Moscow Calling

I've got back into listing to the Voice of Russia for the first time in quite a while. Most of my listening in recent times has been limited those stations relayed via WRN on my Worldspace receiver. Unfortunately the timing of the Voice of Russia has meant that I have rarely ever been able to catch it's one airing each day. So it's been back to the trusty shortwave set which unfortunately seems to be suffering from a bust speaker, and the bassy sound of the Sangean ATS 909 has now become a muffled mush, requiring an external speaker to regain intelligibility.

Nevertheless I've got it sorted, and have printed out the latest schedule from the Voice of Russia website. Sadly, VoR's long standing Science Correspondent Boris Belitsky died quite recently I believe, so the programme 'Science and Engineering in the Commonwealth' is for the time being no more.

A new programme I noticed, however, is 'Moscow Calling'. From it's name I thought it might be a listener mailbag programme, and although the edition of the programme I heard did feature listener's comments, it's in fact a rock show (using the opening of the Gorky Park song of the same name as an intro). This seems to be quite a revolution in the schedule of VoR, as here we have an energetic show hosted by young presenters on modern, popular music. In my mind VoR has tended to err towards a more intellectual and classical type of programming, but Moscow Calling can only be a forward step in broadening the station's audience and appeal.