[Boatanchors] Short Wave Broadcast Folks:

Wed Apr 16 16:44:35 EDT 2014

Religious broadcasting was and still is a major business. Money is readily available from rich and poor adherents to the faith (whatever it is). You are right, Bry, about the deep pockets available to fund installing and running the stations. 

Regarding installation costs: During a proposal presentation in 1992 for a microwave system for a major "Religious Broadcaster", we were informed that there was no limit on the equipment costs involved. Looking around the existing facility, there was some of the latest and best in the studio. The equipment, however, was just thrown together haphazardly and no apparent radio design was involved. The head guy considered it was all scrap metal because of poor design and they wanted even better "Stuff". 

On the power side: While reviewing two religious station designs in the mid-1970s for a church body interested in investing, I noted there was no connection to commercial power. One station would be in Alaska and the other one in the Caribbean. Both stations had unreliable power and the decision was to use diesel generators, which make any thoughts of efficiency fly out the window. Though one station's alaskan personnel may be unpaid volunteers, they still need heat, lights, coffee, refrigerators, other amenities, and lodging due to weather and remote location. The other station, in the Caribbean, needed immense amounts of air conditioning for the transmitter plus personnel support. 

Fascinating subject.

73
Chuck Gallup. K7NKS
k7nks at yahoo.com

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 16, 2014, at 10:38 AM, Brian Carling <bcarling at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

> I have seen it only takes a handful of very wealthy donors to keep someone on the air like that.
> 
> We were once invited to a weekend retreat for the big donors to one of the popular religious shortwave broadcast powerhouses overseas.
> 
> There were only about 70 people invited to this event. Prestigious musicians and other presenters were invited to speak and entertain. There was fine dining and a lot of interesting presentations. I even met one person who had a relative flying over the Middle East looking for Noah's Ark. These were big donors. At the time we were completely broke and poor as church mice. We had a connection who was thinking about putting a program on their station and thus were invited. It was one of the most interesting weekends I have ever spent, watching these folks in action. Whatever you think about their behavior or their motivation it has certainly been an interesting run for religious broadcasters and I suspect they will be some of the last to go from the short waves.
> 
> Does anyone know if the tropical band stations are still on in various towns of South and Central America? I used to listen to a lot of those back in the early 1980s around 2 to 5 MHz. They had some very pleasant music programming and also some religious broadcasts. All in Spanish of course.
> 
> Best regards - Bry Carling, AF4K
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 15, 2014, at 10:48 PM, "Richard Knoppow" <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Stinson" <arc5 at ix.netcom.com>
>> To: <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 5:09 PM
>> Subject: [Boatanchors] Short Wave Broadcast Folks:
>> 
>> 
>>> I know there are some folks here who worked in SWBC.
>>> As you know, most of it's gone now. |
>>> But there are still a few big stations out there in the U.S. running multiple 100KW transmitters 24/7 and all they broadcast is religious "fringe" material.
>>> One old guy who claims to have a personal hot-line to God is on several of these all day, every day.
>>> 
>>> I do not understand the economics of running these stations. They've got big maintenance costs,
>>> staffing and monster electric bills, yet one source tells me that the "Jesus Radio" audience runs about
>>> 200 people on a good day and many hours with no one listening at all. The charge for hours of
>>> programming on these stations isn't very high,
>>> but 24/7 can amount to a lot each month.
>>> 
>>> I don't get it. The math just "don't add-up."
>>> How do these stations afford this?
>>> Surely "Brother Stair" doesn't get enough from the 200 people listening to him to support
>>> multiple 100KW transmitters, 24/7?
>>> What am I missing here?
>>> 
>>> 73 Dave AB5S
>> 
>>  FWIW, one of those evangelistic stations is not far from here KVOH, beamed to South and Central America.  They transmit on a couple of frequencies, I hear them on 9975 mhz. They have a jazz and big band program (no fooling) on Saturday and Sunday evening from 8PM to 9PM Pacific time. Not too many "commercials".
>>  They have two 50KW transmitters built out of a single RCA 100H Ampliphase. RCA built only a handful of HF Ampliphase transmitters so it might be possible to trace this one. The transmitters as they stand are no longer Ampliphase type but I don't know what they were converted to.  They sound OK but my hearing is not so good. There are some details of their antenna on thier web site. The station is near Simi Valley, maybe fifteen miles from here so I hear ground wave. There is a coverage map on the web site, those not too far off the beam can probably hear them pretty well. Whatever other religious broadcasters have I suspect this is an economy operation.
>>   I very much miss all the short wave broadcasting, even the propaganda stations, but especially the old BBC World Service. These days Cuba and China are about the only ones left.
>> 
>> --
>> Richard Knoppow
>> Los Angeles, CA, USA
>> dickburk at ix.netcom.com
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> Boatanchors mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/boatanchors
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
>> 
>> List Administrator: Duane Fischer, W8DBF
>> ** For Assistance: dfischer at usol.com **
>> 
>> 
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> ______________________________________________________________
> Boatanchors mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/boatanchors
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
> 
> List Administrator: Duane Fischer, W8DBF
> ** For Assistance: dfischer at usol.com **
> 
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html