Oh, no ICRT has removed the 8 pm BBC news and replaced them with easy news. The refreshing clear british accents from the beep has been replaced with some north american bloke reading stale news very slowly. As a matter of fact, I would fall asleep if it wasn’t because I usually drive home to YM at that time of day. Now we just need that they replace their broadcast of BBC’s “The World Today” between 6-7 AM. I usually listen to that during my morning commute and find it an excellent way of starting the day. If that goes my 2 last reason for listening to them has dissappeared :x .
Is ICRT trying to become some broadcast buxiban? How to we stop the dumbing down of that sorry radio station?
On a similar note, does anyone know the frequency of the daily BBC World Service News. Its an AM signal broadcast by the Taipei School of Journalism or some such thing.
I have never liked ICRT. I haven’t tuned in for a couple of years because I felt the obnoxious babble of DJs far outweighed the music, particularly when you factor in traffic reports and other noise.
A few years back I was listening to the radio in California when the DJ announced, “northern California’s best Rock!!!” before launching into some lame teeny-bopper pop hit, so I called the station and asked how could he do that – did he really think that crap was northern California’s best Rock? Surprisingly, the DJ admitted that, no, he didn’t like the music either but most listeners are 13 or 14 year-old girls and he just plays what they like. Isn’t ICRT doing the same?
Yep, ICRT is definitely going down the drain–instead of International Community Radio in Taipei, the focus is more and more geared towards students learning English. Around 3 to 5 years ago, ICRT was at its peak with many Multinationals still willing to sponsor some airtime just as PR for the international community. These days, all the ads are mainly in Chinese and geared towards students.
The only time it is international is maybe Sundays with Tito Gray’s airtime for the Pinoys.
ICRT should note that if you are competing with other local radio stations, you will lose–they are definitely more local than you are. And have a better local Chinese content!
As a niche only English radio station on the island, you should maintain this position and did what you have done for the past years. That is SERVE THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY with quality broadcasting!
By the way, does anyone really pay attention to the traffic reports??? Isn’t it a given that traffic is bad during rush hours and like you have an alternative route here in congested Taipei!
Sorry for my bad grammar as I am quite ticked off on this matter, because of the way ICRT is now managed, after working with them during their more successful days.
Note: their last 100 Days of Summer promotion at Breeze was kinda pathetic with maybe less than a 100 thirteen-to-fourteen-year-olds girls as their audience for their so-called main event of the year!
I’ll suggest they change the name to ELRT (English language radio Taiwan) because that’s what it is, no more.
They don’t represent any international community.
A real ICRT has at least to bring music and programs with and from international represented communities in Taiwan.
Not their crap. Many years ago, as I first arrived in Taiwan I used to like it because it’s kind a familiar with home, but now … duh.
And not to speak about the weather, pollution and traffic announcements.
This is … with the weather/pollution/traffic information…
I don’t need to know who you are … I don’t care who you are. Just bring the darn information. You’re not on CNN.
And what’s wit ith this DIVA woman, it’s like she gets an orgasme with every sentence she brings out. (maybe breathing trainging could do wonders). Everytime I’m in the car and she’s on … bye bye, no thank you.
At home I only listen to the morning news.
The best radio they brought in years was during Typhoon Nari last year, when they were flooded.
ICRT … your target audience/focus has to be the foreign community
Their traffic announcements could be helpful - if they weren’t late :? . I usually get an announcement telling me that the streched I am driving on is a huge traffic jam due to an acident , while the truth is that the darn accident was cleared a long time ago and the traffic flow is smooth . It is worse than no information, it’s wrong or outdated information.
I do believe that ICRT is now a business, not a service. They should seek out a market share and make some money. If the teen-pop and English learners are their choice of markets, so be it. The serving-the-forgeign-community went away when the US armed forces left.
For me, ICRT has been unlistenable for as long as I’ve been here (1993). It’s just not my taste in music or on-air personalities. Rare exceptions such as the BBC do not make the entire station listenable. (I feel the same for most radio in the States also. )
I have the feeling that if I were program director at ICRT, their audience would shrink down to me and a few close friends. Then how would the 100 Days of Summer promotion look?
ICRT is a business so let them know directly how you feel about their product.
(Also, can someone help me to figure out when I turned into Richard Hartzell Jr. and starting writing posts like him. Thanks.)
They lost their last shred of credibility with me when they terminated their 24-hour rebroadcasting of the BBC. When I e-mailed them about it, they proferred some lame excuses about their equipment being too old and the cost of replacing it too high (but credit to them, at least, for replying).
As their DJs are morons and their news content thin at best, I haven’t tuned in to their station even once for the past couple of years. I listen to the radio a lot, but always either the BBC rebroadcasts that are still available elsewhere or else the local Chinese news stations.
It is quite disgraceful that, given the glaring deficiences of ICRT, Taiwan effectively has no radio station broadcasting in English round the clock. I’m sure there are few other countries in the world that cater so poorly to those who wish or need to listen to English on the radio. It is also richly ironic, given how much the government goes on about wanting to promote the English proficiency of local people, not to mention its aspirations to compete with places like Singapore and Hong Kong as an internationalized business centre. Where are non-Chinese-speaking foreigners supposed to get their up-to-the-minute local information? From CNN?
One of the best ways for improving fluency in a foreign language is listening to radio news and discussion programs in that language – that’s been my most effective tool for improving my Chinese, and I always recommend it to local people who want to know how to improve their English. The only problem is, they can hardly ever find such broadcasts to tune into here.
So come on, GIO. Give up the pretence that Taiwan already caters to foreign listeners and local students of English via ICRT. Spend a little money and at least give us 24-hour rebroadcasts of the BBC. The Beeb will be delighted to help you do so and probably won’t charge you anything for it. And best of all, set up a real not-for-profit local radio station to broadcast quality news and discussion programs in English. It would bring enormous benefits for Taiwan.
By no means a solution, is a suggestion to try listening to the ‘BEEB’ over the Internet.
This is how I listen and I love the huge choice on offer. If you’re not on a broadband connection, permanently on-line or using an older modem you can still get the World Service on a lower quality setting which won’t clog up your connection.
Best of all, many of the popular program’s such as news hour can be listened to on-demand by clicking on the link so you can either relisten or record them if you wish.
You mentioned CNN, well another of those Taiwan quirks, is that my local cable supplier moved this channel around a couple of times and is now on channel 95 between the buddist and gambling stockmarket channels. In addition, this channel is the only one that has poor reception, so my CNN picture quality is blurred with white interference marks. The cable company came by and said typically that they can’t do any thing about it.
Taiwan international business center on par with Singapore or Hongkong—my foot???
So, the mentioned internet link to get the Beeb to satisfy your listening needs is unfortunately one of the only ways…
I have had no CNN since last year. The cable guy came round to collect the fee last week and told me that poor CNN reception is a common problem. “There are some problems with them (CNN)” in his words. Also, it can’t be fixed. So reading between the lines, CNN is no longer legally carried by the operator and if you can receive it, it’s probably ‘stolen’ from somewhere.
Then again, have I missed CNN? No! The coverage is crap.
ICRT was always crap, and always will be. I stopped bothering to listen years ago.
Thought for the day: Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an English pirate radio station, something like radio Caroline in the UK way back when? It was so popular that when it was eventually discovered all the DJs were promptly snapped up by BBC, making radio 1 suddenly cool for the first time ever.
btw, the CNN I get here in Taichung is neither stolen nor crap.
When I went back to India I pickup World Space Reciver ( www.worldspace.com ) Though I can only listen to it at home ( due to the antenna ) the music is good and there are a lot of channels with very good quality ( music and broadcast )
One easy way for ICRT to greatly improve its so-called news bulletins would be to pay someone to listen to other stations broadcasting the latest local news in Chinese and translate the main points into English. In the long-ago days when I still sometimes tuned into ICRT, their lack of coverage of local news was one of their most wretched deficiencies.
You all know enough about surfing to have gotten this far. Fire up Bill Gates’ ever-friendly Microsoft Media Player and search out the radio stations you desire. Want rock, classical, American country (no thank you) stations from wherever are all available within seconds. If you can’t figure out how to use the search function there then go to the stations’ websites directly. I listen to my local (from home) all-sports radio station i Toronto at night, except when their service sometimes go down. I can also log onto the CBC to get some news from home, or the BBC. Forget ICRT, let the market speak and tell them to take a flying leap. If they don’t want to target the foreigner market anymore then go someplace else. It’s not as if there aren’t any options out there. I wouldn’t fret about CNN too much, it’s all American crap with some football and cricket scores and hosts with worldly accents to cover up for the U.S bile that it produces. The only alternative international news it produces is that show “World Report” which features lame propaganda attempts by the other governments of the World, such as Brazil, China, and Qatar to show how their countries are really great. The ones from China are the most laughable as they are clearly proganada showing nothing but happy toothless peasants/fishermen who are about to be forcibly relocated in order to develop an industrial park in Shanghai.
, while the truth is that the darn accident was cleared a long time ago and the traffic flow is smooth 
. It is worse than no information, it’s wrong or outdated information. 
