Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Rob Gray, who writes:
I took this snap today while visiting in St. Petersburg Russia for a few months. Not exciting radios by any means, but given this store was something like a Best Buy, I thought it was interesting that shortwave still has a small presence.
Thanks for sharing, Rob! I can’t think of the last time I visited an electronics retailer and found as many shortwave radios on the shelf. At least, not since the days of RadioShack.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ralf Bender, who writes:
Here a link to a German radio station website, which yesterday released that a Russian broadcaster is back on air. In times when many broadcasters/stations are closed [this is] good news.
Here there original German website:
https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/medienmagazin/radio_news/beitraege/2018/kamtschatka.htmlAnd here with automatic Google translation:
Kamchatka on shortwave
According to the broadcasting companies of the republics Adygea and Sakha, in the Russian Federation, a third broadcaster is again active on shortwave: the GTRK Kamchatka from Petropavlovsk. Sent for each two hours from 8.00 and 13.00 clock local time on the frequency 5940 kHz.[…]
The transmission to 5940 kHz compensates the omission of the long wave 180 kHz. Like all others, it had been shut down at the beginning of 2014 by long-wave and shortwave recordings that had previously been recorded on the account of the All-Russian State Broadcasting Corporation (WGTRK). Thus, the radio coverage ended outside the areas reached by the FM stations.[…]
The article also includes the following reception video from a DXer in Asia:
Click here to view on YouTube.
Thanks for the tip, Ralf! Perhaps some of our Russian readers can shed some light on this development? Please comment!
RFE and VOA audio services are broadcast over the air and are streamed online.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:
The Washington Post’s Editorial Board put out this opinion piece this weekend entitled, “Russian propaganda has flooded U.S. airwaves. How about some reciprocity?”
I wrote to them at <[email protected]> and asked why they didn’t mention the U.S. Government’s considerable state media broadcast resources in their article.
Apparently they never heard of international broadcasting.
Maybe you could link to this article in the SWLing Post and encourage readers to write to the Washington Post’s Editorial Board to enlighten them.
It amazes me that people who work at high levels in a major U.S.-based news media outlet seem so ignorant about international broadcasting.
Thanks, Ed. It is interesting that while the article notes RFE and VOA’s TV program, Current Time (which is only available online), they fail to mention the substantial resources backing RFE/Radio Liberty and VOA’s on-air audio broadcasts that are also available to stream online.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Robert (AK3Q), who shares this news item:
“This was first reported by the Telegraph and picked up by Fox News website:”
(Source: The Telegraph)
Russia has run large scale experiments to test the feasibility of cutting the country off the World Wide Web, a senior industry executive has claimed.
The tests, which come amid mounting concern about a Kremlin campaign to clamp down on internet freedoms, have been described by experts as preparations for an information blackout in the event of a domestic political crisis.
Andrei Semerikov, general director of a Russian service provider called Er Telecom, said Russia’s ministry of communications and Roskomnadzor, the national internet regulator, ordered communications hubs run by the main Russian internet providers to block traffic to foreign communications channels by using a traffic control system called DPI.
The objective was to see whether the Runet – the informal name for the Russian internet – could continue to function in isolation from the global internet.
The experiment, which took place in spring this year, failed because thousands of smaller service providers, which Roskomnadzor has little control over, continued to pass information out of the country, Mr Semerikov said.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who writes:
Yesterday, 4 October, was the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial Earth satellite. The launch heralded the beginning of the space age. Sputnik I’s Doppler-shifted radio transmissions on 20.005 and 40.002 MHz led to the development of the U.S. Navy Navigation Satellite System (Transit) and the equivalent Soviet system (Tsikada) and, eventually, to GPS and GLONASS and the other modern global navigation satellite systems.
The Sputnik I radio signals were picked up by many shortwave listeners. The 20 MHz signal was close to that of WWV and so was easy to find. And, apparently, WWV turned off its 20 MHz transmitter during some of Sputnik I’s passes over the U.S. so as not to interfere with reception.
There are several good sites on the Web with information about Sputnik I and its radio signals including:
(Click to enlarge)
Sometime in high school, I received a card from Radio Moscow celebrating the launch of Sputnik I [see above]. Perhaps it was issued in 1967 for the 10th anniversary of the launch.
Richard: You never cease to amaze me! Thank you so much for sharing all of this Sputnik I information and resources! That gorgeous QSL Card is perhaps my favorite design from Radio Moscow.
Many thanks to Jonathan Marks who shares this breaking news item via BBC Monitoring:
CNN to stop broadcasting in Russia at end of year
Text of report by Russian state-owned TASS news agency (formerly ITAR-TASS)
Moscow, 10 November. Roskomnadzor [the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications] has nothing to do with the stopping of broadcasts by the TV news channel CNN International on Russian cable networks, Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonskiy has told TASS.
“You should ask CNN’s shareholders about the reasons why the channel is stopping broadcasts,” Ampelonskiy said.
A source who is familiar with CNN’s business in Russia told TASS that CNN is stopping broadcasts on Russian cable networks for commercial reasons.
CNN is distributed in Russia on the cable and satellite networks of operators of subscription television such as Akado, Vympelkom, NTV and others.
The fact that CNN will stop broadcasting on cable networks in Russia from 31 December 2014 is stated in a letter from Turner Broadcasting System Europe (CNN’s owner), a copy of which TASS has. “With this letter we inform you that Turner is stopping the distribution of the CNN International television channel on the territory of the Russian Federation from 31 December 2014,” the letter says. The letter does not give the reasons for the decision. Turner Broadcasting System’s managing director in the CIS, Tatyana Kalita, declined to comment.
Akado and Vympelkom confirmed to TASS that they had received the letter. “Yes, we received the letter. We hope that next year the channel will broadcast on the territory of Russia again,” Vympelkom’s press service said.
Source: TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 2142 GMT 10 Nov 14
Jonathan also points out this article, which links the cessation of CNN broadcasts to a new law Putin has enacted:
(Source: Advertising Age magazine)
CNN, the cable news channel owned by Time Warner, will stop broadcasting in Russia after a new law was passed that limits foreign ownership in media companies.
Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting division said it hopes to resume broadcasting eventually, according to an e-mailed statement. The move was first reported by Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper. CNN’s Moscow bureau operations are unaffected, according to the statement.“Turner International is assessing its distribution options for CNN in Russia in light of recent changes in Russian media legislation,” Turner wrote in the statement. “We are bringing our existing distribution relationships to an end while we do that. We hope to re-enter the market in due course, and will notify our partners of any update about resuming these services.”
Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that requires Russian media with foreign owners to reduce non-Russian ownership to 20% by the end of 2016.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Russia plans next week to discuss contingency measures to cut the country off from the global Internet in what the Kremlin called a necessary step to shield the nation from the U.S.-controlled worldwide Web.
Russia’s state security council will examine ways to ensure domestic users can be redirected to servers inside the country rather than relying on the U.S.-managed Internet domain-names system, the Moscow-based Coordination Center for .RU domain said by e-mail today.
“We need to defend ourselves from the U.S. and Europe,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said by phone today. “This is not about isolating ourselves, it’s about getting ready for possible cut-offs as countries that regulate the Web may act unpredictably.”
[…]Russia last month banned anonymous access to the Internet in public spaces and expanded the regulation of media to the blogosphere, requiring those with at least 3,000 daily readers to register their real names and contact information. In February the authorities had passed a law allowing them to close webpages without a court decision if material is deemed “extremist.”
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who used to criticize Putin and reveal corruption among his inner circle, was the first victim of that law when his blog on LiveJournal.com was shut in March. Recent legislation requires Internet companies to store Russian users’ information on servers in the country, similar to Chinese regulations.
I expect this will only lower Russia on the Press Freedoms Index, where they are currently number 148 out of a possible 180.
This post is being tagged: Why Shortwave Radio?
