Media Network, which covered international broadcasting developments at Radio Netherlands, recently ended a 30-year run on RNW. In a series of four articles, Andy Sennitt mentions some of the highlights, and then looks ahead to how international broadcasting might develop in the next ten years.
Part 2 of this series, “The Media Network Years: the 1990s” is now available on RNW’s website.
The Goal Zero Rock Out Portable Speaker and Cricket Muve ZTE Score
In our two-part series on Internet radio–Rethinking Internet Radio Part 1 and Part 2–we pointed out a very affordable and effective option for listening to internet radio: the Cricket Muve ZTE Score no-contract Android phone combined with the TuneIn radio app. Immediately after posting the article, the price of the Cricket phone increased to $79.99. For those of you who have been waiting for the price to drop again, you’re in luck. They are available at many BestBuy locations for $39.99–an excellent price.
It appears this promotion is good through May 5th. Click here for details.
Read our review of the Cricket Muve ZTE Score as a wi-fi radio here.
Edward R. Murrow transmitting station site in Greenville, NC
I recently read the following comments by Kim Andrew Elliott regarding the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ strategic move away from shortwave radio. I think Kim is spot-on:
As a shortwave listener for nearly a half-century, I am saddened to see the reduction of shortwave broadcasting, especially by US international broadcasters. As an international broadcasting audience research analyst, however, I see much data showing a decline in the number of of people owning and and listening to shortwave radios. Even in rural areas, audiences are moving to FM radio, television, and mobile phones.
US international broadcasting should employ, if possible, the media preferred by its target audiences. If access to those media are denied in the target country, then the use of more robust but less popular media is necessary. Shortwave can be jammed, but it still offers the most physical resistance to interdiction of any medium available to international broadcasting. New digital modes allow text to be transmitted very efficiently via shortwave, requiring much less power than needed for voice. Shortwave could therefore be an alternative means of delivery when the internet is blocked. (On the subject of internet blocking, see previous posts re Iran and China.)
For future emergencies, when the internet, mobile networks, cable television, and other popular forms of communication will be disrupted, the United States should maintain an interagency global network of shortwave transmitters. These can be used by US international broadcasting to reach key target countries, by the State Department to reach Americans abroad and for public diplomacy tasks, and by the military for information operations and other purposes. The output of each agency would remain separate. Their functions would not be intermingled. The shortwave transmitter network would operate as a common carrier.
No doubt that shortwave radio listenership is on the decline. Still, as we point out so often, many around the world still rely on the medium. Indeed, should those of us who regularly use the internet ever experience a regional/national internet blackout or other potential communications disaster, shortwave radio would be a reliable communications medium of last resort.
Broadcasters (like RCI) should not dispose of their broadcasting infrastructure during cuts. Kim’s suggestion of an “inter-agency global network of shortwave transmitters” is a worthy option.
RNW headquarters in Hilversum, Netherlands (photo coutesty: RNW)
Media Network, which covered international broadcasting developments at Radio Netherlands, recently ended a 30-year run on RNW. In a series of four articles, Andy Sennitt mentions some of the highlights, and then looks ahead to how international broadcasting might develop in the next ten years.
Part 1 is now available on RNW’s website. Part 2 will be published on May 1st 2012. This read is definitely worth your time.
1938: The Gernsback Radio Newspaper (Photo: Smithsonian Magazine)
(Source: Smithsonian Magazine)
The introduction of broadcast radio caused some in the newspaper industry to fear that newspapers would soon become a thing of the past. After all, who would read the news when you could just turn on the radio for real-time updates?
Newspapers had even more to fear in 1938 when radio thought it might compete with them in the deadtree business as well.
The May, 1938 issue of Hugo Gernsback‘s Short Wave and Television magazine included an article titled “Radio to Print News Right In Your Home.” The article described a method of delivering newspapers that was being tested and (provided it didn’t interfere with regular radio broadcasts) would soon be used as a futuristic news-delivery method.
[…]This invention of a wireless fax, as it were, was credited to W.G. H. Finch and used radio spectrum that was otherwise unused during the late-night hours when most Americans were sleeping. The FCC granted a special license for these transmissions to occur between midnight and 6am, though it would seem that a noisy printing device in your house cranking away in the middle of the night might have been the fatal flaw in their system. It wasn’t exactly a fast delivery either, as the article notes that it takes “a few hours” for the machine to produce your wireless fax newspaper.
The full article, is a must-read.
Fascinating to realize that even in the infancy of wireless, newspapers already felt threatened by new technology. Goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
(Source: CBC)
A Moncton artist is now working against the clock to film the Radio-Canada International shortwave towers in her latest film project.
Budget cuts at CBC announced last week mean the towers, near Sackville, N.B., will soon be shut down, but it’s not known exactly what will happen to the towers themselves.
Amanda Dawn Christie said she remembers coming and going from Moncton and the towers signifying that she was almost home.
“Whenever I would drive in, I would just be filled with this exhilaration and I don’t know if it’s the high voltage. Like, some people get headaches and nauseous; I would get exhilarated,” she said. “So I don’t know if it was my interest or if it was the high voltage, but I definitely had this sense of ‘wow.'”
She said she’s heard similar stories as she’s started interviewing people for her feature film.
Christie’s been studying the towers for years.
She even created a sculpture on the marsh near the towers — a kitchen sink designed to catch radio waves — a phenomenon often reported by locals.
Now she’s collecting stories of people who call the towers their landmark, or a tightrope school because of the wires, or the connection to Africa or the Arctic.
Christie said she’s particularly fond of the sight at dawn and dusk.
“The sky’s kind of pink and blue, and the lights are on but you can still see all the towers and the wires. It’s very magical,” she said. “If you don’t know what it is, you’re filled with wonder. And the thing is, if you do know what it is, you’re still filled with wonder.”
Instead of the shortwave towers, RCI will broadcast internationally online.
In truth, even when RCI’s Sackville, NB site is decommissioned, I doubt the towers will be brought down immediately. It’s actually quite an engineering feat to dismantle these. I would hope RCI offers other broadcasters the opportunity to dismantle and use them. VOA (or the IBB) had success doing this at their Greenville, NC transmission site (Site A).
In the past, we’ve noted several artists and musicians who were inspired by the audible characteristics and sonic texture of shortwave radio (check out the Besnard Lakes and Radius, for example).
Guitarist, Elliot Sharp, was inspired not only by the sonic qualities of shortwave radio, but also the mechanical qualities:
(Source: the Star Tribune)
Elliott Sharp does not believe in categories or conventions. It’s not that he’s trying to be rebellious. He’s just very curious — the kind of tinkerer who built a short-wave radio as a kid — and smart enough not to be deterred by artificial distinctions.
…[H]e’s worked with a ridiculous array of musicians, ranging from such rockers as Sonic Youth and singer Debbie Harry, to jazz greats such as Jack DeJohnette, to the legendary Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and classical music’s groundbreaking Kronos Quartet.
[…]Then there is the scientific side of Sharp’s brain. He grew up in Cleveland, where his father designed speakers and microphones. Already grounded in music from studying classical piano at age 6, he built a short-wave receiver at 11 and began experimenting with layers of noise.
Later he would link music and mathematics. Some compositions, he said, use algorithmic approaches “derived from the workings of recombinant RNA and the dynamics of bird flocking and wolf packs.”
He was also among the first musicians to deploy computers. The last of his three solo sets at the Walker will include “additional electronics and more free-ranging improvisation,” he said.
For more on Elliot Sharp, check out the full Star Tribune article quoted above, or visit Sharp’s website.