[QCWA] Fw: SWLing on way out?

[Norm Gertz]

Subject: SWLing on way out?


>> 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."
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