stories of Czechs and their descendants in Latin America.
The Russian service faces entirely different challenges. It was established in 2000, when many people believed in a more modern and open political direction. Today, however, it operates in an environment of tight information controls, and the Russian government considers Radio Prague an enemy. “In Russia, we are officially blocked... I think we are really fighting to keep our listeners there and so we work under slightly different conditions: we are blocked and we simply try to get through. We are succeeding, although on a smaller scale,” stresses editor Olga Vasinkevič, describing the continuing effort to deliver objective news through mirror websites and Telegram networks.
Internet and podcast pioneers
Radio broadcasting has long set the pace in technological innovation as well. Radio Prague International was the first media organisation in the country to set up its own website, back in 1994, at a time when the public had practically no idea what the “internet” was.
“When I first heard about the internet... I immediately realised that this was an incredible opportunity .. At that time I was actually dealing with how to cut our budget, about 50 percent of which went on shortwave transmitters,” recalls then-director Dušan Pálka, describing the discovery of a cheaper alternative. Initially, news was sent to subscribers on floppy disks in purely text form via email. An amusing paradox was that among the first grateful subscribers was the US CIA, for whom the digital text massively reduced the workload of transcribing recordings.
Another major milestone came several years later. The radio became a pioneer of a format that was completely unknown at the time. “Podcasts, I know that we started doing them in 1998-99... It was downloading these podcasts, that is, audio files, using RSS feeds,” says former director Miroslav Krupička, highlighting how far ahead of its time the newsroom was. The transformation in distribution also brought a generational change among listeners. “We were slowly losing one audience, but we were building another audience,” Krupička adds. The result of this visionary openness is today’s astronomical eight million visits a year.
But the station did not live by daily news alone and was not afraid to venture into more demanding artistic genres.
“I happened to discover that this short play by Vaclav Havel existed and that it had never been translated into English. And I thought to myself, this is a 20-minute radio play that is perfectly suited to Radio Prague’s format,” David Vaughan explains the background to the creation of a unique international radio adaptation of Václav Havel’s play Guardian Angel.
QSL cards as an artistic item and collectors’ passion
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The station, however, is not built solely on editors and modern technology. Its unmistakable soul remains its listeners, who maintain an intense, often lifelong connection with their favourite voices.
“I am originally from Benin and I have been listening to Radio Prague since 2006. I started sending reception reports to Prague right away. And in return, I received QSL cards,” says listener Romano Bayou from West Africa.
Reception reports and the QSL cards that followed, which originally served as essential technical confirmation of shortwave reception quality, have lost their primary function, but have become all the more of a collectors’ phenomenon. Today, the exclusive designs of these cards are created by contemporary artists, such as illustrator Kristýna Marková.
“I see it as a great joy and an honour that I can use visual expression to represent our public-service medium abroad,” Marková says about her work.
A new themed set is issued every year, reliably generating excitement among loyal listeners on the other side of the world. Jorge Bustos Alarcón of Chile knows this well; over decades of faithfully tuning in to Czech broadcasts, he has amassed a fantastic collection of 466 cards.
“Getting a QSL card was always the fulfilment of a dream. My favourite card is the one of Prague Castle that I received on June 5, 1995,” concludes the proud South American collector, bringing to a close this remarkable story of a connection spanning continents.
And the station will further build on that tradition with a forthcoming anniversary edition marking 90 years on the air in August of 2026.
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