Sheldon Harvey of the Canadian International DX Club has written an excellent piece, Radio Canada International, Dancing the Same Dance Again, covering the recent announcement of cuts at RCI. The CIDX page also contains contact information for the British High Commission in Ottawa for our Canadian friends who are upset about the BBC's announced cessation of shortwave broadcasts to North America.

Posted 03:28 UTC

Restless Natives (Andy Sennitt editorial): "The problem is that more than 99% of the people who listen to the BBC on shortwave do not subscribe to DX clubs or mailing lists, and are therefore likely to be blissfully unaware of what's about to happen. Those who are in the know care so passionately about the issue that they run the risk of overstating their case, to the extent that they come across as paranoid."

(When this link eventually changes, this editorial should be found at this URL; I wish RN would have a permanent URL for each item when it's created, not only when it's archived....)

Posted 03:45 UTC

Kim Andrew Elliott posted to the swprograms list about a few letters to the editors in response to recent articles about the BBC ceasing shortwave broadcasts in the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times.

Posted 00:56 UTC

Savage Cuts at RCI (Andy Sennitt, RNW): "So much attention has been focused over the past three weeks on the BBC's decision to cut back on shortwave broadcasts to North America and the Pacific, that the plight of another international broadcaster has been somewhat overshadowed. Yet what is happening at Radio Canada International (RCI) is arguably much more devastating in terms of its impact on the station's output and on its staff." (Thanks Sheldon Harvey for drawing our attention to Andy's article via a post on the swprograms list.)

I have to confess to feeling a little compassion fatigue when it comes to the crisis at RCI. It seems like we go through this little song and dance with them every few years. Canada's high-level bureaucrats and politicians have never understood what to do with their international service. Which is a terrible shame, because the broadcasters at the station over the past 25 years clearly have, and have done an admirable job even when faced with daunting situations. A broadcaster like Wojtek Gwiazda clearly has a commitment to international broadcasting out of love of the medium and an understanding of its importance. He clearly hasn't done the things he's done for the sake of a paycheck, because his actions in opposing the various cuts and drawing attention to them over the years have no doubt failed to endear him to his superiors at work.

Okay, get writing!

Posted 19:10 UTC

If you missed BBC head dissembler Mark Byford's appearance on Write On this weekend, you can visit the well-hidden Write On web page (boy, I don't think they could bury this thing any deeper) and listen on demand. I wish they would include the broadcast times and frequencies on the program pages; the BBC could do a lot better job with their web site. I had to laugh when, just before the 0745 broadcast to Europe that I listened to, they aired a promo for the BBC web site and how easy it is to use. I couldn't find the Write On page for 20 minutes and had to have John Figliozzi point me to it directly. Feh.

BTW, they used a small piece of my letter about eight minutes into the program as a hammer to hit Byford over the head with.

Posted 00:51 UTC

Tom Sundstrom's Musings page, which has kind of gradually morphed into another shortwave-related weblog, has a copy of a message from Rich Cuff that contains an Excel spreadsheet with the post-closure BBC frequencies.

Incidentally, Tom's page is a good read, and contains information about IBB's decision to close down their Playa del Pals transmitter site in Spain with virtually no notice.

Posted 00:44 UTC

I've posted the letter I sent to the BBC and assorted other interested parties (the UK embassy in Washington, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office--who provide the World Service's funding--and various politicians) to my personal web site. It's a little long, but it's a thorough dismantling of the justifications the BBC has given for discontinuing shortwave to North America.

Posted 07:35 UTC

Net pirates plunder satellite booty: "For years, a dwindling crowd of tech-savvy satellite TV subscribers has had the ability to tap freely into the satellite streams meant for affiliate TV stations, seeing shows such as 'Star Trek: Voyager' or 'The Simpsons' days before the rest of the country. Now these 'pre-air' shows have started appearing on the Internet and are being traded like songs were in the early days of MP3 music--a practice known as TVRip."

Posted 02:49 UTC

Net TV firm set to guard Canadian border: "A looming copyright battle in Canada could soon offer one of the first major tests of technology that promises to establish national borders on the Net. At issue is a plan by Canada's JumpTV to offer live network TV over the Internet--a strategy that recalls an earlier venture by Toronto-based iCraveTV, which collapsed in a chaos of lawsuits last year."

If this succeeds, how long will it be before net audio starts to look like DVD, where you have to have a player set to the proper region to play any discs you might buy?

Posted 22:24 UTC

From Shortwave to New Wave (L.A. Times): "Shortwave broadcasters are increasingly partnering with foreign FM and AM stations to pick up their feeds, but this rebroadcast distribution is spotty. For example, the BBC is heard via satellite on numerous public radio stations in the United States including, locally, KCSN-FM (88.5) in Northridge and KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena. But neither of these stations gives the proud BBC anything like prime time--both program it in the after-midnight hours." (Thanks Chet Copeland for posting this on the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 17:41 UTC

Africa: the radio scene tells all: "Radio, the most widely used medium in Africa, can only flourish on democratic soil, which helps to explain why private stations are thriving in the west and not in the centre of the continent. Chad has only six private radio stations, while Mali boasts 100... What explains this tremendous disparity?" (Thanks Don Moore for posting this article on HCDX.)

Posted 02:09 UTC

Rupert in the sky with diamonds: "[B]ids for world domination have a way of going awry. And just as Murdoch stands ready to exult, 'Mine, all mine!' along comes Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who recently announced that if Murdoch and Hughes come to terms, he would like to examine the merger to make sure it doesn't consolidate too much media power in the hands of one man."

Posted 01:31 UTC

The Supreme Court ruled today that it's okay to broadcast tapes of intercepted phone calls, so long as the people doing the broadcasting obtained the tapes legally. So while the person who actually tapes the call and passed it on is breaking the law by disseminating the information, the person who receives the tape is not. Interesting loophole.

Posted 01:13 UTC

Wojtek Gwiazda raises the alarm again: "Faced with contradictory explanations from the management of Radio Canada International and the CBC, employees at Canada’s international radio voice have called for a moratorium on wide ranging program cuts which are scheduled for the beginning of June." (Brought to my attention by a post to swprograms by Glenn Hauser.)

Posted 00:45 UTC

If the news about the BBC World Service (or is that the Half-A-World Service? The Third World Service?) eliminating shortwave broadcasts to North America and Australia upsets you as much as it upsets the people on swprograms, contact the BBC. Let them know that this is a boneheaded move that will result in disenfranchising a huge portion of their audience. The main e-mail address for the BBC, guaranteed to wind up in a circular repository somewhere, is worldservice.letters@bbc.co.uk. The head of the Third World Service is Mark Byford, and he is presumably reachable at mark.byford@bbc.co.uk, guaranteed to be read by a secretary and deleted, or if it's a really good letter, printed out and placed in a circular repository. And of course, since nobody pays any attention to e-mail, you can write to the BBC by postal mail at:

BBC Half-A-World Service
Bush House
London
United Kingdom

NASWA Easy Listening columnist Rich Cuff suggested two other options: First is the UK embassy. Secondly, the British Info Service can be reached at Public.Enquiries@newyork.mail.fco.gov.uk.

Remember to be as polite as possible under the circumstances.

Posted 22:41 UTC

Don't Panic (Andy Sennitt, Radio Netherlands): "The apparent belief of some listeners that other broadcasters will fall over themselves to follow the BBC's lead is, in my view, misplaced. Certainly in the case of Radio Netherlands, decisions here are made on the basis of what's right for our listeners and our organisation. We naturally take account of what other stations do, because we're all in the same business. But each broadcaster has its own mission, budget, and strategy. As far as we're concerned, having just upgraded our Bonaire relay station with double the previous generating capacity, we have made our own intentions clear as to our audiences in North America and the Pacific."

Posted 20:59 UTC

Kim Elliott posts that the BBC World Service will be dropping shortwave to the US, Canada and Australia as of July. Bill Whitacre taunts the faithful. Watch as madcap mayhem ensues on the swprograms mailing list!

Posted 18:42 UTC

Radio's big bully "Dirty tricks and crappy programming: Welcome to the world of Clear Channel, the biggest station owner inAmerica." (Salon)

Posted 01:14 UTC