Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Lin Robertson, who shares a link to the USAGM Congressional Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2023.
Click here to download the PDF.
If you’re interested in how shortwave services are being affected by the budget, you can do a simple search for the word “shortwave.”
One change of note to the Greenville, NC, transmitting station (page 37):
In FY 2023, USAGM is proposing a realignment of the ERM transmitting station
in Greenville, North Carolina under the USAGM’s Office of Technology, Services,
and Innovation (TSI), which currently is responsible for other of USAGM’s
transmitting stations. The realignment of shortwave resources will effectively
enhance the overall USAGM broadcast mission capabilities by aligning all content
distribution platforms as managed by TSI. This action will decrease OCB’s general
operating expenses by approximately $2.1 million annually
This is a 197 page document and traditional over-the-air services are mentioned frequently.
If you notice relevant points to shortwave services feel free to point them out in the comments and note the page number! Thank you!
In East Asia, The last few weeks the VOA English transmissions have been silent with nothing. Also it seems the Chinese language transmissions are now being jammed and unbearable to listen to.
I created a table to illustrate the average cost of SW transmissions using overseas transmitters. These costs also include MW transmitters where they are operational and the power consumption listed is derived from the average transmitter efficiency for each station. Each sheet covers one year.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkJ6m1_6fbJNOgkxgfTigl4v5m3XsXrqiYktkTxe488/edit?usp=sharing
From your figures, it would be easy to achieve the cost reduction target by transmitting part of each day on DRM. When transmitting in AM they could promote the DRM broadcasts and recommend the purchase of receivers.
They could transmit their website images and text using Journaline, and even transmit in English and the target area language all from the same transmitter simultaneously.
Many of these areas have either poor, expensive or no internet. Also if there is a coup, the broadcasts can continue from outside the country.
https://www.drm.org/desktop-and-portable-radios/
FYI that this 2023 budget was out in March of 2022 so it’s not exactly news at this point.
No, but it wasn’t posted _here_before, and at least 3 people so far seem to be better informed for it and found it useful.
Don’t be a killjoy, eh? This is hardly “Spreading The Radio Love”.
If they added a DRM Content Server, and DRM modulator, and a little tuning they could more than halve their electricity consumption which is considerable in high powered transmitters and have an even larger coverage area. After, other than one DRM test to Cuba, more than 67 % of their transmitted power is the carrier, which contains no sound. This would get them from the T model ford gasoline era to the EV era. They could also transmit many pages of text and images, into countries which can switch off the internet. at will.
So the USAGM broadcasters are quite familiar with DRM.
You’re certainly right about power consumption and savings associated with that. Good point.
If they switched to DRM, though, it would severely limit their listening audience. If you look at the geographic areas they still target with shortwave broadcasts, most have very little in the way of DRM receivers that are capable of receiving HF broadcasts. India is an exception–and perhaps this would be a good region to test the waters–but even then, most of the DRM radios are AM/FM only and do not natively include the HF bands.
I suspect if they switched to DRM in a big way, it would limit their over-the-air listening audience by orders of magnitude. It’s just a reality even though DRM does have much to offer in many respects.
I’ll take a look at the document, nothing like some light reading.
If I were President, and that’s never gonna happen, least of all ’cause I’m a naturalized American, my first act in office would be to order a ten-fold increase in the VOA’s annual budget (just for starters).
VOA does an outstanding job explaining to the world what America is, the values and principles on which the nation was founded and defends.
Listening to VOA on the shortwaves growing up convinced me there’d been a geographical accident of birth that was going to have to be rectified at the first opportunity…