Tag Archives: Why Shortwave Radio

BBG: Radio audience far exceeds that of TV, internet

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(Source: BBG)

(WASHINGTON, D.C.—November 15, 2011) U.S. government funded international broadcasters reached an estimated 187 million people every week in 2011, an increase of 22 million from last year’s figure, according to new audience data being made public by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

[…]The record numbers, released in the BBG Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), measure the combined audience of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa). The report details impact on audiences around the globe including people in the world’s most repressive media and political environments.

[R]adio remains the BBG’s number one media platform, reaching 106 million people per week, [while] television’s growth puts it at 97 million people. The Internet audience was approximately 10 million, with the largest online audiences measured in Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt and Iran.

In summary, BBG’s stats show that radio has fully 10 times the audience of the internet/SMS, and radio listeners surpass television viewers by 9 million. Clearly, radio leads the way because it is a basic technology that has been in place for decades, building a lasting infrastructure and audience. We’ve posted numerous articles proving that radio–specifically, shortwave radio–is still a viable and dynamic information medium, with no regard for borders, for the party in power, or for the economic status of the listener.

Indeed, radio is perhaps the only information medium–other than word-of-mouth–that informs both some of the most wealthiest and some of the most impoverished people on our planet.

Let’s keep it alive: remind your broadcasters that radio is a lifeline for many listeners across the planet.

Read the full BBG report here (PDF).

US Christian Broadcaster Still Believes in Shortwave

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(Source: VOA News)

With the rise of the Internet, some news broadcasters, including the Voice of America, are moving away from shortwave radio.

But some religious broadcasters in America still believe in the medium.

“Our view is that there is a great future for shortwave,” says Charles Caudil, president of World Christian Broadcasting, which runs KNLS. He says its long-range signal is ideal for reaching rural areas in the developing world.

“Very few people there have the Internet available to them, or satellites. But they do have shortwave receivers. There are about three billion shortwave receivers in the world,” he said.

I think VOA could learn from their own report. While VOA believes that China (cited in this report) is well-equipped for the internet world, have they thought about internet surveillance (see previous post) in their on-line distribution model?

Looks like some broadcasters still do. Again, shortwave radio = anonymity.

Read full VOA report and watch video.

The Register: Global internet surveillance skyrocketing

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(Photo courtesy: USAID)

As I’ve mentioned in many previous articles, the internet is surely an excellent first-world technology. However, as this article from The Register points out,  the internet also hides a much shadowier, more alarming nature, exemplified in the growing amount of internet surveillance.

A top US government official believes that the internet is under fierce attack by authoritarian governments worldwide, and that the situation is rapidly deteriorating.

“Today we face a series of challenges at the intersection of human rights, connected technologies, business, and government. It’s a busy intersection – and a lot of people want to put up traffic lights,” said US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, speaking at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

[…]And as information communications technology moves ever deeper into less-developed countries, Posner sees the problems increasing. “These are the places where repressive regimes are getting hold of the latest, greatest Western technologies and using them to spy on their own citizens for purposes of silencing dissent,” he said. “Journalists, bloggers and activists are of course the primary targets.”

From his point of view, governments in some of these emerging markets “appear fiercely determined to control what people do online.”

Again, this underlines the straightforward, egalitarian nature of an alternative media source:  shortwave radio.  People living under the control of such a regime can turn to radio to hear voices from across the globe, to dispel inaccuracies and fallacies, and learn the truth.  Unlike the internet, there’s no virtual gateway that can be locked down by a government’s heavy hand. Shortwave radio has no regard for border crossings.

Best of all, no one can prevent these listeners from listening; no one can track them or their listening habits.

Herein lies my fear that, as many large international broadcasters such as the BBC, VOA, DW and others abandon shortwave service to invest in the internet, we put all our eggs in one tenuous basket. Certainly, we can invest in technologies which attempt to stall government efforts to temper our internet presence in, for example, China; but what about the people accessing these protective internet sites?  Who is watching them and their surfing habits?

Crack.  There goes democracy…


BBC World Service launches new famine aid broadcasts

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(Source: journalism.co.uk)

The BBC World Service has launched special radio broadcasts on its Somalia service aimed at helping those affected by the famine in the Horn of Africa.

According to a release, the daily 15 minute programmes, called Gurmad (Rescue), feature news bulletins offering practical information and expert advice “to help people to make informed decisions that may help them survive the famine”.

The editor of BBC Somali, Yusuf Garaad Omar, said while the broadcaster has been covering the humanitarian crisis its reporters have been “overwhelmed” with questions on relief aid.

“So we decided to devote a special programme to address these issues, and as a majority of those affected are Somali-speakers, it was also obvious that BBC Somali is the right channel to reach these people.

“We hope that timely, up-to-date information, provided by experts, about issues these people are facing every day, will help them survive this crisis. We will do our best to maintain the supply of such knowledge to all those who are in need of it.”

Click here to read the full article at Journalism.co.uk.

It pleases me to no end to know that someone at the BBC World Service acknowledges that shortwave radio is still the most effective way to reach those who live in the most rural and impoverished parts of our globe.

RNW adding more shortwave broadcasts to Egypt

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Radio Netherlands Worldwide has announced that it is increasing shortwave and satellite broadcasts into Europe after Egyptian authorities shut down internet and mobile services.

The new shortwave times/frequencies are:

  • 0600-0700 UTC on 9830 kHz
  • 1600-1700 UTC on 5955 kHz + 9750 kHz
  • 1730-1830 UTC on 11615 kHz + 11655 kHz

For the full story, please read RNW Media Networks’ post.

In an Internet World, Radio Lives

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Thank you to Radio World for publishing this:

A teacher with an ETOW radio in Bor County, Southern Sudan. Courtesy Project Education Sudan

For as long as I can remember I’ve been passionate about radio.

From my earliest childhood memories in the 1980s during those final fading days of the Cold War — of my dad tuning in WWV in Fort Collins, Colo., on his dad’s vintage RCA 6K3; of falling asleep listening to my then-old-fashioned AM transistor radio; and of drinking in all those mysterious DX stations I heard over shortwave and medium-wave … I was the sort of kid (a throwback to a former generation, one might say) who couldn’t get enough of radio.

In those days when cable TV and video games and the first PCs upstaged and supplanted radio in nearly every American household, even in the blue collar town in which I grew up, it was nonetheless radio that captured my imagination, and taught me early on that everyone has a story. Radio taught me, too, that each voice is different in his or her consideration of what’s meaningful or newsworthy. I learned to understand or at least appreciate the diverse perspectives I heard in my vicarious radio journeys, and from these sprang my own opinions, hopes, beliefs. Radio became my teacher—a teacher who gave me, in my formative years, a global perspective.

I would have to say that radio has shaped my life. I suppose that’s why radio recently has become a mission for me…

…Today, I am the founder and director of Ears to Our World, a grassroots charitable organization with a simple objective: distributing self-powered world-band radios to schools and communities in the third world, so that kids, not to mention those who teach them, can learn about their world, too.

I want others –– children and young people, especially –– who lack reliable access to information, to have the world of radio within their reach.

Click here to read the full article.

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