UNITED NATIONS INFORMATION SERVICE IN GENEVA CELEBRATES WORLD RADIO DAY ON 13 FEBRUARY 2017
Geneva, 10 February – The United Nations Information Service in Geneva will be celebrating World Radio Day on Monday, 13 February with a series of events, including interviews with the United Nations’ radio partners and a Facebook Live virtual tour of the studios at the Palais des Nations.
Activities will highlight the important role played by radio in communicating the work of the United Nations to a wider public.
UN Radio has come a long way from the 1946 makeshift studios and offices at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where it transmitted its first call sign: “This is the United Nations calling the peoples of the world.” News bulletins and feature programmes were broadcast in the Organization’s then five official languages – Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish – for 9 to 12 hours each day. Arabic was added in 1974. UN Radio EN has 73 partner countries.
In 2016, the UN Radio Geneva team produced close to 1,000 reports, features, interviews and other audio items, mainly in English and French, but also in Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Spanish.
