Encore – Classical Music on Shortwave – Broadcast on Sunday afternoon in Europe and USA
Encore – Classical Music this weekend is being broadcast as usual by Channel 292 (Europe) on 6070 kHz at 15:00 UTC Sunday 25th August.
And by WBCQ on 7490 kHz at 00:00 – 01:00 UTC Monday 26th August
There is a repeat on 6070 kHz on Friday 30th August at 19:00 UTC.
This week’s show has quite a lot of Xylophone, but also a Strauss lieder, some Tchaikovsky, Schubert – a piano duet played by Richter and Britten (people forget what an extraordinary pianist Britten was).
There will also be some Vivaldi, Debussy, and a treat from Brahms to finish with.
Both Channel 292 and WBCQ do live streams if the reception is poor in your location. Easy to find their sites with a google search.
Thank you for spreading the word about Encore – Classical Music on Shortwave. And thank you to everyone for letting us know how well/badly the signal is received where you live.
Brice Avery – Encore – Radio Tumbril.
Regular Broadcast times are:
15:00 – 16:00 UTC Sunday, and repeated 19:00 – 20:00 UTC Friday on 6070 kHz (Channel 292 Germany).
00:00 – 01:00 UTC Monday on 7490 kHz 9WBCQ – Maine).
In Europe, we can also listen to ORF-1 (Radio Austria) every morning on 6155 kHz, playing classical music. The half-hour long program is at 07:30 CET/CEST (same time summer and winter).
I love classical music on shortwave. Enough so I’ve recorded a number of these shows. Keep up the good work Brice.
Classical on shortwave sounds awful.
I disagree. Sure, it’s not high fidelity or anything, but I quite like the way it sounds over shortwave! 🙂
There is a certain romance to hearing music of any sort over shortwave.
Yes, there are background noises, there is fading, and there is distortion. But like the people who enjoy listening to music using old 78 RPM records and tube stereos, the romance is in the experience of capturing music from another time.
If you want good fidelity, you can get it online and it will sound nearly perfect. That’s not why we do this.
78s also sound like rubbish. All this romance with the sound. So romance with crappy sound??
Good memories, perhaps? I do believe many people listen to music through their emotions and memories of what they did and such, when they hear a music piece from their child- or teenagehood!
I do connect hit-tunes from the ’80s and ’90s to thoughts about my life back then.
Keith, you are so, so bitter on everything in here…. Why do you bother wasting your time and get into bad, bad mood by reading the posts here????
Best regards, MIchael from Denmark
I agree with Michael. Keith, you likely don’t realize this, but you’re coming across as a “troll” these days. Your comments are entirely predictable and you can tell that something in your past has made you bitter. I believe many of us are under the assumption it has to do with the demise of the Happy Station show (?) else something in your personal life. I’m sure you’re a nice fellow…at least you came across that way on your shortwave show and specials.
As Michael said give this site and shortwave radio stuff a pass. Guessing this is not your cuppa anymore. No worries.
I should add that I –LOVE– Encore. Keep up the good work Brice! I need to sort out a way to make recordings of your show.
True that hearing classical over shortwave takes me back a couple decades. I for one indulge in the sonic ambiance of it all.
Ron it has nothing to do with that. I switched to television ages ago. Shortwave is a dead medium only kept alive by DXERS and a few SWLs. Where are the listener figures? Where is the content? Or better yet where is the award winner content?
Ron: All I hear with shortwave radio is people going on bring back memories or it reminds me decades ago and so on. We are 2019 not the 1970s or 80s. In television we never get this people who think they should be getting free stuff because they write in. We know who is watching and for how long and when.
The last few times I went to any shortwave gathering it was like a retirement home had gone out for some kind of outing.
If the SW and the various clubs would attract a younger generation and not stuck living in the past it would be different. But this has almost never been done. 20, 25 or 30 years ago you could talk about the millions of people that were listening to SW.
When it comes to reception reports. I would have to say the only ones that are truly useful and not in terms of actually audio reception. Would be the ones sent by Japanese listeners. When I look at all the letters and emails we got from listeners in japan on average they were on average between 2 to 3 pages long and were notes and comments on nearly ever single minute, almost like a program log. And they actually listen to the full program. And they always send return postage. Always every single time. And if by change they don’t send postage they request a reply by email so the receiver does not have to pay return postage. They also never ask for pens, t-shirts, calendars and so on
So many DXERS and a number of a few SWLs on average listen for between 10 to 15 minutes or sometimes less and then send a shopping list. I have about 6000 of these that I’ve kept.
When I was at CRI I did a project for the Audience Research Department. We gathered every email and letter for a 24 month period. what we found was the the vast majority were from the same 100 or so people.
Just like when the Australian government had a hearing into the shortwave cuts to the ABC and Radio Australia. Those who supported shortwave said the ABC was inundated with people upset about the cuts, but were unable to provide ant data to back up their claim. The ABC was asked by commissioners how many people contacted them over the cut of shortwave to Radio Australia. ABC said around a couple of hundred from North America and Europe. Then they were asked what about Radio Australia’s target audience in the Pacific. It was less than 15 and 0 though any of the Australian offices in Pacific island nations. In PNG, Vanuatu, Fiji, Gilbert Islands, Marshal islands and so on listeners who do listen to Radio Australia on a regular basis had no idea that RA cut shortwave.
Keith,
I think if you take a closer look at your own comments you’ll see that you are holding some bitter feelings about shortwave. You would have a hard time convincing me otherwise based on the comments I’ve seen from you over the past few years. Especially since your own departure from the shortwaves.
I don’t blame you as I am guessing you invested pretty heavily in the shortwave scene in the recent past. Unlike the majority of us, you’ve actually broadcast programming on shortwave in just the past few years. I know because I used to listen to the Happy Station and some RNW specials.
I seem to recall someone mentioning here that you also tried to build a shortwave transmitting site somewhere in Asia. Those things take money and time, neither of which can be financially rewarded on the shortwaves these days. Indeed monetizing shortwave has always been difficult.
I reckon what I’m saying is that I can sympathize. I’d probably feel the same way had I been in your shoes.
But why do you still hang out here on a radio blog and make negative comments? I bet I know why. Because it’s hard to let go of this past and publishing negative comments probably makes you feel better in some way.
If you’re into TV or video now, spend more productive time on a TV blog. Just an idea.
We can’t help you overcome your frustration with your past in shortwave broadcasting. Few of us listeners have ever been there.
Perhaps you ought to ask yourself if it’s time to move on to better adventures and just let your past be your past?
And to be frank, your comments don’t change my relationship with shortwave. I can assume this would be the same for the majority of the individuals who spend time on this fine site. We’re here because we share a common passion.
When you post negative comments, sadly it just makes me feel sorry for you.
Of course, you might just enjoy being a troll, but I don’t believe the guy I used to hear on the Happy Station show would do that.
Please take this rambling comment in friendship…I mean no offence.
Ron
Keith is, I think, being quite misleading – or, at least, has been mislead – with his comments. I won’t speculate why, but:
Firstly, he’s getting “listeners” mixed up with “SWLers who write in / send reception reports / beg for QSL cards”. The latter is only a subset of the former – we don’t really know /how/ small a subset that is, but we know it /is/ a subset, so it’s not really showing what Keith says it shows. He also seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about them & has often expressed resent at the subset of /that/ subset who expect freebies.
Not saying he’s totally wrong about that last bit – I think it’s true that what was considered cheap PR by the stations is now seen more as SWLers & QSLers getting pushy about their ‘right’ to free stuff – but it’s unfair to tar all SWLers/QSLers with the same brush, and even more unfair to keep painting that tar over all listeners…
(As an anecdata example: I listen – that’s actually *listen*, not just ‘make a point of catching’ – to probably about 5~10 hours of both CRI & RNZI each, and have done for years. I was going to say I’ve never sent a listener or reception report to either – but I remembered I sent one to CRI about a decade ago. That was only because my wife happened to see an article I was reading about their latest QSL package and decided she’d like one…)
Secondly, his recounting of the Radio Australia thing is a pretty disingenuously warped one:
1: The initial ‘trial shutdown’ that was used to gauge audience reaction was performed at about the same time of the year they’d previously done maintenance shutdowns. Long-term & experienced listeners would’ve known this, and assumed that’s what it was.
2: The ABC themselves reported it as a maintenance shutdown, in other broadcasts, other media, and online. That same information was widely repeated & distributed elsewhere (including here, and even by Keith himself if I recall correctly).
3: Even when directly approached, the regular ABC local SW & RA audience contact points advised that it was a routine maintenance shutdown. Basically, anybody who took the time to look before contacting the ABC would’ve been lead to believe it was a normal maintenance shutdown.
4: The ABC only recorded enquiries made on one specific form (or email address; I forget) as ‘official’ enquiries. That mode of enquiry was not the usual ‘official’ complaint contact form, nor was it linked or promoted anywhere. It was also removed after the temporary shutdown and before they announced the final ABC shutdown the RA & ABC local SW services
5: The ABC also chose not to count any complaints received after they announced the complete shutdown of those services.
6: Essentially, by the ABC’s method, the only ‘official’ count came from people who happened to stumble across the hidden ‘correct’ way of enquiring/complaining within the ‘correct’ timeframe – all others, including direct enquiries, were discounted.
7: All the above was admitted by the then-MD in the Senate Estimates hearing, or outlined in the subsequent report.
So, no, it didn’t really happen the way Keith has described it, and again I don’t think it really shows what he says it shows.
Ron. Opening the TX site in Taiwan didn’t lose any money at all as I ended up selling the land the site was on for 5 times the actual worth. The land itself, which wasn’t being used for anything. Under ROC law had to be use for something before any real estate development can take place it needs to be used for 5 years. Which it what I have done with a number of empty spaces I have bought in Taipei. But a space, turn it into a parking lot, then 5 years later sell it for 5 times the price to a real estate developer. That was the end purpose. I never lost anything. Even the equipment was sold as scrap to the highest bidder,which got a far better price than selling it as used.
The way the ABC handled it was the correct way. Just like when Radio Netherlands dropped English to North America. All they did was make an announcement at certain times and only on shortwave to the target. They ran the 30 second message for nearly 3 month. No mention on their website and no announcement made anywhere else. Do you know what the response was. I was at meeting with Chris van Gelder (son of Harry). He said during a 3 month period just from that announcement on shortwave fewer than 150.. The part that made me laugh was when it was announced by RNW on their website. People were writing in saying how much they love a particular, say how they would miss it if RNW cut shortwave to North America and so on and so. But the program or in some cases programs or even frequencies were not even on the air anymore and they were obviously just looking at an old schedule.
Now the ABC handled it this was because they knew that if they made the announcement any other way. people would be writing in, even if they never listened. RA had experience with that before in 2009 when they were actually considering the idea of dropping SW.
RA’s mandate and target is the Pacific. Those who listened outside this target are not important.
Its like B&W television or 78rpms.
Where are the numbers?
The whole discussion reminds me of the sort of arguments you can find in technical and audio magazines from the late 50’s, when stereo records first became available.
Composers, conductors, and musicians arguing that stereo was an ‘artificial realism’ produced by an objective but arbitrary illusion of space not connected to reality. In their eyes ‘realism’ was a subjective experience that couldn’t be conveyed by something as simple as another channel providing limited spatial information, but was much more dependent on the ‘mental image’ created entirely by _listening_. As long as you could hear the recording, the objective ‘quality’ was unimportant – only your subjective reaction to the mental images it produced.
Technical types, of course, argued pretty much the opposite 😉
Overall it’s a philosophical argument, sure, and they normally leave me either cold or furious – but I can’t help but think there’s enough personal variation in ‘factors we consider important’ for both to be correct, with the relative importance of each down to the individual.
I mean, even today I know people who prefer to listen to old 78-derived recordings of Caruso over modern 24-bit/192kHz sample rate recordings of modern tenors, purely because of their subjective reactions to the performances. I think it’s odd, myself – but I can’t really criticise them just because they experience things differently to me!