Re: [HCDX] [dxld] "Shortwave-radio era looks short-lived"

["Bill Harms" <wharms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I will go one step further.  I submit that international broadcasting 
is the one that is dying and that the retreat from Shortwave is just 
symptomatic.  If international broadcasters think that technology is 
going to help get them more listeners, they are foolhardy.  In the 
beginning, some of their faithful listeners may follow them to the 
new technology, but in the end, they will have fewer listeners anyway 
as their voices fade into the cacophony of what is available with 
other technologies.  The same thing is happening with traditional AM, 
FM, and TV broadcasters albeit perhaps at a slower rate.  Sure they 
will have listeners, but not with the same numbers they had in the 
past. 

Before you get me wrong, I am an avid radio DXer and love picking up 
different stations.  I have a fairly good sized QSl collection and 
library of audio clips.  I just see the writing on the wall.

Bill Harms
Elkridge, Maryland

On 24 Sep 2006 at 15:10, Mike Terry wrote:

> 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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