Radio Canada International

From HFUnderground

A bit of a late comer to international broadcasting among the fighting countries of World War II, Canada set up the CBC International Service. It was later rebranded as Radio Canada International, RCI.

The interval signal used was the first four notes of O' Canada" on a piano, sometimes on an autoharp. A theme song, "Vive la Canadienne" arranged by Lee Gagnon was commonly used in addition to the start of transmission interval signal.

The main studios proper were in Montreal with the transmitting station in Sackville, New Brunswick. The Sackville station had the callsign CKCX.

Foreign language programming was based in Montreal while the English and French language external broadcasts were sometimes specially produced in the Montreal studios for external consumption. In addition RCI often relayed domestic programming produced in CBC studios in other Canadian cities or foreign bureaus.

Over the years, proposals for funding increases, and new languages and even an additional transmitter site in British Columbia have been floated. But changing technology and political climates dictated major funding cuts over the years. The end of shortwave transmissions in June 2012 effectively spelled the end of any effective way in implementing the mandate RCI was created for.

More recently, the separate RCI website was shutdown and became an internal page buried within the main CBC website.

Having lost the medium for which RCI was created for, its existence, while officially in still in operation, has been reduced to a token existence as a mere formality.

References and links

Wikipedia article links:

Radio Canada International[:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Canada_International]

CKCX - Saskville Transmitting Station [1]