Monday, May 05, 2008

Voice of Israel expands their website

Kol Israel (The Voice of Israel): http://www.intkolisrael.com/ or http://www.iba.org.il/
In what has become a growing trend this month, IBA (parent of Kol Israel) announced that all shortwave broadcasts have been eliminated as of 31 March 2008, except for a one-hour-per-day transmission to Iran (in Persian). Kol Israel broadcasts are now available exclusively on the internet.

The first address given above is for the Kol Israel International website, which is elegantly laid out and features icons for streaming audio in 14 different languages (at various times, as listed on each button). Below these icons are numerous links in Hebrew. At the top of the page is an IBA Live Now area, followed by links to IBA Media Center (in Hebrew) and Kol Israel Foreign Languages – Reka (the news presented in English or Russian, apparently). Audio is now handled through a Flash interface at the top of the page (the IBA Live Now area), but didn’t work for me under various web browsers on various computers. So really, Kol is absent from shortwave and disfunctional on the internet. For a more detailed look at the Israeli scene, check out the second URL given, which is the home page for broadcaster IBA.
(Source: Click! ODXA-Listening-In, May 2008)