[HCDX] "Shortwave-radio era looks short-lived"

["Mike Terry" <miketerry73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

By Doreen Carvajal International Herald Tribune
September 24, 2006
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.

The 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 ?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/2006/09/24/business/radio25.php 

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