City Havana | Branding Radio Reloj | |
Broadcast area Republic of Cuba/Worldwide Slogan "Emisora Cubana de noticias" Frequency 570, 790, 820, 830, 850, 860, 870, 950 and 1020 kHz and 101.5 mHz First air date January 7, 1947; 70 years ago (1947-01-07) | ||
Radio Reloj (Spanish for Radio Clock) is an internationally broadcast Spanish-language radio station, located in Cuba.
Contents
Overview
The station is heard on various AM frequencies throughout the country and also on certain FM frequencies, such as 101.5 FM in Havana.
Radio Reloj started on 1 July 1947 and claims to be the oldest non-stop information channel in the world..
The news and information is read against a background sound of continuous clock ticks every second. Every minute there is a station name announcement, a beep on the minute, a time announcement and "RR" .-. .-. in Morse code. On the top and bottom of each hour, the main news headlines are broadcast for two minutes.
Both Manu Chao and Vocal Sampling have recorded musical "tributes" to these background ticks, in the songs "Me Gustas Tú" ("I like you") and "Radio Reloj", respectively.
Listenership outside of Cuba
From its inception in 1947 until the Internet era, Radio Reloj was generally available only to listeners in Cuba; however, on occasion during a clear night (especially during the winter months), Radio Reloj could be heard in adjacent countries, and it generally has a good signal along the Florida Keys (from Islamorada to Key West) and some parts of Southwest Florida, due to this area being immediately north of Havana. A good example of DXing of Radio Reloj was on the morning of January 21, 1999 at 1:20am (Eastern Time), when US radio station WMCA, licensed in New York City and broadcasting on 570 AM (the same as Radio Reloj's Santa Clara signal), went off the air for transmitter maintenance. Once WMCA's carrier signal dropped, Radio Reloj's broadcast could be heard up and down the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States including New York City, where WMCA originates its broadcasts. Radio Reloj is also available free in satellite broadcast in Hispasat 30° W. Radio Reloj has also started broadcasting its programming via an Internet stream using any media player in decent albeit low bit-rate sound quality.