HCJB voice of the Andes to terminate English Language Broadcasts on International Shortwave

Radio Station HCJB, the Voice of the Andes reported… it will air its final English-language broadcasts on international shortwave radio from Ecuador on Saturday, May 6, even as the station’s English Language Service shifts its emphasis toward teaching English as a second language.

English was one of the first two languages, along with Spanish, to air when the station began broadcasting in Quito on Christmas Day, 1931.

Station Director Doug Weber calls the move a refocusing or “taking some of the resources that we’ve been using on the broadcasts and focusing that into English-as-a-second-language (ESL) things — programming that will go out on our other (mostly Spanish) outlets.”

This follows a May 2003 refocusing of the station’s outreach from Ecuador that saw English broadcasts and production drastically reduced. “Since then we’ve only been doing English-language transmissions for 2½ hours a day,” Weber said. “We haven’t received a lot of response from those transmissions, but we have received a lot of response from some of our ESL programs.”

Weber also cited the transfer of English Language Service Director Jeff Ingram to HCJB World Radio’s newest regional office in Singapore where he will assume media management responsibilities. He was the last full-time English-language radio producer, with newer staff concentrating their efforts on ESL follow-up.
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“We’ve had a very loyal audience and we’re grateful to them,” Weber said of the nearly 75 years of relationship via the radio. “And we’re grateful to the Lord as well for the opportunity to be able to minister to so many people through our English-language broadcasts for so many years.”

As to possible future changes, Weber said while specific plans aren’t in place, “We are in a process of evaluating all of our ministries in all of our languages to try to determine what are the most effective things that we’re doing and try and put our emphasis on the things that we’re doing well.” (HCJB World Radio) Read Article