When I started this radiocommunications museum in the year
2008, I was looking at the stations of extinguished countries
in a rather simple way: all details, like callsigns and frequencies,
and all multimedia items, like recordings and pictures, were added
to a station's page in the appropriate country, as seen politically
- but this attempt was leading to multiple pages of one single
station, for each political phase an own page. This only worked
fine for stations that ceased operation before the country extinguished,
or at the same time. This kept the focus on the country.
But, things are a bit more complicated, because this approach
does not reflect the history of the station itself. Many stations
continued their work without interruption; the political change
did not affect the stations' work. Look at a coastal radio station
for example, where the same geographic coastal area has to be
served, independent from the changes of political borders.
So while working on updates for countries of the former Soviet
Union, I noted, that it would make more sense to look at a
radio station with all technical details and multimedia content
at once, and linking the stations' page to both countries involved.
This is not only true for the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
also the German reunification is involved: Rügen Radio continued
working for several years in reunified Germany, so having 2 pages
(one about the station in the German
Democratic Republic, one about the station in the Federal
Republic of Germany) does not make too much sense. As you
know, there are some more countries involved in this topic, just
to mention Yugoslavia and Yemen - and more changes may happen
as the world is turning.
While I write these lines, I know that still many stations haves
2 different pages in 2 different countries here - but with forthcoming
updates, there will be 1 page per station only, accessible from
all the countries involved, thus reflecting the station's history
over the centuries. But still, a station is only linked to those
countries, in which the station really worked. An example maybe
Beograd Meteo (YZZ) in Yugoslavia - that station ceased operations
in the 1980's, and thus never operated out of the Republic of
Serbia. Consequently, Beograd Meteo is listed in Yugoslavia
only, not in Serbia
April 2021, -rb-