Media Network Vintage Vault 2018-2019

February 2012. VOA is 70 years old. The first broadcast was in German to Europe. Later, from studios in Munich, VOA tried to reach Europe again with a "music and more"service called VOA Europe. This operation, launched in 1985, didn't last very long. In the early days it sounded like AM radio on FM. And it was cable radio in the Netherlands, rather than over the air FM. More successful in the Balkans, I believe. The photo is of the VOA entrance was taken last year. I understand the VOA logo is to return to its familiar red, white and blue later in 2012.

This programme examines plans for a TV station on by Roy Bates on one of the disused wartime forts in the Thames Estuary. We talk with offshore radio specialist Hans Knot (still going strong in 2012 - check out the website). You might want to skip the frequency changes at the start of the show...those were the days when Radio Netherlands had a major presence on shortwave. The programme also talks to media researcher , now teaching in Bulgaria. He'd been commissioned to look into the future of shortwave radios up to 2000 and beyond. Actually, they seem to have got quite a lot of it right. 

As a student, it was often fun to listen on the radio between the broadcasting bands. You would tune just above the mediumwave (AM) broadcast band, say around 1.8 MHz, and you'd often pick up one half of what sounded like a very personal conversation. That's because, in those days, ship-to-shore communications went mainly via medium and shortwave radio. Ships had a communications officer, and they were responsible for setting up calls from the ship which then connected to the public telephone network on land.  I still recall the trip to Ijmuiden like it was yesterday, and I find it difficult to believe we made this programme nearly 27 years ago, way back in October 1985. I remember the female operators at Scheveningen Radio were drop dead gorgeous, had fantastic voices and were clearly driving the place. They were often the only female voice men out on the ships had heard in weeks. The men at Scheveningen Radio were mainly in the Morse code section which, even then, was being phased out. I vividly recall sitt

Hearing reports that it's 26 degrees below (Centigrad) in Moscow at the moment, reminded me of a programme we did with Vasily Strelnikov, the former Radio Moscow WS presenter. This programme takes you back the start of March 1992, when things are starting to open up, media-wise, in the Russian capital. Did you know that Vasily also has a FaceBook page these days? The show starts with a report by Rosella Strom who went to Geneva, Switzerland as part of the World Radio Congress at the ITU where large chunks of the radio spectrum were allocated. And guess what. They are doing the same thing again right at this moment. Actually, it seems surprising that most of the battles haven't changed a bit in 20 years. 

We had no idea of what had really happened in the Ukraine at the end of April 1986. I remember that when the news broke, we were celebrating Queen's Day in the Netherlands (April 30th). I tuned into Radio Moscow and Radio Kiev, but they didn't give us much detail. I love the offhand way the announcer in Kiev says "and now sports". The programme also had contact with Pat Gowen, G3IOR a radio amateur in the UK who monitors and contacts Russian amateurs on a regular basis. He confirmed that amateurs in Kiev made no mention of the situation. In other news, the Head of the Russian service of Radio Liberty, Oleg Tumanov turns up in Moscow denouncing the station. It seems he had been a KGB agent - at least according to the that came out later. Captain Midnight blocks HBO satellite signal in protest at the new rates being charged. It turns out later that this is a based in Florida. NDXE announces a date for buying the transmitter. KVOH has also hit some delays.  Len Scott of the English service of Radio Budapest t

I confess I don't understand the by John Tusa. He seems to think that a tiny piece of advertising on the Berlin relay on BBC World Service (where currently promos for programmes are slotted in) is somehow a threat to the editorial independence of the World Service. John Tusa may be correct in that the Berlin relay won’t raise much of the 3 million pounds that BBC World Servce radio is trying to raise this year to offset the drastic budget reductions announced nearly a year ago. But for years, ads alongside BBC World Service radio output have been heard on many stations that partner with the external broadcaster. Some stations insert their own commercials at 29 and 59 minutes past the hour when London carries programme promos. That's common in Africa where the local stations need to generate revenue because they are not subsidized by the government. Infact these countries will probably never be able to finance the public service broadcast model that survives in parts of Europe, like the UK, Belgium and Germa

A "Jaws" style opening to this news edition of the programme. There's a report about Offshore Radio Stereo 531 from David Ward in Norwich. Paul Rusling says he is not involved! Buster Pearson has died. VOA English is now on MW. Africa Media News from Richard Ginbey (presented by Mike Bullen). Grove Enterprises has a new publication - The Listeners’ Handbook. Lou Josephs on the Whole Earth Catalogue. New Irish Bulletin Board. Radio Earth is back via Radio Milano International. NRC has a special test on mediumwave. News about the RX99PLL from Escom, we called Dutch engineer Eddie Visser (then in Denmark, now retired in ). What’s going on in the countryside? There has been a break in to the bunker at Lopik. MN Satellite Technology report - the ECS-1 runs into problems.

A very early Media Network just a few months after being relaunched under a new name. The music from DX Juke Box has gone and we're starting to train the correspondents to write and present their own pieces. Richard Ginbey is the first to really compile features about broadcasting in Southern Africa, this time it focuses on Capital Radio 604 in the Transkei. There was also a scandal at VOA after some rather confusing statements by a politician on the station's real role. Robbert Boschart also explains the strange situation about broadcasting in Andorra, locked between Spain and France. You can hear that phone lines were kinda rough in 1981 in the calls to Andy Sennitt and Dan Robinson. Wish we had access Skype in those days. Wim van Amstel reports back on his trip to Oman.

This programme was broadcast just before Christmas as rumours started emerging that the Soviet Union was about to stop jamming Western broadcasters like the Voice of America. Richard Ginbey reports on what he could hear from a listening post in Johannesburg, South Africa. The EDXC convention was to be held in Helsinki 1987. We tested the Kenwood R-5000 communications receiver, Andy Sennitt reports from WRTH editorial office and John Campbell discussed how to contact clandestine radio stations. Pete Myers also looked at an automatic car starter launched in Japan in time for Christmas.

This programme looked at the launch of Cable One, a precursor to Sky Radio, started by two Dutch entrpreneurs and record producers. Although it launched, legal problems with the Dutch broadcasting law at the time put an end to the plans. Those were made up jingles by the way - Carl Josephs did the voice-over. The programme also included a piece by the late Dave Rosenthal on solar eclipses, Richard Ginbey has a nice crop of catches which sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. We also managed to visit the Funkausstellung in Berlin thanks to Hans G Janssen and Wolfgang Schulz who wandered around on our behalf. DAT recorders were the talk of the show. John Campbell reports on novelty clandestine stations like Radio Duck. Mike Bird rounds off the show with propagation conditions. Work has started on the Radio Netherlands extension.

This programme starts with a report on the clandestine station, Radio Free Suriname which was backed by opposition groups in the Netherlands. The principal backer was the late Johnny Kamperveen, who's father Andre started ABC Radio in Paramaribo, but was killed in the December murders. Johnny later returned to Suriname to start the station in 1993 and passed away ten years later. There's also news of the sale of the ship Laser 558. The Admiralty says it will look at the buyer. John Campbell reports that shortwave conditions are improving, just in time to observe the Irish pirates. We also look at brief shortwave broadcasts from Hong Kong during the boat race and talk to Bob Grove about Monitoring Times and the Ten Tec 535. 

Europa TV was a rather disasterous attempt at pan-European satellite television by a group of ex-public service managers working in Hilversum. They underestimated the cultural differences across Europe, wasting a lot of money in the early part of the project. It started off as Olympus TV. The team seemed shocked when Olympus cameras of Japan took out a court injuction to stop them using the name (after all the logos, bumpers, jingles had been produced). They also realised the hard way that live voice-overs in feature programming doesn't work because languages vary in how long it takes to say the same thing. Very quickly dubbed as "Europeless TV". The exception was the music programme "Countdown" hosted by Adam Curry which became very popular in Southern Europe, especially Portugal. Veronica TV was able to get better acts to the Netherlands because of the European exposure the programme gave to international talent. But in general Europa TV was a perfect example of public broadcasters trying to be commercial e

In the mid 1980's it was always extremely difficult to balance the programme bearing in mind the varying listener interests. Most of the feedback came from South Asia, North America, Europe and the Pacific, so compiling an edition to interest someone in Bombay as well as Boston was challenging. Following my trip to Victor Goonetilleke in 1985, we experimented with some special Asian editions of the programme which were only broadcast to Asia at 1430 UTC. They had very different content, focussing mainly on South Asia. The programmes brought mixed response. Some said they liked the fact that we highlighted issues affecting South-Asian listeners. But there was an equally strong lobby that said the reason for tuning in to a European station was to find out what new technologies were being used there. They thought we should not single out a particular area as being a special case. In the end, we limited the number of special opt-out programmes, prefering to do "media safaris" to various regions of the world and m

There have been plenty of fantasy stations on short and mediumwave. Today we'd call them hype or vapourware. Back in the 80's, if someone started advertising the existance of a station in the World Radio TV Handbook (page 45, 1986 edition), then you tended to assume that it looked serious. In fact, NDXE very quickly became a standing joke in the international broadcasting business, boasting that it was going to broadcast in stereo, printing a list of fantasy programmes that were never comissioned and starting a listeners club before it had acquired a shortwave transmitter. By the middle of 1986, the project was falling apart and it was time to expose the nonsense that was Dixon Norman. 

Towards the end of October 1987, around 70,000 headed for PalExpo in Geneva, Switzerland, an exhibition centre right next door to the airport. The event was organised by the ITU, so despite efforts to attract international broadcasters, it was really aimed at the government controlled phone companies of the day - and information ministers on a junket trip to the Swiss capital. Companies spent millions on making their stands look rather like the motor show held annually in the same building. I mixed a visit to the city with a look around the EBU and a visit to a musical box museum. This show was the result.

This was a fun show to end 1992, catching up on the media news that was current on the last day of that year. It was a rather momentus day for Radio Luxembourg because they closed down their English service, playing many of their jingles in full so enthusiasts could tape them. But the majority of the show is devoted to a collection of radio mistakes which seemed funny at the time. Remember a lot of international broadcasting was pre-recorded in those days, so many of the fluffs were retaken. Sometimes though, people forgot to edit them out.

Satellites helped Radio Netherlands become far more topical in the 1980's. Before that, feature programmes like Media Network were recorded three weeks in advance and then shipped to Madagascar and Bonaire for playback at the transmitter site. By the time I arrived at the station, the programmes were being fed by satellite. But old habits die hard and it took me a while to persuafe the studio booking department that I wanted to record the programme as close to transmission time as possible, i.e. Wednesday evening rather than Monday afternoon. So much could happen. And in January 1986 it did, with the explosion and loss of seven NASA astronauts about the Space Shuttle Challenger. This was certainly a radio moment, since it was possible to follow the recovery operation if you knew where to search on the shortwave dial. As it happened, the feature that I'd prepared that week was on air-traffic control and the use of shortwave by planes. 

Much of this programme is devoted to looking at World War 2 receivers and visits two Dutch collectors who have turned their houses into workshops to restore old receivers. One collects the old German equipment, the other material from the Allies. I remember this programme well having recorded both interviews in Amsterdam on a very wet day and getting absolutely soaked on public transport (was carrying a UHER tape recorder, which is now a collectors item in itself). The photo is from the dial of the famous AR-88 shortwave receiver made by RCA and found in many military surplus outlets in the mid-eighties. 

This edition starts with a clip of a Radio Netherlands programme I discovered in the archives from 1963 when everything sounded much more dramatic than it really was. We then switch to developments on mediumwave 675 kHz is no longer used by public broadcasters in the Netherlands but an announcement on the frequency by Erik de Zwaart seems to have lead people to jump to the wrong conclusions. Virgin Radio starts testing on the old BBC Radio 3 frequencies and Radio Fax tries to get a shortwave licence again. There's a new guide to Indian broadcasting and John Wilson of Lowe Electronics announces some changes to the proposed HF-250 shortwave communications receiver. The picture is that of the reserve MW mast at the Northern end of the Lopik transmitter site which I watched being dismanted ten years after this show was made. Plenty of calls to the Radio Netherlands - including the new Channel Africa, the new name for Radio RSA. The FCC is trying to decide which system to choose for advanced television standards,

This is an interesting mix of radio news and reportages dating back to April 1986. We started with news about the clandestine radio station which targeted Zimbabwe from a transmitter base in South Africa. There was much speculation at the time as to who was behind it. It broadcast on shortwave, picking a frequency very near to the ZBC. The show encourage listener participation from the start and this programme is yet another example. Engineer and radio enthusiast Trevor Brook took a trip out to the radio station Laser 558 and recorded the experience for us. There was a satellite update on the broadcast satellite TVSAT (what a lemon that turned out to be) and Mike Bullen sent us a profile of changes at Radio Peking. Mike later left Radio Netherlands to become a writer, authoring the very successful comedy series Cold Feet. He now lives in Australia.