Tag Archives: Why Shortwave Radio

Radio: “a rare dimension to our human experience”

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SX-99-DialRegarding Garth Mullins’ radio documentary, SWLing Post reader, David Korchin, comments:

“I got my start in a small FM station in Saskatoon—CFMC, doing overnights, then drive, then mornings.

Kind of a loose format, and with such a small staff that we were all doing each others’ jobs. When the news guy went on vacation, I got to rip-and-read.

Later I moved to another market, with a bigger transmitter and more audience, a tighter format and rules about what you could say and play—but the lone magic of talking into the mic and being in the ears of a complete stranger never left.

It’s why I’m a Ham, I suppose. It’s already depressing that the biggies like Netherlands and Canada and others have tuned out. I hate to ponder the End of Radio—it’s like losing an untouchable, rare dimension to our human experience.”

David Korchin (K2WNW) is also a talented photographer; check out his website–One Camera One Lens–and especially his photography project, The Hamateur. Amazing images…

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts, David!

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Radio is dead? Not according to Mullins

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Garth Mullins

Garth Mullins

Garth Mullins is an SWL and a radio geek:  yes, he’s one of us.

What’s more, Mullins believes that radio is now experiencing a renaissance.  Listen to his brilliant documentary, End of the Dial, which was recently re-broadcast on the CBC program Ideas with Paul Kennedy. Best 54 minutes you’ve ever spent.

Be sure to check out Garth’s website: http://www.garthmullins.com/

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The Straits Times: “Western radio broadcasters tuning out”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing this article from The Straits Times which interviews our friend Victor Goonetilleke. This is one of the first articles I’ve seen in the international press which gives a listener’s perspective on recent cuts to shortwave broadcasting.

Analog Radio Dial(Source: The Straits Times)

For 67-year-old Victor Goonetilleke, sitting with his headphones on in his house in the lush green Sri Lankan countryside, June 30 was the end of an era.

Voice of America’s (VOA) short-wave broadcasts to Asia abruptly went off the air, raising howls of protest from many of the US government-funded broadcaster’s listeners across the region.

But as the broadcasts had already been greatly diminished, this was not a surprise. The big Western radio broadcasters have gradually ceded the political “soft power” space they once dominated to a new heavyweight: China Radio International (CRI).

In recent years, Radio Canada International and Radio Netherlands Worldwide have shut down while the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and VOA have cut back on their range of languages and hours of programming. Now, the VOA has left Asia.

Mr Goonetilleke is not just an avid radio listener. He professionally monitors radio frequencies for the VOA. He is also a former veteran radio correspondent with Radio Netherlands for 24 years in an era when short-wave radio broadcasts from the likes of the BBC, VOA, Radio Netherlands, and Deutsche Welle were often lifelines to other worlds for hundreds of millions especially in times of conflict and misery.

The BBC now broadcasts in 29 languages across the planet, down from a peak of 69 in the 1970s. CRI broadcasts in 65, up from a reported 43 in 2006. Some programmes are run by local FM stations.

These days, Mr Goonetilleke can listen to four hours of CRI broadcasts in Sinhala and Tamil daily, compared with 30 minutes each on BBC.

CRI’s Tamil language broadcast is one of its oldest, run by fluent Tamil speaker Zhu Juanhua, a Shanghai native better known by her tens of thousands of listeners as Kalaiarasi.

According to the CRI website, it has 3,165 listener clubs around the planet, including CRI netizens’ clubs.

[Continue reading…]

 

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“The Gutting of Radio Australia”

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ABC-Radio-Australia(Source: Inside Story)

We’re sitting on the grass in the village of Matangi on the island of Futuna. This is one of the more isolated communities in Vanuatu, a small group of houses on a small island at the southeastern extreme of the archipelago.

“We rely a lot on Radio Australia when there’s a cyclone coming,” says Miranda, a member of the island’s Community Disaster Committee. “We have no telephone on this side of the island and we often can’t hear Radio Vanuatu.”

As Australia debates budgets, debt and deficits, we rarely hear the views of communities affected by planned cuts. Whether it’s the size of the aid budget or the resourcing of the international services of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, our neighbours have little input into decisions that affect their lives.

The latest blow is the planned redundancy of eighty staff from ABC International following the Abbott government’s decision to take Australia Network television away from the ABC. Revoking the $250 million TV contract – with just ninety days’ notice – has had an impact well beyond television. Given the integration of TV, radio and online services within ABC International, the decision affects not only Australia Network but also the other international services providing crucial information to the islands region.

Continue reading at: http://inside.org.au/the-gutting-of-radio-australia/#sthash.4cwXhev9.dpuf

View other posts related to Radio Australia cuts by bookmarking the tag RA Cuts.

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VOA and RFA via homemade radios in North Korea

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FlagNorthKoreaMany thanks to SWLing Post reader, Anil, for sharing this article regarding the importance and inspiration radio provides to many North Koreans. This comes from our favorite North Korea independent news site, NK News.

Here’s a quote from the article from a North Korean defector known as “Park”:

“I have been listening to the North Korea Reform Radio and other outside radios since 13 years ago,” he said.

Using this homemade radio, Park could access VOA, RFA, NKRR, VOP, RFC and ONK over the past five years.

“Frankly, the ideological education in North Korea is so strong that many people including myself could not believe the content of the outside world radio,” he said of his first experience listening with the device. “I was once certain that this radio signal was sent by someone who was trying to deceive us.

“But this radio played strong role in motivating me to escape North Korea. My friends and I used to regularly listened to NKRR and other radio programs inside the underground hideout.

“Many told me to quit listening to those radio signals and start making money for myself, but with the help of this radio, I finally decided to escape the North.”

Read the full article, including a description and photos of Park’s homemade radio at NK News.

In addition, note that North Korea is the theme of this year’s San Fransisco Hackathon.

To follow other posts about North Korea, please note the tag: North Korea

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What if shortwave radio had been invented today?

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SX-99-DialSWLing Post reader, Walt, comments on the recent cuts to VOA’s shortwave radio service:

“Having spent many years as a VOA Foreign Service Officer and radio engineer, I can personally attest to the effectiveness of shortwave broadcasting and it’s ability to reach oppressed people around the world. The “new” technologies like the internet are so easily filtered and controlled, all the proxy servers in the world can’t get around all the blocking software that these oppressive countries’ can put in place.

If shortwave broadcasting was invented today it would be regarded as a modern wonder of technology. To bad that the IBB board of governors are so out of touch with conditions outside of the USA. Not everyone in these oppressed countries has internet access. They all have radios!”

Many thanks for your comment, Walt. I’ve often thought the same thing.

If shortwave would have been discovered in the Internet age, would be working on ways to use it as a digital communications medium in earnest; “targeting” people across the globe with digital information, without using the Internet? Quite possibly.

No other broadcast or communications medium crosses borders at the speed of light and has no regard for who is in power, nor who is receiving the information; shortwave is anonymous and accessible.

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Remembering Radio Beijing: 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre

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A long shot of the iconic "Tank Man" on Tiananmen Square. Photographer: Stuart Franklin

A long shot of the iconic “Tank Man” on Tiananmen Square. Photographer: Stuart Franklin

Today is the 25th anniversary of the horrible events that took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, during which Chinese troops opened fire on unarmed student demonstrators.

In this off-air shortwave radio recording of Radio Beijing, made on June 3rd, 1989, you’ll hear the news reader/editor depart from the script and comment on the massacre of protestors in Tiananmen Square:

It’s believed this brave news editor was detained shortly after the broadcast and spent years in a detention (re-training) camp.

Rest assured, you will hear no mention of the Tiananmen Square protests on China Radio International today–even though this year marks the 25th anniversary of the event. China’s state media goes to great lengths to keep this sort of on-air protest from happening again. State media even tries to limit on-line research of the protests; last year, we posted a fascinating article which listed banned search engine terms in China.

I also encourage you to check out Jonathan Marks’ comments (from a broadcaster’s perspective) on this particular Radio Beijing broadcast.

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