Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who writes:
Another radio turned up in the BBC series, ‘Death in Paradise’.
Set on a picturesque Caribbean island with an infeasibly high murder rate, we see the police interviewing a witness as he listens to the local radio station.
Can SWLing Post readers identify the radio I wonder?
Please comment if you can ID this radio! Not an easy task this time as there’s no close-up shot to pull details from the front panel. Good luck!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares these screen shots from “Death Wish 2” (1982). Carlos is curious if anyone is familiar with or recognizes this brand of radio:
Do you think this radio a fabricated stage prop, or a real model? Please comment!
I’ll add this post to our ever growing archive of radios in film!
Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of RadioBecause I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Adid, Joel, Michael Bird, and Mike Terry, for the following tips:
As many as 40 local television outlets and 200 Canadian radio stations could be forced to close in the next three years as the financial pressures faced by media companies intensify under the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests a new study from an industry advocacy group.
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters issued a report on Wednesday warning of potential closures and widespread job cuts as private TV and radio broadcasters face a cumulative projected revenue shortfall of up to $1.06 billion by the end of 2022.
Most vulnerable are the country’s AM radio stations, the report said, as well as other independent private radio and TV operations in smaller markets across the country.
The study, titled “The Crisis in Canadian Media and the Future of Local Broadcasting,” was commissioned by the CAB, which represents the majority of private broadcasters in Canada, and conducted through Winnipeg-based independent media economics consultancy Communications Management Inc.
Replacement of stations with single national outlet described as act of ‘breathtaking cultural vandalism’
Dozens of regional radio stations have been replaced by a single national outlet, in the latest blow to an industry that has seen deep cuts in recent decades.
Outlets across England and Wales owned by Bauer Media – ranging from Wolverhampton’s Signal 107 to York’s Minster FM and Salisbury’s Spire FM – will now broadcast under the single brand Greatest Hits Radio.
Critics said the move was the death knell for traditional mid-sized commercial radio stations, with only a handful of truly independent local radio outlets remaining.
Most of the outlets affected had their own locally employed presenters and management and their own studios in the towns and cities they served. Now, most of the stations on the new network will carry national programming for 20 hours a day.[…]
For a behemoth that now dominates the local AM radio dial, its beginnings were surprisingly humble.
One hundred years ago Thursday, WWJ radio — Detroit’s very first station — was born when Detroit News publisher and radio enthusiast William E. Scripps had a 200-watt transmitter set up in a corner of the sports department. (Today? It’s 50,000 watts.) WWJ will air a special show, “WWJ at 100, a Century of News,” at 7 p.m. Thursday to celebrate.
WWJ wasn’t just first in Detroit. Depending on how you slice things, it was the first commercial broadcaster in the U.S., though when it went on the air that Aug. 20 a century back, it was probably picked up by only a few dozen households in possession of what was, at the time, shockingly high-tech radio equipment.
Asked where he’d locate WWJ in American broadcasting history, Specs Howard, founder of the School of Media Arts in Southfield that bears his name, said without hesitation, “Oh, right near the top.”
One-time WRIF program director Fred Jacobs, now head of Jacobs Media Strategies in Bingham Farms, agreed, saying, “It’s really been a remarkable run, especially in a world where brands come and go.”[…]
At the Voice of America, staffers say the Trump appointee leading their parent agency is threatening to wash away legal protections intended to insulate their news reports from political meddling.
“What we’re seeing now is the step-by-step and wholescale dismantling of the institutions that protect the independence and the integrity of our journalism,” says Shawn Powers, until recently the chief strategy officer for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA.
Voice of America’s mission is a form of soft diplomacy: to embody democratic principles through fair reporting and to replace a free press in countries where there is none. VOA and its four sister networks together reach more than 350 million people abroad each week.
Since taking office in June, Pack has upended the agency. In a podcast interview last week with the pro-Trump website The Federalist, Pack said he had to take action because many executives and journalists were disregarding the agency’s ethical standards.
“My job really is to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias, not to tell journalists what to report,” Pack told host Chris Bedford. Pack has declined NPR’s repeated and detailed requests for comment.
But it appears that Pack is, in fact, interested in influencing which stories get told, and how. The senior news editor who oversaw VOA’s standards and practices was reassigned to a corporate position earlier this summer and has since played no role in guiding coverage or scrutinizing stories flagged as problematic.[…]
This issue over 100 Pages Of Projects, News, Views and Reviews…
Amateur Radio News from the SW corner of Canada and elsewhere.
You will find articles, profiles, news, tips and how-to’s.https://ve7sar.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-communicator-magazine-september.html
Please consider supporting us via Patreon or our Coffee Fund!
Your support makes articles like this one possible. Thank you!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who shares a music video recently released by Rush in honor of the 40th anniversary of their album, Permanent Waves.
The animated video takes us on a journey through radio and broadcasting history. No doubt, you’ll recognize many names and stations. It’s a wonderful radio nostalgia trip. Rush produced this video in memory of their epic drummer, Neil Peart, who passed away earlier this year.
Enjoy:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Michael Schuster, who shares the following guest post:
by Michael Schuster
Back in the 1970’s my grandfather gifted this solid-state portable to me as it was more than he needed. It was the first “real” radio I can remember owning, and it initiated my habit of scanning the dials into the wee hours of the morning. I began my serious SWLing using this set as it had excellent sensitivity, dual conversion design, big booming audio, and generous bandspread tuning for each major SW broadcast band.
One of the best-known SWL programs at the time was Happy Station on Radio Nederland, and I have distinct memories of listening in our back yard one summer afternoon when the show came up on the African Service over the Madagascar relay. My family was astonished at the program coming from so far away and even more so when Tom Meijer happened to read my letter over the air during the mailbag segment!
Fast forward many years (and two moves) later, it sat on a shelf until, trying it out again, I was dismayed to find both slide rule tuning dials, and the rotary drum band selector, to be frozen in place. And so there it sat until….
In a few online forums I kept hearing about a magician named Vlado at Ham Radio Repair. He specializes in restoring old sets, and has the courage and curiosity to tackle just about anything. Thinking this might be my last chance to bring this fossil back to life, and armed with a scanned copy of the service manual downloaded from the Radio Museum web site (the Internet is a marvelous thing) I began a several months’ long email exchange with Vlado entitled “Would you be willing to work on…”
He is chronically swamped with sets to work on, and has little room to store pending jobs, but was more than willing to have a look. Several months, and one pandemic later, we touched base again and I arranged to ship this monster off to him. Vlado is especially interested in the stories behind old hardware, so I shared its history with him as it adds that extra “human factor”.
The radio is in great shape as he noted, but needed a total rework of the tuning dials and drum selector. He also replaced all of the electrolytic capacitors (most were leaking as pictured), replaced some tiny light bulbs with LED’s, and realigned all of the circuits for maximum performance.
Unpacking and trying out the restored set was a true blast and somewhat miraculous. It performs just as I remember and now sits on the shelf, this time in use rather than in storage, booming its audio across my basement work room.
Now this set will probably outlive me as it did my grandfather; hopefully it will end up in the hands of an appreciative recipient for the next generation of radio enthusiasts.
Thank you for sharing this repair story, Mike. I visited Vlado’s home a few weeks ago and saw the box labeled “Sony CRF-160” in-line to be repaired. As Vlado worked on it, he sent me a couple of photos, too, because I believe it was the first time he had ever worked on this particular Sony model. It is certainly a gorgeous radio–wow! And I do love your philosophy as it’s the one I adopt too: keep vintage radios alive and working beyond our generation.
Vlado is truly the most capable ham radio repair guy technician/engineer you’ll ever meet. He’s also as honest as the day is long. If you have a vintage or late-model solid-state radio that needs repair or restoration, contact him.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jason W, who writes:
You might be interested in this episode of the BBC series tomorrow’s world from 17th Feb 1993 on YouTube:
10:23 to 14:50 has a introduction and demonstration of digital radio in the UK and concluding with “the experts say we will be fully digital by 2020 it’s a long wait” (referring to the switch from fm to digital radio in the UK which is yet to happen).
I thought it might be interesting to highlight this on the blog in 2020.
We can forgive the bit where she suggests digital radio will operate alongside analogue FM in the same frequency band. This Wikipedia on the history of digital broadcasting in the UK shows the UK adopted the DAB Eureka 147 standard in a SFN (single frequency network) from the start of test transmissions in 1990.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_in_the_United_KingdomThe same episode has a later piece on wide-screen digital television. (20:18 to 23:41) ending with the line “like digital radio, it is a few years away” 🙂
This is fantastic! I love watching vintage Tomorrow’s World episodes. It’s great to see how well they predicted the future and what they considered to be meaningful future innovations at the time. Thank you for sharing, Jason!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David (G4EDR), who writes:
I enjoyed reading about the vintage shortwave radio book memories from Bob W6ACU and it prompted me dig out the book which got me started in SWLing back in 1970. It was in a series of illustrated teach yourself books and the title was ‘Radio’ written by David Gibson G3JDG [see cover above].
I borrowed it from the school library and renewed the loan so many times the librarian suggested I should buy my own copy so that someone else could have the chance to borrow it! I still have my own copy of the book bought with my saved pocket money for the sum of 15 shillings. That was before the UK changed to decimal currency (15 shillings is 75p in decimal).
The book covered basic radio theory and several construction projects including a crystal set and an atu which I made and I also learned all about amateur radio and QSL cards.
That was the start of my life long obsession with radio. How things have changed over 50 years! Thank you for allowing me to rekindle those happy early days of this fantastic hobby of ours.
73, David – G4EDR.
Thank you, David, for sharing your memories with us. It’s amazing, isn’t it, the impact one book or one radio can have on one’s life!
