"Shortwave-radio era looks short-lived"

PARIS: Perhaps it is fitting that a 50-second video clip of an ear-
shattering explosion of 13 shortwave radio antenna towers on the
Spanish Costa Brava is getting viewers on the Web site YouTube.

It took 32 pounds, or 14.5 kilograms, of dynamite to fell the massive
antennas, which long relayed news from the United States to the former
Soviet Union. But the most powerful force behind the demolition was
the rapidly shifting landscape of radio, where listeners are migrating
toward MP3 players, Internet radio and podcasting.

The felling of the towers was the latest noisy outburst of a cost-
cutting trend that is silencing the familiar and crackly shortwave
voices that leap across the globe through the clear night sky in times
of crisis and Cold War, tsunami and Thai coup.

In January, the Finnish public broadcaster YLE will end all of its
shortwave broadcasts with the goal of saving money and diverting
resources to online news services.

Next month, Germany's public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, will end its
German-language shortwave broadcasts aimed at Canada and the United
States. Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, and the Korean Broadcasting
System are also reducing shortwave services.

The leading international broadcaster, the BBC World Service, is
pursuing a diversification strategy that regards the future in stark
terms. "Audience needs are changing and technology is moving rapidly,"
reads the news service's explanation of its strategy through 2010.
"Shortwave is also declining at a fast pace and if we don't change, we
will die."

Critics of the retreat warn, however, that shortwave is the most
reliable communications medium of last resort. They point out that it
can allow determined broadcasters to reach across borders even when
repressive national regimes halt FM broadcasts, block Internet sites
and jam television programming.

"Shortwave does not respect boundaries and reaches the rich and poor,"
said Graham Mytton, former head of the BBC's audience research unit
and now a media consultant. "Most international broadcasters think
things are driven by technology, but not entirely. They're driven by
politics and local media circumstances. Their mistake is they downplay
shortwave because they're living in developed societies. But they
don't go to rural areas like Nigeria, where everyone has a shortwave
radio."

Smaller international broadcasters with more limited resources are
phasing out shortwave entirely. Slovak Radio silenced its shortwave
programming in July, and Swiss Radio International ended shortwave
broadcasts two years ago to transform into an online news service,
www.swissinfo.org.

In the meantime, all of the world's largest international
broadcasters, from the United States, France, Germany, England and the
Netherlands, are cutting back or reviewing precious resources devoted
to shortwave radio.

"The future of shortwave radio is quite clear," said Guido Baumhauer,
director of strategy and distribution for Deutsche Welle, or DW, in
Germany. "It's all going down when it comes to the consumers."

With the average age of its shortwave listeners hovering at about 50,
DW expects to save more than EURO 10 million, or $12.78 million, a year by
reducing shortwave services, according to Baumhauer, who said the
money would be invested in other services like Internet radio and
podcasting.

The state-subsidized broadcaster is phasing out shortwave programs for
North America and the Balkans and reducing daily transmissions of
shortwave programs to 160 hours from 200.

"In the U.S., if people are really into German they have so many other
ways to get consumer information," Baumhauer said. "Considering the
costs related to the transmission, there's no point in continuing."

The history of shortwave radio dates to 1927, when Philips
Laboratories of the Netherlands transmitted shortwave broadcasts from
Eindhoven to the Dutch East Indies.

The BBC trailed behind with the founding of the BBC Empire Service in
1932.

Shortwave radio provided a vital alternative voice in wartime Europe.
Radio Oranje, for example, was set up in London after the German
occupation of the Netherlands to broadcast uncensored news. Through
the Cold War years, international broadcasters used shortwave to shout
over the Iron Curtain.

While held in his luxury villa during an attempted coup d'état, the
former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev listened to shortwave
transmissions of the BBC and Voice of America.

But after the Berlin Wall fell and new media forms flourished, there
was less need for shortwave transmissions in developed countries.

International broadcasters like RFI of France and the BBC started
striking hundreds of partnership agreements with local FM stations to
rebroadcast their programs with clearer sound.

With the advance of technology, it has also become increasingly
difficult to say what a radio is, since it can be distributed through
digital television, mobile phones, computers or satellite radio,
according to Michael Mullane of the European Broadcasting Union for
public broadcasters in Geneva.

The BBC eliminated its North American shortwave transmissions in 2001,
when there were still an average of more than two million listeners.

But with FM rebroadcast agreements with local stations, the BBC now
has five million listeners in Canada and the United States, according
to Michael Gardner, a spokesman for the BBC.

The BBC is constantly reviewing its expenses in connection with
shortwave radio, he said, but in the meantime, the news service still
reaches two-thirds of its weekly 163 million radio listeners through
shortwave.

This year, the BBC actually posted an increase of about five million
shortwave listeners in rural areas of Africa and Asia, but Gardner
says the increase amounted to existing listeners who were surveyed for
the first time in Myanmar.

David Hollyer, former managing director in Spain for the U.S.
government's Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, is wistful about the
long-term consequences of mothballing and destroying shortwave
transmitters.

The transmitters in Spain, he argued, could have been deployed to
broadcast to Central Asia to reach a Muslim population.

Instead, with the changing political climate, U.S. authorities closed
the station in 2003, ended its lease, and turned over the towers to
Spain.

When Hollyer watches the amateur YouTube video of the familiar towers
crumbling in clouds of smoke, it reminds him of an Edwin Markham poem.

"To paraphrase," he said, "the towers went down with a great shout
upon the hills and left a lonesome place against the sky."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/...ss/radio25.php

Eh. I've become more of a utility listener anyway.

In article
,
Steve wrote:

Eh. I've become more of a utility listener anyway.

I think IBOCcrock is a futility listener.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

On Jan 5, 4:12�am, RHF wrote:
On Jan 4, 7:33�pm, Telamon
wrote: In article
,

�Steve wrote:
Eh. I've become more of a utility listener anyway.

- I think IBOCcrock is a futility listener.
-
- --
- Telamon
- Ventura, California

That's A Good One ! ~ RHF
�.

Tried one of the Kaito's tonight and just remembered, why I stopped
listening to shortwave - blahhhhhhhh.....

In article
,
IBOCcrock wrote:

On Jan 5, 4:12?am, RHF wrote:
On Jan 4, 7:33?pm, Telamon
wrote: In article
,

?Steve wrote:
Eh. I've become more of a utility listener anyway.

- I think IBOCcrock is a futility listener.
-
- --
- Telamon
- Ventura, California

That's A Good One ! ~ RHF
?.

Tried one of the Kaito's tonight and just remembered, why I stopped
listening to shortwave - blahhhhhhhh.....

Well maybe you should give broadcast listening a try and give up on the
futility listening.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California