Category Archives: Broadcasters

Richard voices his opinion about BBC World Service commercialization

Richard Cuff–noted SWL and festmeister for the Winter SWL Fest–sent a message to the BBC World Service listener feedback program Over To You deploring the BBC’s decision to incorporate limited advertising on the World Service as of April 2014.

Over To You contacted Richard and invited him to an interview where he discussed these changes with Mark Bunting, head of BBC WS Strategy.

The program aired earlier this week. Richard noted that the discussion was “chopped quite a bit” to fit a nine minute time slot.

Click here to listen to Richard’s interview on Over To You: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sbmkt

More 1968 recordings on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive

BBC World Service to further reduce shortwave

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(Image source: BBC)

I appears the BBC World Service is cutting shortwave broadcasts even further in an attempt to meet tighter budget numbers. Not many details, at the moment, in terms of what language programs will suffer the most.

Many thanks to Richard Cuff for the tip:

(Source: The Guardian)

The BBC World Service will further reduce its shortwave transmissions next year as part of a £15m savings drive which staff have been warned will be a “real stretch”.

The money will be used to invest in new TV and digital services, part of a programme called Invest to Innovate.

An extra £6.5m is being pumped into the World Service’s budget this year, alongside an extra £1.5m of savings, helping to create 130 jobs. New initiatives include a global version of Radio 1’s Newsbeat.

But the BBC’s director of global news, Peter Horrocks, said further savings would be required in the future.

[…]Horrocks said changes would include more multilingual reporting, with staff filing for their own language service and in English, as well as a further reduction in shortwave transmissions.

He said the World Service would also have to integrate further with the main BBC News operation.

Horrocks also announced that the BBC’s global news division, which includes its world news TV channel, would be renamed “World Service Group … a sort of World Service-plus” and the World Service board would be axed with the change in its funding.

[…]It closed five language services, stopped radio broadcasts in seven languages, cut back on shortwave and medium-wave transmissions and axed a number of World Service English programmes.[…]

Read the full article at The Guardian online.

BBG tries to improve employee morale

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In December 2012, we posted a survey from the 2012 edition of The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government by The Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte. The survey indicated that the Broadcasting Board of Governers (BBG) had been ranked in the bottom five places to work in the federal government.

According to the Washington Post, the agency is now working on a plan to boost employee morale. Some of their initiatives include:

“Agency directors and senior staff hold[ing] face-time sessions in the cafeteria for informal talks with employees, a “Civility Campaign” addresses labor-management issues, and a Workplace Engagement Initiative takes a deeper dive into the agency’s low morale ratings.

Some of the morale-boosting events are meant to be fun, such as the raffle during the fitness-center open house, a chocolate bake-off in time for Valentine’s Day, and ?after-work gatherings — a bingo night, happy hour, checkers and chess.

It’s going to take all that and some sustained work to improve the agency’s failing report cards.”

Read the full article on The Washington Post…

Many thanks to Richard Cuff for the tip!

Lynley Marshall defends ABC overseas broadcasts

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Lynley Marshal (Source: ADNews.com.au)

(Source: The Sydney Morning Herald)

“The chief for the ABC broadcasting into the Asia Pacific insists the taxpayer funded network has a growing audience with better programs on the way – despite reports the service is for the chop in the May budget.

ABC International boss Lynley Marshall stoutly defended overseas broadcasts as a way of promoting Australia, saying the spread of social media and mobile devices in Asia has vastly extended the potential audience.

She told a Melbourne audience on Monday evening the service had more than 1 million supporters on its Facebook page for learning theEnglish language.”

[Continue reading…]

While this article doesn’t mention shortwave radio per se, it’s most interesting to see where Marshall must both defend Australian international broadcasting as a form of diplomacy while also defending the news agency when its reports are critical of the government.

There’s an inherent tension all international broadcasters face–at least, those that are tax-payer supported–as many try to transition from being purely a mouthpiece of the government to an example of free press and democracy.

Horizon FM Tenerife now on shortwave

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Thanks to Mike Barraclough for this info:

“Horizon FM Tenerife has started broadcasting on shortwave on 5,780 [kHz], 75 watts at the moment, short English announcement on their website.”

More information can be found here along with an announcement that Horizon plans to increase output power to 1kW within the next three weeks.

Mike originally posted this info on the Cumbre DX FB page.

Shortwave Radio Recordings: Voice of America, circa 1968

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Many thanks to David Firth, who is kindly sharing shortwave radio recordings he made on reel-to-reel recording equipment in the late 1960s.

Firth is uncovering and digitizing these off air recordings as time allows and, thanks to his generosity, we will be posting these recordings on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

The following is a recording of the Voice of America, which Firth recorded in 1968.

This seven minute recording will surely bring back memories with clips from VOA Jazz Hour (Willis Conover), the VOA Breakfast Show, and VOA Special English.

[Confession: the first time I heard this recording, the Willis Conover clip gave me chill bumps.]

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Check out more recordings on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, also check out David Firth’s channel on YouTube.

Want to know more about Willis Conover? Check out David Goren’s podcast for Jazz At Lincoln Center.