Thursday, May 31, 2007

Signatures' collecting to Director of Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty. It's very important! Sign it too in comments!

Jeffrey Gedmin, Director, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Dear Mr. Gedmin!

We, long-time listeners of the RFE/RL's Russian Service, are hereby petitioning to you, Director of our favorite radio station, regarding the current situation with Dmitry Savitsky's jazz program.

As you may know, "49 Minutes of Jazz", one of the most popular programs of RFE/RL's Russian Service, was closed in April, 2004 after 16 years of weekly broadcasting. Dmitry Savitsky, Russian Service Paris correspondent, a famous writer, essayist, and journalist and a great connoisseur and expert in jazz music, was the author and the presenter of that program.

His jazz program, one of the three most highly rated ones, was closed in spite of its great popularity among listeners. According to some sociologic research RFE/RL's Russian Service, now managed by you, lost approximately 30 per cent of its regular listeners after the program had been shut down.

It comes as no surprise that the Russian programs produce by Radio Liberty lost such a big part of their audiences since Mr Savitsky's challenging and rich in content jazz program had long been a hallmark of Radio Liberty. Many Radio Liberty listeners developed their attachment to Radio Liberty by enjoying "49 minutes of jazz". They started to appreciate other RL programs such as the news, political analysis or cultural reviews only later after getting used to and falling in love with "49 minutes of jazz". After the demise of Mr. Savitsky's program they lost the stimulus to listen to Radio Liberty so they switched to the Internet getting news analysis from various web-sites not necessarily from the RFL/RL's.

In April, 2007, three years later Mr. Savitsky's jazz program went on the air again to our delight. We heard the familiar jazz bumper again. We were very glad that jazz would again be part of our favorite radio station programs. However, it is a pity that this jazz program has now been reduced to 9 minutes from almost 50 (and "49 minutes of jazz" was also repeated during the week), as it used to be in the period from 1988 to 2004.

Mr. Director, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that it is impossible to squeeze into 9 minutes any serious discussion (including the dialog with us, the listeners) of the history of jazz, its latest developments, interesting biography data of prominent jazzmen, reviews of larger jazz festivals around the world, new jazz books, and CDs.

In our view, "49 minutes of jazz" was undoubtedly the best jazz program of the Russian-language radio both in Russia and beyond. "49 minutes of jazz" was fresh and full of non-banal thoughts and live irony; it excellently reflected the spirit and the atmosphere of American and European jazz clubs, jazz recording studios and concert halls of the New York City, New Orleans, London, and Paris. And last but not least, it brilliantly and deeply expressed the spirit of freedom and democracy, especially in the manner of the dialog with the listeners. This spirit of freedom and democracy is so much needed in the contemporary authoritarian and almost dictatorial Putin's Russia.

We would very much like to listen again to the reborn full-format jazz program by our favorite presenter Dmitry Savitsky.

We are requesting you, Mr. Gedmin, to do everything possible to restore justice to us, listeners of Radio Liberty in Russia and the other countries of the world. We are asking your favor and help in restoring the former, "long" Dmitry Savitsky's jazz program on our favorite radio station.

Sincerely yours, -

Radio Liberty listeners and jazz fans
(signatures and e-mails):

Anna Susid hanna72[&&&]mail.ru
Alex Moma alex_rainy[&&&]yahoo.com , malekz2001[&&&]mail.ru
Georgy Zherdev gzherdev[&&&]rambler.ru
Tatiana Ilyina plut-007y[&&&]andex.ru
Ksenia Knorre kknorre[&&&]mail.ru
Mikhail Iofin IOFINART[&&&]aol.com
Maria Smirnova mariasmirnova[&&&]gmail.com
Sabirjan Kurmayev sabirjan.kurmayev1[&&&]gmail.com
Klara Kurmayeva klara.kurmayeva[&&&]gmail.com
Olga Ksenofontova arriflex[&&&]mail.ru
Sergey Malyarov woodstock-69[&&&]yandex.ru
Anna Malyutina bugaga74[&&&]mail.ru
Dmitry Finkel' finkel[&&&]mail.ru
Mikhail Rozenberg mrozenberg[&&&]yandex.ru
Olev Remsu orems[&&&]hot.ee
Vladimir Grinberg vladgrin[&&&]mail.ru
Mikhail Efimov efimov_m[&&&]mail.ru
Mike Rogozin miker64[&&&]yandex.ru
Anna Kerpel' a.ker[&&&]paco.net
Ivan Yanushkevich office[&&&]kailas.spb.ru
Boris Novikov nbmmbn[&&&]mail.ru
Pavel Tsvetkov pc_pc[&&&]mail.ru
Anatoly Vapirov vapirov[&&&]telecoms.bg
Alex Gotkhart gotkhart[&&&]yahoo.com
Yuriy Deynekin deynekin[&&&]aol.com
Michael Sapozhnikov mike0214[&&&]gmail.com
Slava Gurevich dgur[&&&]earthlink.net
Elena Lavrovich granatolog[&&&]yandex.ru
Aleksandra Astakhova umka1000[&&&]mail.ru
Nikolai Baev nikiprok[&&&]gmail.com
Olga Zhuk bug1960[&&&]gmail.com
Elena Petrova fr-taube[&&&]yandex.ru
Andrej Abramov andrej.abramov[&&&]mail.ru
Dmitry Pevko dorje1975[&&&]mail.ru
Natalia Lebedeva nl314[&&&]mail.ru


and many other listeners of Radio Liberty, who would like to contact you regarding this matter, but who cannot do so because they do not have access to the Internet.
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Signatures, added after sending this petition:

Aleksander Gajewski Aleksander_Gajewski[&&&]gbpizs.gov.pl
Eugeny Keppul jaugene[&&&]gmail.com