Media Network Vintage Vault 2018-2019

This edition goes way back to the time in late October 1984 when they started testing the new Radio Netherlands transmitter site out on the Flevo polder near the town od Zeewolde. I got a chance to take a short helicopter ride as they put the transmitters on low power to measure the antenna radiation pattern. I'll never forget the ride because I learned later the German helicopter couldn't stop the rotors when we landed because the battery had failed and he needed to get back to Germany the same day. It's rather ironic to learn that in 2012, the entire Flevo transmitter site has been sold to the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. The facility will now be converted to operate in the ultility bands, acting as a back-up system to Dutch military abroad incase conventional satellite systems failed or are compromised. Bearing in mind Syria and Iran are both jamming satellite communications at the moment, I can understand why they take precautions. Of course they will need much lower power than the 4 500 kW transmitte

AM (mediumwave) stereo has been trying to take off since as long as I've been in radio. The idea surfaced in the early nineties again and we covered it in Media Network in December of 1991. Rather wierd listening to it 21 years later. Never did take off. Interesting to hear how listeners were calling in their tips to the show even though the cost was rather high compared to today's standards. And some familiar voices from long-time Media Network listeners in this show - Tony Barrett, Julius Hermans, Dave Onley.

A rare glimpse into the inner workings of one of the strongest propaganda voices out of the Balkans from one of its smallest countries. Today Radio Tirana is a shadow of its former self when it was the mouthpiece of . One of the older female announcers used to fascinate me. She would sometimes sign-off with the words. And that is the end of our broadcast. "Goodbye dear Listener". Perhaps I was the only one.

One of my favorite programmes from 1999 because of an excellent contribution from listener Nevil Coles in the UK explaining how fanfares used by international broadcasters had intrigued him. We voiced his contribution and managed to find most of the interval signals he was talking about in the Media Network Archives. We also looked at how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was shutting down its AM broadcasting facilities as it transferred to FM. The new FM transmitter was opened with fireworks. But the shutdown of the AM facility in Hornby Ontario was witnessed by reporter Scott Fybush. I am delighted to report that Fred Vobbe's DX Audio Service is still going strong in 2012.

A Media Network edition from August 1997. One of the items is an interview with Tudor Lomas who used to work for the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in the early nineties, before heading out to start a training centre called Jemstone based in Jordan. I did a training session with him in Beirut in that year. Would be impossible now.

Media Network's first visit to Chile. This was in connection with a radio festival that Radio Netherlands organized with several hundred partner stations in Santiago. Diana Janssen made the trip - I stayed in the Netherlands working on other projects at the time. She spoke with Bruce Girard who later went on to do a lot of work with AMARC, the community radio organisation.

The mystery of the spy number stations has been a recurring theme in Media Network. Perhaps the most elaborate project to catalogue them was a 4 CD project set up in 1997. I see it's in Wikipedia. The edition of Media Network talked with the producer of the CD in the second half of the show. We also looked at how radio was seen in the dim distant past (Remember the TM Century Punk Country Campaign?) and Jim Cutler threw in a surprise T-shirt competition. Perfect proof that the nineties weren't boring, even though no-one had a smart phone.

This programme starts with a portrait of Radio Denmark. Then we presented a feature on Hate Media. Recently found the complete edition of this programme, so I am reposting the complete programme. We knew that Radio Milles Collines incited genocide in Rwanda in 1994. But in March 1995 we didn't know the full extent of the tradegy. That would be revealed several years later at the trials in Arusha, Tanzania. Eric Beachemin did a lot of travelling in the Great Lakes region of East Africa and brought back with him some unique insights into how media could help repair the social damage as well. This version is slightly shorter than the regular Network - was used in transcription to other radio stations. We also noted that some of the later work we did on publishing information about hate speech was used (and credited) by those who made the film Hotel Rwanda in 2004. That was the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu mi

In 1994, the Dutch broadcast museum was just that. It was a collection of equipment in a rather nondescript technical centre tucked away in the complex spiderweb of lanes that is Hilversum. It wasn't until 11 years after this recording that everything moved into the spanking new centre on the Media Park (photo shows it under construction). Arno Weltens was working as a curator of the Netherlands Broadcast Museum at the time and organised an excellent exhibition about offshore broadcasting. This was rather different than some of the other recollections of the offshore days, when several entrpreneurs tried to break the monopoly in public service broadcasting in the Netherlands. Arno illustrated the exhibitions with recordings from the broadcast archives.

In 1995, Radio Netherlands signed a deal with RTL Radio Luxembourg to use the great 208 metres for a few hours each night for it's English language broadcast. We combined that with a visit to the station and made the following documentary. This was one of the first dual presentations we tried with co-host Diana Janssen. Interesting old recordings of RTL which I haven't heard elsewhere in a long time. The picture of the transmitter site at Marnach is shown below. That was were the English transmissions came from.

Some mysteries remain unsolved. So let's reveal a rather old one. In February of 1988, George Wood of Radio Sweden visited Radio Netherlands on a duty trip. He was there to see how we were doing things in the English department. He dropped by on a Wednesday. Over lunch we decided on a prank. We'd swap programmes for one week only. He gave me some scripts to read and he read the texts I'd compiled for that week's show. And then Pete Myers, Mike Bird and other contributors played along. We changed the jingles for that week only. It was if George had always presented the programme.  On the day of transmission I took the day off. After the European transmission at 1130, listeners started to call the station, asking what happened to Jonathan Marks. Had I been fired? Had I said something wrong? The sweet lady operator on the Radio Netherlands switchboard tried to connect the listeners, but there was no answer from my extension. She told the callers that I was not "in anymore", implying that I had left for the day.

This week back in in 1995 I went down to the open day organised in Brussels by , the voice of the Flemish community in Belgium. The radio station has long since disappeared, gradually stopping its foreign language broadcasters, becoming an Internet only radio station, and now only a . This programme, recorded in September 1995, recalls the early years of the station with guests Frans Vossen (DX Editor) and Jacques van der Sichel (who was the director at the time). Some interesting archive recordings too. This version is slightly shorter than the original transmission (missing Mike Bird's report).

It doesn't seem like nearly 15 years ago that Arthur T Cuhen passed away. He was probably one of New Zealand's most famous shortwave listeners, having made his hobby of radio listening into a career from the 1960's onwards. He reported regularly for magazines and radio stations, including Radio Netherlands DX Juke Box and Media Network. We broadcast this tribute programme in which I tried to mix tributes with some fascinating stories told by Arthur himself. While we recorded his contributions for the programme he would often reminisce. He also had made excellent recordings of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia even though he was monitoring the events in Prague on the other side of the world. He often spoke of his wife Ralda, who was his childhood sweetheart and faithful companion. They lived at 212 Earn Street in Invercargill, New Zealand - an address that was often read out over dozens of international radio stations. I was struck by his picture perfect memory in which he could recall his work for the Ne

Towards the end of the Media Network radio show series, we did several radio safaris to countries in Latin America and the Pacific. I tried to ensure that they captured the sounds off the air as much as possible, to give a flavour of the radio scene in the country. Argentina went well. And Chile was a fascinating discovery. Santiago had huge smog problems when I visited and it was great to escape to the mountains and the coast. Had long talks with local radio operators who were having difficultly keeping their business going. Slick satellite music networks attracted advertisers away from the smaller operators. At that time, Christian Voice had also purchased the transmitters of the former Voice of Chile network. In fact government had sold off all its broadcast properties. I remember wandering around a Sunday market in Valpariso and seeing world band transistor radios being offered for sale for a few dollars. Incredible names on the dial. Took a photo in lieu of carrying them half way round the world.

Safety officials in the US are studying the navigational black boxes to determine the final moments of the Korean Airlines Boeing 747 which smashed into a jungle covered hill on Guam on Wednesday. Later on Wednesday evening we reached Glenn Scheyhing, assistant news director at KTWR in Guam. Because from the news video it looked as if the plane came down very near their shortwave radio station. Was that the case? In receiver news, the International Centre for Humanitarian Reporting in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the USA passes on the results of two major field tests of the BayGen Freeplay radio. These have been undertaken by the BBC Afghan Education Drama (AED) Project in Afghanistan, and the Cranfield Disaster Preparedness Centre (DPC) in Eritrea. Each of the tests was designed to test whether the clockwork radios would match up to the expections and durability claims that we’ve seen widely quoted in the press in many parts of the world.  Victor Goonetilleke (photo taken in 1997) joins us to discuss  a non-g

Enjoyed relistening to this Media Network programme recorded in October 1997. Pete Myers was not only a famous presenter and producer at Radio Netherlands. He had a previous life in London being the main anchor for Good Morning Africa on the BBC External Services. But he also presented evening talk programmes on the new Radio 1 when it launched in October 1967. He went back to London to the reunion and recalls what life was like at the Beeb. In the famous , he's the one further to the right sitting behind John Peel. He always wore sun-glasses for this type of photo. I believe this one was made on the steps of All Souls Church next to broadcasting house. Golly, nearly fifteen years have passed since we made this. 

A news edition of the programme including items about World Radio Network London,  Radio Netherlands analogue audiosubcarrier update and changes to the RNW webste.  It seems our efforts to make a different kind of offshore radio special last week did not go unnoticed. We’ve had a nice post bag of reaction, plus a question from Humphrey Macintosh in Leeds in the UK. He notes that many of the offshore radio personalities of the 60’s went on to make a big name for themselves in either BBC or independent local radio. But were there any people who were famous on the high seas but never made it ashore? Well to wrap up our coverage of the scene for the time being, we put that question to Dutch offshore radio specialist Hans Knot. We also talked to Paul Rusling about his various projects in the Isle of Man and the Baltic States (a station targeting Sweden). 

This Media Network is concerned with closedowns rather than sign-ons as we delve back into the archives for a special documentary on offshore radio. Jonathan Marks, Diana Janssen, plus a host of other stars will be tracing one of the most important stages in the development of European Radio. We now present, “30 years in 30 minutes”.  That’s the voice of the late Paul Kaye, who 30 years ago today made the very last announcement on Radio London, or Big L. Radio London was the most successful of the radio stations which operated from ships and old army forts off the British coast between 1964 and 1967, and which had a major influence on the development of broadcasting in this part of Europe.  A company called East Anglian Productions obtained a so-called Restricted Service Licence, which allowed them to operate the station for one month on mediumwave 1134kHz, using very low power - officially just one watt. Back in the 60’s, the original station operated with much higher power and covering a large part of the

Yes, welcome to the last Media Network of June, we’re 26 programmes into 1997 and going strong. Meanwhile in Hong Kong British Forces Broadcasting Service is still going strong, but only for a few more days. You may recall in November last year we did a series of special programmes from Hong Kong, previewing the transfer of power from Britain to China. That will happen next Monday night at midnight local time. With 8.000 journalists currently in the British colony it’s going to be difficult to avoid coverage on many stations around the world. Radio Netherlands Newsline programme will be no exception…..we’re building satellite links right at this very moment.  When we examined the local broadcasting scene in Hong Kong back in November, BBC World Service had started to dismantle it’s shortwave relay station. That’s now being completed. And the British Forces Broadcasting Service had grand plans about it’s final days of broadcasting. Rory Higgins, stations manager of BFBS Hong Kong told us then they hoped to sai

Found this interesting montage while searching for something else. It's a show we did from Hong Kong looking ahead to how the Special Administrative Region would change when HK was handed back to the Chinese in July 1997. It's interesting as is currently chairman of the BBC Trust. That quote at the start of the programme is rather appropriate in the UK at the moment. Between now and July 1st 1997, an estimated 8000 journalists will be passing through Hong Kong examining basically the same story. In January 1841, China and Britain signed a Convention which ceded Hong Kong island to Britain, a year later Kowloon was ceded too and in 1898 the land north of the Kowloon peninsula was leased by the British from the Chinese. Now that lease is coming to an end. As sovereignty of the whole of this area changes from British to Chinese, what will happen to life in Hong Kong as it becomes a special administrative territory. Around 2000 Dutch speaking families are part of the international community living here, most of