Coup d'etat in USSR -- Radio Moscow
Payman Arabshahi
News of the take over of power by vice president Genady
Yenayev was broadcast on the English service of Radio
Moscow at about 03:30 UTC Aug. 19, 1991 (20:30 Pacific
Standard time in Seattle, last night). At this time,
Radio Moscow was broadcasting two programs in parallel.
Program 1 appeared to have been pre-recorded and was
broadcast on 12050, 13605, 13645, 15180, 15410, and 15425
kilohertz. It consisted of news reports about Soviet workers
in Japan, and a round table discussion about the policies of
Gorbachev.
Program 2 was broadcast on 11770, 11780, 11850, 11920, and
11980 kilohertz. Following the "news flash" announcing the
overthrow of Gorbachev, it started playing piano music. Then,
at half hour intervals on the top and bottom of the hour, the
news along with more details of the event were broadcast.
Music filled the time in between the announcements. At 05:00
UTC, while the woman announcer had finished about 2/3 of the
report she was reading, the broadcast on 11850 (the strongest
of the above frequencies) was abruptly cut. Reception conditions
on other frequencies gradually deteriorated though music could
be heard in the background. Meanwhile, program 1 was continuing
as if nothing had happened in the Soviet Union.
BBC reports as of 16:00 UTC indicate Radio Moscow
is playing music with intermittent announcements about the situation.
Reception Location: Seattle, Washington USA
Equipment : Sony ICF-2010 with 60 foot outdoor antenna
Time : 03:30 - 05:30 UTC, Aug. 19. 1991
Payman
Peter Arensburger
have a satelite that provides all their embassies and missions with soviet
television, so it's a simple matter of tunning an antenna to the correct
frequency), a speaker on the first channel declared that only the first channel
would continue to emmit, while the other channels would stop emmiting for an
undetermined amount of time. This annoucement was made around noon today.
-Pete
--
In real life: Peter Arensburger, biology weenie
pe...@cscwam.umd.edu
..!uunet!mimsy!cscwam!peter
Kim Christian Madsen
>According to my folks who live in Geneva and get soviet television (the soviets
>have a satelite that provides all their embassies and missions with soviet
>television, so it's a simple matter of tunning an antenna to the correct
>frequency), a speaker on the first channel declared that only the first channel
>would continue to emmit, while the other channels would stop emmiting for an
>undetermined amount of time. This annoucement was made around noon today.
In Denmark, the ptt channel TV has for the past 1.5 month shown "MOSCOW 1"
as well as the regular programs, after I learned about the coup, I
turned to the program, at first there was some brief news bulletins,
but since I don't understand russian, I could only judge the visual
and body-language signals, which told me that the reporters were told
exactly what to say (reading bulletins from the coup-makers). Later
translations (on other channels) confirmed this.
Later -- not a word on the situation, but old War-movies and the
Swan-lake ballet -- when I checked today it was a harmless
"muppet-show" episode they were showing.
Kim Chr. Madsen