Media Network Vintage Vault 2018-2019

This was a news edition of the programme including a portrait of the battle for English language radio on the French Riveria. I remember visiting the studios of Radio Riveria a few years later and discovering it was built by the Germans during the 2nd World War. They had hired space in the studios of Radio Monte Carlo, one of the periphery commercial stations that beamed back into France from border areas to break the monopoly of Radio France. (You may remember Europe No.1, RTL, and Radio Andorra were part of the game too). I remember the studios of RMC had extremely thick walls and the transmitter site up on the hill behind (on French territory) was designed to beam Goebbel's propaganda directly into North Africa. Never went to transmitter site. I was told you could imagine where the Nazi swastika banners had once fluttered. 

In the summer of 1992, if you tuned up and down a shortwave radio in many parts of the world you could hear what sounded like a Yoga meditation class on several dozen frequencies. At this time, the Russian authorities were hiring out shortwave airtime to anyone who wanted to pay for it. Radio Moscow World Service, the Russian external broadcaster had been downsized well before it became the Voice of Russia. As a result, many shortwave transmitters were lying idle. Aum Shinrikyo bought a major amount of airtime....42 simultaneous transmitters. The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom apartment in Shibuya, Tokyo as a meditation class known as Aum-no-kai ("Aum club") and began steadily growing in the years that followed. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989. Because it attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan's elite universities that it was dubbed a "religion for the elite". The Wikipedia entry goes on to explain that at

This programme includes news about jamming in Sudan. What's curious is that in 2010 the jamming transmitter in Sudan would seem to be back on the air, this time jamming the station Radio Debanga aimed at Dafur. We also looked at radio tourism. Jan Taner decided to visit 1548 kHz Radio St Helena and helped to start the Radio St Helena Day. The frequency of 11092.5 kHz Upper Sideband has become synonymous with Radio St Helena - at least if you Google that number you'll find it. They have been several St Helena days since, always on the same frequency. We also looked at cheap shortwave portables like the DAK Industries DMR3000. Reposted 12 December 2010 because of broken link complaints. Seems to work now.

This was a very consumer conscious edition of the show, in which Jonathan and Diana find out why some leading scientists expect the peak in the solar cycle 22 to cause more damage that the millennium bug. We’ll also be exploring why the world’s first terrestrial digital TV service in the UK (the forerunner to Freeview) has more bugs in it than a tropical rain forest.

In late September 1998, we broadcast a news edition of the programme at a moment when the revelations about President Clinton were threatening to overload the Internet. Sam Younger stepped down from the BBC World Service and Mark Byford announced some changes to the UK external broadcasting service. We talked to the Internet department at CNN to find out how audio and video downloads were going and Kim Andrew Elliott, Audience Researcher at VOA has some interesting comments to share. And we did a remarkably silly sign-off. What fascinates me is how international broadcasting got stuck in a time warp since then..

In this first Media Network of April 1998 , we kick off a brand new summer season of our weekly communications programme by staring into space. Can a company that has created a virtual country in space deliver a worldwide phone system by the end of the 1998? Iridium thought it could. This programme also has news of a new Democracy Radio station announced by the Clinton Administration (which took VOA by surprise) as well as portrait of the Hague music station Arrow Classic Rock and its fight for a commercial licence.

I find Northern California to be steeped in fascinating broadcast history. There's the Marconi transmission and receiving centre in Tomales Bay. Check out this link. Then you there is the mission control centre for the This Week in Tech network in Petaluma, with Chief twit Leo Laporte. The photo shows the cottage which I visited in February 2010 and posted this video. But so much for the present... In 1998 Diana Janssen and I visited San Franscisco where we met Brian Cooley who was heading up CNET radio at the time. 11 years later, Brian is still with CNET but doing video. The radio bulletins are over. This show marked Media Network's 17th anniversary since it hit the airwaves in 1981 and to celebrate we decided to visit a radio station that hadn’t got a transmitter but it has got a beautiful view of the San Francisco bay area. There are not many studio windows that look out on the famous island of Alcatraz. This programme formed part of a trip to examine what was happening in

In this edition of the show we were messing about in boats. For instance, Light Vessel 18, the former Trinity House lightship was nearly ready for her new role as a floating Radio Station to help celebrate the Royal National Lifeboat Institution's 175th anniversary. Radio Northsea International was planning to be heard over in the area of the English county of Essex and beyond starting on 3rd August 1999 on 190 metres medium wave, that is, 1575 kiloHertz. This revivial was only for the month of August. This programme also updated the story about Quality Radio 1224 kHz and quashed the rumour that AFN was planning to close down its Frankfurt transmitter on AM. I also like the preview of the Funkausstellung 1999 from the late Bob Tomalski. He was brilliant - still sadly missed. And he was spot on in his predictions. The photo is taken in Lemmer, one of the harbours on the Ijsselmeer lake

I have always been struck by the connection between radio and transport, especially trains. Many of my friends in broadcasting have an interest in trains - especially steam. So while at a conference in Canada in 1998 I took the tour of the CBC English service in Ottawa, and learned how trains have been important to the start of national radio in that part of North America. It turned out to be important to me too. I went out to the airport to catch the KLM flight back to the Netherlands. I then discovered that there was no plane. It was a bus to Montreal. Where did the bus leave from? The Canadian National railway station opposite my hotel. This show also contains news on the book series about the great manufacturer of portable radios - Zenith.

So who remembers the radio stations that operated from the Forts in the 1960's? They were trying to break the monopoly of the BBC but choosing to use abandoned WWII anti-aircraft defenses built in the North Sea rather than the ships used by Radio Veronica and Caroline. The answer is that plenty of people still remember those broadcast pioneers, as I discovered at the Radioday.nl in the Casa400 hotel in Amsterdam on November 13th 2010. That lead to a request to dig up this show from August 13th 1998 in which we reviewed a new CD about the Forts, containing interviews from those involved. I see those CDs are still around - judging from the displays of offshore memorabilia. This show also included a great opening from Jim Cutler hinting at the crowded shortwave bands. Rocus de Joode was in the frequency coordination meeting in KL. Frederick Noronha submitted a piece about community radio in India. It is a shame that it didn't take off as fast as the commercial FM. The programme ends with the revi

In 1998 we remade a documentary on Tokyo Rose in the light of new recordings and websites that were springing up. This was before Wikipedia of course. I think it interesting to contrast this story about Tokyo Rose (it was more than one person) with that of American actress Mildred Gillars who broadcast from Berlin to North America. I see that she is the subject of a new book by Richard Lucas called 'Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany". There are recordings of her in the US Library of Congress. The original programme is also on this website.

This edition was recorded in a small village just outside Geneva, Switzerland. Hirondelle, the Swiss media foundation which had been running several post-conflict media projects organised a symposium. It focussed on what broadcasters could do to restore the peace in places like Burundi and Liberia. Hirondelle is still going, having since got the contract to build and maintain the Radio Okapi network in Congo. Once again, I believe that most of the sentiments in this programme are still valid today, even though the programme was compiled in July 1998. For a time there was also a hate media website maintained by Radio Netherlands which is referred to in the programme. We discovered that this site was also used as one of the references for researchers on the film Hotel Rwanda. I see the man at the centre of the film, Paul Rusesabagina, is still involved in a bitter feud with Rwanda's President, Paul Kagam. Allegations flared up again in October 2010.

In this edition, let's head back to the 1980's. The late Richard Ginbey was a keen shortwave radio listener who did more than most to document African broadcasting. He lived in South Africa, Namibia, and New Zealand for much of his life, working as a radio presenter for a number of music radio stations. He was one of the few people making audio recordings of the stations he heard. In the 1970's he was heard with his own radio programme on Radio Portugal (then known as the Voice of the West) and a publication called the World Radio Bulletin. By the time I joined Radio Netherlands, he was already contributing a monthly spot for that station. I encouraged him to give us more profiles and less lists - and he duly obliged. Sadly, Richard was killed in a road traffic accident. I tried to find out what happened to his priceless collection of cassette recordings, but my letters were never answered. This programme from June 1983 includes a contribution from Professor John Campbell on th

We only really started to get an idea of what broadcasting was like during the Cold War towards the end of the 1990's. I remember we had a visit from Estelle Winters, who is still a regular presenter on the Voice of Russia, the station that took over from Radio Moscow World Service. I remember when we finally saw pictures of the studios of Radio Moscow and realised why the station always had a signature sound - no matter what language, you could often identify the station on a crowded short-wave dial because of the modulation. The studios had two microphones pointing towards the presenter, giving it a characteristic echo since there is a phase difference between the sound captured by the mikes. This show originally aired on 22nd January 1998.

This is a very early Media Network from December 1982 when distance still had a certain magic. There was no wikipedia to get a briefing on far away places. Phone lines were prohibitive expensive (6 Euros a minute to the Pacific) and awful quality. Via a complicated method of simultaneous recording (two tape recorders running at the same time in different locations), I managed to link up with Martin Hadlow, at that time working for in the Solomon Islands. Hearing the station was virtually impossible outside the Pacific, even though they had a short-wave transmitter. Martin later when on to do some fascinating projects for UNESCO in Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan. The photo illustrating this podcast was taken in 2005 when Martin was stationed at UNESCO HQ in Paris. He is now a professor in Brisbane, Australia. This same broadcast includes a review of a book called "Let Truth be Told" written by the late Gerard Mansell, one of the directors of BBC External Services in the early 1980's. BBC External Servic

Towards the end of May 1998, 150 international broadcasters got together at a hotel golf resort just outside Ottawa for a conference on the future of international broadcasting. It was organised by Radio Canada International together with 6 Canadian Universities and it was the fifth in a series of meetings, all of which have focussed on the future of international broadcasting. Even then, the writing was on the wall for shortwave international broadcasting. Radio Prague in the Czech Republic, for instance, had decided to invest 10% of its programme budget into “new media”. They said they were better able to reach Czechs living abroad using e-mail than their limited shortwave facilities. On the other hand some stations in Asia are actually putting new transmitters on the air although these aren’t being designed in such a way that they could be digitised later. But in the light of the recent decision in October 2010 to fund the BBC World Service in a different way, its interesting to listen to F

During the Cold War there were several clandestine stations that popped up from Eastern Europe, being the voice of the communist party in exile. One was Radio Independent Spain which got airtime from Radio Prague. This was one of the memories towards the end of this show recorded in 1999. This edition also carried news of HCJB in Quito which was having challenges with a nearby volcano. Broadcast September 30th 1999.

I remember listening to a jingle of the Voice of Lebanon, a shortwave radio station that operated well outside the conventional 49 metre short-wave band. So even though it had a low power, it didn't have competition from higher powered stations and would propagate into Northern Europe most evenings. But I had to visit the station, and hum the tune of the jingle before I realised that, for the locals, the music had a very different significance. When I visited Beirut in June 1998 to take part in a training course for journalists, the country was on a lift. From current reports, it seems to have become very polarised again. And that could not be more dangerous. The cafes in the hills around Beirut are still fantastic - and you could see why artists and singers preferred to work there than in dusty Cairo or the heat of the Gulf. Thanks to Sorgul for the photo. Mine still have to be digitized. Like the show? Leave a comment.

There used to be a great round-table discussion about radio content organised by the EBU and Spanish National Radio RNE. It was held every two years in Torremolinos. The venue in the Malaga conference centre was great because the room was like a football stadium. It worked because everyone could see each other which is essential if you want to get people talking whose native language is not English. I went to one of the events in 1999 and got a glimpse of what people where thinking about the future of radio 11 years ago. I think it was a pity they were discontinued. Perhaps that's because the venues they chose later were more like a classroom. So who got it right and who was well off the mark? Listen back to this Media Network spring safari and let me know what you think. If you are interested in more great photos of Torremolinos as it is today, check out this Flickr stream from William Helsen. Photo used under creative commons licence.

This edition was a mixed bag....no single theme. Strange going's on in London as reported by Nic Newman (Suitcase TV), African Media News from Richard Ginbey, a visit to the VERON Dutch Amateur Radio station PA0AA located in the Sikkens Paint Factory just off the A44 on the way to Noordwijk and John Campbell had some interesting comments on La Voz del CID, a station targeting Cuba. Time travel back 25 years. The photo, by the way, comes from the old Marconi transmitter located in the grounds of the Vatican..but that's another story.