Ignorance is bliss ...for Vlad the Invader....
The people of Russia are still struggling to access news and information that has not been censored by the Putin regime. The people of Russia had been given an account of the Ukrainian invasion that bore little relation to reality - so there was little pressure from the people of Russia on Putin to stop.
The prospect of World War 3 is very real now that missiles and drones have been launched. Which means the strategic case for scheduled short wave (SW) broadcast radio is as strong now as it's ever been since WW2 : especially in the online age where the path from source to listener is complex and vulnerable.
SW can reach over 4 billion listeners behind tyrant internet firewalls for a transmission cost of around £500 per hour. A £5k "field" transmitter and antenna can be set up and made operational in an hour by a trained crew. Compare that to 20 years and ~£100bn to install and commission internet/cellphone infrastructure that could reach 4 billion
WW2 had made “the Wireless” the go-to national information medium for the whole world – and those sets used thermionic valves tied to mains power. The much more convenient battery powered portable transistor radio had appeared in the 50s, and by the 60s every home (and teenager) had at least one.
The swinging sixties was the seminal period for British Pop – and Radio Luxembourg (founded in 30s) was already available across the UK and Europe - despite the UK’s government’s autocratic control of the airwaves that prevented commercial broadcasting, 208 Radio Luxembourg was “adopted British media”, much to the chagrin of the BBC and PMG. As the name suggests it was broadcast (legally) from tiny Luxembourg using the world’s most powerful medium wave transmitter 208m - in the medium wave, easily heard across Europe after dark. It cornered the teenage and youth market and so the advertisers lined up, it was clearly hugely popular.
Then came the offshore pirates operating in international waters off the UK’s east coast, and Radio Caroline 208, Radio North Sea International (and others) were launched from 1965 and quickly became an entertainment sensation in the medium wave. The UK response was typically anodyne with the 1967 introduction the heavily regulated BBC Radio One to sit alongside the Light Programme which became Radio two – and the Home Service became Radio 4. Various other services have come and gone over the years, and now all these and more exist in a variety of online incarnations. And then there was the podcast. So BBC Radio has been rebranded as BBC Sounds. However, the audience has been divided rather than grown – the ability of the Home Service and light programme to reach just about everyone in the UK each week Is something a modern mogul would die for.
Meanwhile, Television showed up!
The arrival of commercial TV in 1955 took a fast-growing slice of media spending and the two TV channels (ITV/BBC) hoovered up the “family” audience and its attention and slowly expanded into BBC2, Channel4 and the final analogue service, Channel5. And then it all went into orbit….
… British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was an insane aberration of a confection of poor ideas and worse management, based on an obscure technology and massive government meddling. It took all of the 80s to actually reach the market in March 1990 – a year after Sky - with its obtuse and incompatible technology in a world that had already set and established the standards for direct to home satellite broadcasting. Typical IBA and BBC hubris. There was no practical alternative but to merge 50:50 with Sky in 1990 and accept that Sky’s more cost-effective (and established) technology had won.
Meanwhile, back on earth … TV had progressed to 5 terrestrial channels and the start of the idea of digital terrestrial TV – with another muddle of regulation, incompatible non-standard technology and an obsession with encryption. Predictable commercial folly ensued. The public was more confused than ever, and the same audience with a “legacy” UHF band4 TV antenna that once had the choices of BBC1/2 and ITV, could now spread itself thinly over about 50 digital channels.
Digital terrestrial television launched as ONdigital in the UK on 15 November 1998. However, ONdigital had problems from the start, and renaming the service ITV Digital on 11 July 2001 failed to help the matter.
All subscription services except E4 and FilmFour went off-air on 1 May 2002 after the consortium collapsed, explained as being due to paying too much for the television rights for The Football League. However, the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode, the fact that at least 40% of homes would need new aerials to receive it, a high churn rate, an insecure hackable encryption system, the cost of having to provide free set-top boxes, and aggressive competition from BSkyB all contributed to ITV Digital's spiralling costs, before shareholders Granada and Carlton called a halt to the venture.
All this sets a scene that suggests the UK broadcast industry in the 90s might have been better managed if operated by a troupe of chimpanzees.
VAST amounts of money had been wasted on new technology follies - and for some reason the BBC and UK government decided to cut the relatively minor cost of one broadcast service that had been quietly and effectively going about its job of delivering authoritative news, “soft diplomacy” and British culture to the world: the BBC World Service on radio - since 19 December 1932!
And then in the midst of this confusion, the number of digital TV and radio channels proliferated, and spread the same audience ever more thinly across all these new channels. In the golden age of 5 channel TV, ITV and BBC still commanded 20m audiences for prime time. And then the 500 channel digital diaspora was further confused by TIVO/personal video recorder devices - and now ultimately 5 million channels of internet and streaming.
I don’t think it can get any worse! Sooner or later, new formats of advanced programme guides will come along to help round up and redirect dispersed audiences. Smart EPGs are a very big subject for another blog post.
One thing has emerged as a really good idea: to rethink and relaunch the one broadcasting format that allows the truth to reach everybody on the planet in the most direct fashion, simultaneously: short wave radio! Remember that any smartphone is going to betray the user's identity and location - even to the extent of providing targeting information... 💥
The really fascinating allure of SW was and remains that broadcasts from the right type of antenna installations at just 1 to 5 locations around the planet can reach battery portable receivers in the hands of all 8 billion inhabitants of that planet. The ultimate mass medium.
There is no need for a subscription. A SW radio receiver is a one time purchase. Emergency and temporary transmitters can be put up in a day.
Internet infrastructure has taken 25 years to evolve to the current level, and it most certainly cannot be replaced in the day following a major natural or unnatural catastrophe.
An Achilles heel of short wave broadcasting is that it may be jammed by those who would prefer the information did not receive the audience. This is, however, an imprecise process, and new and sophisticated ways to dodge jamming are possible. However, the very presence of a jamming signal will indicate to the audience that there is information that somebody wants to conceal from them... and it is human nature to be curious...
However, it is in the fascinating nature of short wave that the signals are bounced off the Ionosphere - which varies in height and density according to time of day and location. It is possible that a transmitter 10 miles away will be inaudible - but is perfectly audible 1000 miles away. The "skywave" signal sails over the local receiver on its way up to be reflected from the ionosphere. Back in the day, the transmitter engineers and frequency planners of the World Service could aim to "drop a signal" into a specific location. This can make jamming short wave broadcasts into an impossibly complex process.
Continued at https://poelposition.blogspot.com/2022/03/shortwave-radio-in-ukraine-why.html
The real challenge is to make sure the audience has the means to receive the short wave transmissions. Some snazzy tech coupled to compelling content is a place to start thinking.
Once upon a time, almost everyone had access to a "regular" radio with coverage of the short wave bands. Listening to the radio services from around the globe was a big part of my youth in the 60s/70s – I used to listen to the English language services of the Voice of America, Radio Canada International, Radio Netherlands – plus Radio Moscow and Radio Peking and many others. Almost all countries at that time invested an hour a day to broadcast their “state news” in English. Every house had at least one “AM” radio somewhere that was capable of receiving these programmes with a modest antenna.
Great post. As an amateur radio enthusiast,, all for bringing back k widespread AM public service and info stations.
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