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Radio Australia: Another one bites the dust

ai4i said:
The closest thing we have had to that occurred when the British company, World Radio Network (a dead link) aired on 1Worldspace and on Sirius, then SiriusXM, but most of the stations they chose to offer were very western. They caried several European stations, but zero from Latin America, one from Africa, only the southern Korea, and the least representative of all middle eastern countries.
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That would be Israel.I wonder if the other, more "representative" countries in the region refused to participate because Israel was participating, or if that was WRN's decision.
 
CTListener said:
I wonder if the other...countries in the region refused to participate...or if that was WRN's decision.
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Even the Saudis,
reminding their ex-pats of what it sounds like to separate heads from torsi (torsos?),
would have been bizarrely refreshing,
and who among us would not contribute a few ريال (riyals) per month for that :cool:
 
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ai4i said:
Even the Saudis,
reminding their ex-pats of what it sounds like to separate heads from torsi (torsos?),
would have been bizarrely refreshing,
and who among us would not contribute a few ريال (riyals) per month for that :cool:
Click to expand...

Except BSKSA (Broadcast Service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) never had an English-language international SW service. Their signal would boom in on 25 meters all over the US, but every word was in Arabic, frustrating SWLs for years.
 
CTListener said:
Except BSKSA...never had an English-language international SW service.
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I seem to recall a station from somewhere in that area that aired American pop music for a few hours each afternoon, my time,
but I cannot remember where it was based, maybe a smaller country such as Jordan or UAE? I think they were on the 31m band.
 
ai4i said:
I seem to recall a station from somewhere in that area that aired American pop music for a few hours each afternoon, my time,
but I cannot remember where it was based, maybe a smaller country such as Jordan or UAE? I think they were on the 31m band.
Click to expand...

It was Jordan, but they might have been on 25. I remember the American pop on that station well. UAE was on 19 meters with a very strong signal and interesting programming. Iran used 31, but it was an odd frequency just off the lower end of the band -- 9022 or 9122. In the late '60s, Israel used to use 9009.
 
So they are still taking Radio Australia off the air, but not the 120 meter Northern Territory relays?
According to my 1994 Passport to World Band Radio, Iran did use 9022 in a variety of languages, beaming to Europe, then North America later in the evening.
 
CTListener said:
It was Jordan, but they might have been on 25.
Click to expand...
Yes it was and yes they were, eleven MHz.
Not having listened to the bands for so many years, I get adjacent meter bands confused.
 
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Never ceases to amaze me how the K.I.S.S. principle just goes over some government officials' heads.

We may lose AM broadcasting in this country before 25 years is through, for example, and it's the most dependable emergency broadcast medium during blackouts and major catastrophes where power may be out for days or weeks -- when cell phones and laptops will stop running because of no power to charge the batteries.

AM broadcasting is simple , and the receivers are fairly simple and cheap for the most part. A Walkman can hear regional stations at night quite well.

It's much the same with SW. Radio Australia already has the SW infrastructure in place, it's probably already been paid for. It may cost some money to run, but it serves a huge area, from the Outback to the South Pacific. So now they're gonna save a few bucks and leave a few hundred thousand people in the dark (as several of the comments on the SWLing article indicate.

I feel for those people once it's off the air, and for the rest of us, really. If it weren't for R. Australia, I would be a lot less educated (or interested) in that country. Listening to it prompted me to read up on the place, including its history.

Thanks for posting the links, RTC.
 
boombox4 said:
Never ceases to amaze me how the K.I.S.S. principle just goes over some government officials' heads.

We may lose AM broadcasting in this country before 25 years is through, for example, and it's the most dependable emergency broadcast medium during blackouts and major catastrophes where power may be out for days or weeks -- when cell phones and laptops will stop running because of no power to charge the batteries.

AM broadcasting is simple, and the receivers are fairly simple and cheap for the most part. A Walkman can hear regional stations at night quite well.

It's much the same with SW. Radio Australia already has the SW infrastructure in place, it's probably already been paid for. It may cost some money to run, but it serves a huge area, from the Outback to the South Pacific. So now they're gonna save a few bucks and leave a few hundred thousand people in the dark (as several of the comments on the SWLing article indicate.
Click to expand...

The money saved may make one particular bureaucrat's budget look better, but will only be a tiny insignificant overall saving - mainly the electricity used by the transmitters. They plan to produce the programming anyway. This is the same with the ending of shortwave broadcasts in any major country. Yet Brother Stair can collect enough money from donations to keep a dozen 100 - 250 KW transmitters broadcasting the same program at WWCR, WRMI, etc. And there are many other ministers broadcasting.
 
Yes - losing analog TV was just the beginning. Those without a working TV or power, and a local ch 6, could tune the 87.7 audio in case of severe weather! When AM goes, it will be a sad day in America. And I bet the FCC wants a DTV-like transition for AM so badly. What they don't know is some markets are so full of FMs and translators that AM stations couldn't fit. Yet they don't want ch 5 and 6 being used for AM anytime soon.
 
channel99 said:
The money saved may make one particular bureaucrat's budget look better, but will only be a tiny insignificant overall saving - mainly the electricity used by the transmitters. They plan to produce the programming anyway.
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Well, some of the programming. No need for a mailbag show when there are no more awestruck kids staring wide-eyed at their little shortwave portable, amazed that they're hearing a signal from the other side of the world and anxious to let the station know.
 
CTListener said:
Well, some of the programming. No need for a mailbag show when there are no more awestruck kids staring wide-eyed at their little shortwave portable, amazed that they're hearing a signal from the other side of the world and anxious to let the station know.
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When was the last time "awestruck kids" bothered with shortwave? The early 1990s, when the Cold War ended and the USSR failed? That was the beginning of the end for shortwave.
 
KeithE4 said:
When was the last time "awestruck kids" bothered with shortwave? The early 1990s, when the Cold War ended and the USSR failed? That was the beginning of the end for shortwave.
Click to expand...

Yep, that was shortwave's last hurrah -- the end of the Cold War through the first Gulf War. The internet took off beginning in the mid-'90s -- siphoning away kids and grown-ups alike -- and the rest is sad history for poor old SW.
 
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