Americans don’t hear a lot of news from the rest of the world, or what the rest of the world thinks is newsworthy. Our NPR station actually does broadcast some BBC news programming at hours I am not available to listen to it, so I know bits are available.

I was thinking that the station should take the five minute top of the hour news summary from radio stations from around the world and insert them into our top-of-the-hour broadcasts. I think it might be very informative. Select a particular hour, say 6 PM, and broadcast that country’s news roundup at the same time every day.

I have a list of candidate countries. These are countries I think will have English-language news broadcasts and countries that use the English language on a regular basis. (Maybe)

Washington, DC
Denver
Canada
Mexico
Australia
Japan
China
India
Russia
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Israel
Egypt
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Morocco
France
Holland
Sweden
UK
Ireland
Bermuda/Jamaica/Belize (Caribbean)
Brazil
Venezuela

There is a heavy concentration of Mideastern countries on the list, but there is a bit of news being generated today. If things ever quiet down there, we can look for other candidates in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. (I have two US cities listed because this is for the US and sometimes the news from the center of the country doesn’t mirror the headlines out of the capital. )