Spanish Broadcasts on the Internet

The Internet has opened up many new possiblities for language learners as well as native speakers. One of these possibilities is receiving broadcasts (radio, news, television, etc.) in languages other than English. In this article, I hope to give you the information you need to begin exploring this branch of the Internet.

To get started, you need to download a media player that can handle the broadcasts. The two most popular players for this kind of media are the Real player (http://www.real.com ) and the Microsoft Media Player (http://microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer ). Visit either of these sites to download the media player. I suggest that you download both players which work with either Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer since some sites will only use one of the two players (however, many sites let you choose which one to use).

The next step is to find a broadcast to listen to. There are several archives you may search through. First, you should check out the archives listed by the players you downloaded. (http://www.real.com and http://windowsmedia.microsoft.com ). From there you should take a look at http://www.broadcast.com . This archive has a large list of audiobooks, CDs, video, and radio stations. Unfortunately, there are limited Spanish resources listed in these archives. Hopefully, more will be added in the future.

One of the most helpful archives I found was the MIT list of Radio Stations on the Internet (http://wmbr.mit.edu/stations/list.html ). This has a huge list of radio stations that you can sort through by country, format, or call letters. The stations marked with a symbol (resembling a lightening flash) have live broadcasts that you can listen to over the Internet. Nevertheless, since the technology is new, there are limited Spanish resources at the time being. Again, hopefully the numbers will grow in the near future. One more good place to look through is http://www2.jonction.net/~kairyv/radio/s... . This archive deals only with Spanish radio broadcasts. I highly recommend that you check this one out. It lists the call letters, where the station is broadcasting from, and the basic format of the station.

Some radio stations that I found and enjoyed listening to are:

http://www.radiolatina.com A Spanish pop music station from Mexico. Music by artist such as Luis Miguel, Enrique Iglesias, and Ricky Martin.

http://www.radioformula.com.mx A Mexican radio station group with a variety of formats including music, talk, and news.

http://www.sinfo.net/exitosa La Exitosa - A radio station from Panama playing mostly music.

http://www.cadenaser.es CadenaSer - A radio staion from Spanish (mostly talk shows)

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