Many thanks to Mike Barraclough who shares this news:
“BBC has today launched a website publishing every BBC programme ever broadcast by the Corporation from digitised editions of the Radio Times 1923-2009. Getting occasional internal errors at the moment presumably due to heavy use following publicity. Well designed and easy to search. http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/“
The archive is quite deep–if you’re the nostalgic type, expect to spend a few hours browsing.
BBC World Service Director, Peter Horrocks (Source: BBC)
Another hat tip to Jonathan Marks for this press release from the BBC:
(Source: BBC Media Centre)
Peter Horrocks, Director of the BBC World Service Group, today announced that he will be leaving the BBC in the new year.
Peter Horrocks has been Director of the World Service since 2009 and has worked at the BBC for 33 years.
Under Peter’s leadership weekly audiences for the BBC’s global news services – BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC.com – have reached a record 265m.
Peter has led the World Service through some of its most challenging times, responding to funding cuts by modernising the World Service for the digital age.
He successfully oversaw one of the biggest changes in the history of the World Service as it moved from Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) funding into the licence fee, leaving its historic headquarters of Bush House for the BBC’s New Broadcasting House.
BBC World News has undergone a creative renewal that is being appreciated by audiences around the world and bbc.com/news now regularly achieves one billion page views a month. BBC News is the most retweeted news source in the world.
Peter Horrocks said: “It has been a privilege to be Director of the BBC World Service, which is loved and trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
“I am hugely proud of the dedication, the creativity and the reinvention shown by my team. The World Service now has its largest ever audience, an expanding number of languages, and is modernised and transformed for a digital age.
“Having overseen this recovery and taken the World Service into the new era of licence fee funding, it is time for me to move on to my next challenge. I will miss the BBC but am confident that the BBC’s global news services are in strong shape for the future.”
Director-General of the BBC, Tony Hall, said: “Peter’s remarkable career at the BBC has spanned more than three decades. Starting as a News trainee, he established himself as the youthful editor of Public Eye before going on to lead teams that produced some of the BBC’s most important news programmes, including Newsnight and Panorama. He also edited general election programmes before running several News departments, latterly the World Service Group.
“Those who have worked with him know of his energy, drive, his passion for journalism and his innovation but they have also come to appreciate his editorial integrity and his deeply rooted sense of BBC values. He leaves us as one of our most respected leaders. He is a force of nature and we will miss him.”
Director of BBC News and Current Affairs, James Harding, said: “Peter Horrocks has been a defining figure in the modern history of the BBC World Service and global news. He has demanded the highest standards of its journalism, he has driven innovation in the ways we tell stories and deliver the news, he has opened the BBC to new voices and fresh ideas and he has presided over the extraordinary growth of the BBC’s worldwide audience.
“His sharp intellect, open-mindedness and good judgment have shaped BBC News and Current Affairs for three decades. He has recruited and inspired hundreds of people here in the UK and around the world. And, like few others, he has set his stamp on both the programmes and the personality of the BBC.
“Since I joined the BBC last year, Peter has been a constant source of good advice, organisational wisdom and personal support. Of course, I respect Peter’s decision to move on, but, both personally and as an organisation, we will miss him.”
The BBC will advertise for Peter’s successor as Director, World Service Group.
About Peter Horrocks:
Peter Horrocks has worked in a wide variety of roles across BBC News since 1981. He has been editor of Newsnight and Panorama and produced TV election results programmes in 1992 and 1997. He has been Head of Current Affairs, Head of TV News and he created the BBC’s multimedia newsroom department in 2007.
As Director of the World Service Group Peter Horrocks has responsibility for World Service English radio, multimedia services in 28 languages, BBC World News TV, BBC.com/news and BBC Monitoring. He also chairs the BBC’s international media charity BBC Media Action.
Many thanks to Jonathan Marks who apprised me of this excellent 1960 film from the BBC. As Jonathan notes, it’s heavily scripted, but fascinating nonetheless.
Click here to view the full video on YouTube or watch via the embedded player below:
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing:
(Source: BBC News)
The BBC’s News department is to axe 415 jobs as cost-cutting measures continue, the BBC’s director of news James Harding has announced.
The move is part of £800m efficiency savings required after the licence fee was frozen in 2010.
The latest cuts are expected to save £48m by 2017.
BBC News currently employs around 8,400 people, including around 5,000 journalists, based in London, around the UK and overseas.
He also set out plans to substantially restructure the news division and put the BBC at the forefront of producing news for the digital age using new technologies.
A total of 195 new posts will be created to fulfill this plan, meaning a net reduction of 220 full-time jobs overall.
Around 70% of the annual running costs of BBC News are staff-related, meaning there would inevitably be an impact in this area, Mr Harding said.
The article continues by outlining all of the cuts and gains to the BBC.
I took note that BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight and the World Service program Newshour will be consolidated under a single editor. The BBC World Service’s budget, however, will increase from £245m this year to £250m in 2016-17. (Perhaps the most positive news in international broadcasting circles this week.)
Also check out Jonathan Mark’s comments on Critical Distance.
Sunday was the FIFA World Cup Final, and not only was I looking forward to the game, but (to tell the truth) I was also looking forward to recording the game via the BBC World Service for the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. Due to the BBC WS cuts, part of me fears this may be a last chance to capture this radio and sports history.
If you would like to hear the recordings of the World Cup Final, skip to the bottom of this post. But if you want to know how I managed to make the recordings, and why I made the choices I did, feel free to continue reading…Warning: full-on radio geek tech ahead!
Making the recording
I had two SDRs (software defined radios) at my disposal: the Elad FDM-S2 and my trusty WinRadio Excalibur. To record this match, I choose to use an SDR rather than a tabletop receiver for several reasons, namely:
Propagation was rather mediocre Sunday, and there were only three feasible BBC World Service English frequencies I could tune in mid-afternoon, none of which, of course, were targeting North America:
My hunch was that either 13,660 or 15,400 kHz would be my best bet for the early part of the match (pre-game starting at 18:30 UTC, half time at 20:00 UTC), however, I knew they would drop off after the first half of the game. And 11,800 kHz would be my best bet in the latter part of the game, unless 9,915 kHz happened to be stronger.
In the past, 11,800 had served me quite well for afternoon BBC listening, but yesterday there was an unscheduled religious broadcaster on 11,825 that was causing interference a full 30 kHz on either side of their carrier! During my pre-game check of the frequency, each attempt I made to block this broad interference was unsuccessful–very frustrating.
Which SDR?
The FDM-S2 is a fine SDR, and I was very tempted put it to the test. But while the Elad FDM-S2 is quite capable of making very wide spectrum recordings (up to 6 MHz) and could easily record all four frequencies on four different meter bands at the same time, I decided to use the WinRadio Excalibur, instead.
Why? If 11,800 kHz was my only viable frequency option in the latter half of the game, I needed a receiver that could sync to the less noisy lower sideband of 11,800 kHz. While Elad plans to add USB/LSB selectable synchronous detection in the next version of their SDR application, it currently does not have this capability.
I suppose, too, I feel more comfortable with the WinRadio Excalibur; I’ve been using it now for well over two years. If something were to go wrong during the broadcast, I knew I could diagnose it quickly on the Excalibur.
In addition, the Excalibur can do both a spectrum recording and up to three individual AF recordings at the same time (though limited within a 2MHz bandwidth). I’m not sure if Elad has plans for this in their next SDR.
Setting up the Excalibur
The Excalibur only has a 2 MHz bandwidth for spectrum recordings. I knew if I focused on the middle frequency of 13,660, I would be able to record it and either 15,400 or 11,810 at the same time, but not all three.
The first half of the match, I recorded both 13,660 kHz and 15,400 kHz in a 2 MHz wide spectrum recording. At the same time, I recorded the audio (an AF recording) from 13,660 kHz, which was consistently the stronger of the two frequencies.
Half time
By 20:00 UTC, I knew both 13,660 and 15,400 kHz would stop transmitting and I would need to either hop to 11,810 kHz or 9,915 kHz.
While maintaining a good audio recording of 13,660, I stopped the 2 MHz spectrum recording and moved it to encompass 13,660 and 11,810 kHz. A quick check proved that 11,810 was the strongest station. Fortunately, the interference above 11,810 had quieted somewhat at that point, and by using the LSB sync lock, this noise was successfully mitigated a bit.
Still, I could hear a chuffing sound coming from the splatter 11,825 was producing. So I enabled the notch filter and widened it to 2 kHz. By shifting it around in the upper side band, I was able to find the “sweet spot” where most of the splatter noise was canceled. I then started the audio recording on 11,810 a few minutes prior to 20:00 UTC, making a little audio overlap with simultaneous recording on 13,660.
Syncing on the lower sideband and using the notch filter in the upper sideband mitigated most of the splatter interference.
In the end, I was very pleased with the results of the recordings. While capturing the BBC World Service isn’t exactly like snagging rare DX, I felt I had a lot riding on this recording, so pre-game preparations were necessary, especially since the Excalibur couldn’t record spectrum from 9,915 to 15,400 kHz.
And in theory, had I used the Elad FDM-S2, I could have recorded the entire chunk for three hours and then revisited the material later to make audio recordings from the AF.
For your listening pleasure: the full 2014 World Cup final via the BBC World Service. This broadcast is broken into 3 sections: pre-game and the first half, second half, and extra time. Enjoy!
Yesterday, I was primed to follow the FIFA World Cup semi-final match featuring the Netherlands vs. Argentina. Moreover, we have good friends from Germany visiting; of course, they wanted to see who their winning team will be playing in the final match come Sunday.
But as we live in a fairly rural area, and don’t place much of a priority on television (radio, anyone?), we have no cable, no satellite, and with no more than a rabbit-ear indoor antenna on our only telly, no local over-the-air broadcasters available. But we found we were able to watch the match stream live on ESPN via an Apple TV box attached to our only television.
Of course, I also tuned in the match on shortwave radio–via the BBC World Service on 11,810 kHz out of Ascension Island–starting a little after 20:00 UTC. And guess which stream was more “live” (i.e., immediate), ESPN or shortwave? Here’s the recording:
Answer: You guessed it–the shortwave coverage was one full minute in advance of the ESPN “live” stream. My friends watching television in another room marveled at my clairvoyance…
When the match went into extra time, as Argentina and the Netherlands were tied 0-0, the BBC World Service dropped the frequency to KBS (you’ll hear a few minutes of KBS in the recording). At this point I was resigned to watching the match on ESPN, as I didn’t want to miss any of the action while trying to find another broadcaster covering the match.
Then, radio to the rescue: I received the following tweet from SWLing Post reader/contributor @LondonShortwave:
Listening to ARG vs HOL live 6180 R.N.Amazônia http://t.co/grtot78JZ4 @SWLingDotCom @UlisK3LU @rya857 @adxb1159 @EA4004SWL @El_Radioescucha
— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) July 9, 2014
So I quickly tuned to Radio Nacional Amazonia on 6,180, where I discovered a booming signal and full match coverage. Even though the commentary was in Portuguese, a language I can’t speak, I could still follow the match knowing player and team names. When Argentina won the penalty kicks after extra time, commentators exploded with excitement. Listen for yourself:
What made the match all the better, besides watching it with my good friends here at home, was following it with my shortwave friends across the globe. As we exchanged tweets (while following coverage) it was as if we were all in the same room. Indeed, here’s what @LondonShortwave said:
@SWLingDotCom @UlisK3LU @rya857 @adxb1159 @EA4004SWL @El_Radioescucha love the fact we can all listen to the same signal so far apart!
— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) July 9, 2014
So true–! While using the Internet to communicate, we were listening to the same and far-more-efficient shortwave station for coverage.
Now on to Sunday, and hoping I can catch the final match on the BBC World Service…with the rest of the world. If you can, join us. Game on!