INID, 9835 kHz, 1600 UTC, 20 Mar 2025

[Synclair]

Unidentified and unlisted station broadcasting on VOA Radio Ashna's former frequency of 9835KHz. I caught it about 1550. It is very strong in UK, indicating it could be Wooferton but is simply playing one tune over and over - like an interval signal.

Does anynone have any idea what it is or where it originates?

[Ct Yankee]

I have read that some USAGM stations are simply playing music rather than go silent, this might be the case with Radio Ashna.  Maybe it is a contract matter, so the transmission is there but not the previous content. Might explain why they could shutter Greenville's Radio Marti broadcasts but not Woofferton's Radio Ashna. Here is a quote from Jeff White WRMI GM in Radio World:

"We have a monitor in India who is checking a lot of the relay transmissions from Thailand, Kuwait and other USAGM relay stations over in that part of the world. And he was saying that on such-and-such frequency, Radio Free Asia in Korean, for example, was still on, but Radio Deewa, which is one of the USAGM stations, was just playing music."

[Treehouse SWL]

Yep - this came up in the World of Radio forums yesterday.

Right now, at 1747 UTC, the former VOA broadcast in Somali at 11610 kHz is instead playing this repeated instrumental tune. In this same hour, down on 9480, there's different instrumental music playing rather than the former VOA broadcast in Oromo.

Both these broadcasts beamed toward Africa (I monitored them via an SDR in Cyprus) come from the Wooferton site. While the U.S. government could shut down USAGM sites quickly, Wooferton is owned by Encompass, which undoubtedly has a contract with VOA to relay its broadcasts at certain times. In short, Encompass will relay just about anything -- even endless music -- as long as it's paid by the contract.

The same type of music also is being broadcast on 11735 kHz at this hour via the Madagascar site, also not owned by USAGM, instead of the former Shona broadcast from VOA. What a waste of transmitter power!