Media Network Vintage Vault 2018-2019

This podcast is actually two Media Network programmes rolled into one. We originated the show from Berlin on November 8th and 15th 1990, a year after the fall of the wall. I was keen to visit Radio Berlin International, the voice of the GDR, located in a former furniture factory on the Nalepastrasse. Because of its former owner, the building had huge empty hallways where the furniture was built and rather smaller offices alongside. The English section had mostly been dispanded by then, but there was familiar GDR propaganda material lying around in the office. If you want to understand more about the media situation in the GDR before the wall came down, check out the fabulous interview with Wolf Harranth who runs the radio documentation project in Vienna. Those videos are to found here http://www.vimeo.com/10320815 and http://www.vimeo.com/10320815 . What amazed me was realising that the RBI staff could see the wall from their office windows and that some of the presenters, like commentator John Peet, had gone

This was actually my first attempt at making a mini radio documentary, being 23 at the time. Joined Radio Netherlands (Radio Nederland as it was then called) the year before. In July 1981 I got an interview with the late Professor Lou de Jong (he died in 2005), who worked at Radio Oranje in London during the war. Alongside the BBC Dutch Service broadcasts, there was time allotted to governments in exile. Before doing the interview, I did quite a bit of research into what happened at the offices in Stratton Street.  Lou de Jong was a bit stiff to start with. He was testing me to see if I had really done my homework or just wanted a sound clip for something else. I told him I was fascinated in broadcasting history and really wanted to find out what it was like to be a broadcaster in those difficult times, especially working for the Dutch government in exile. So, after a while, he began to really enjoy telling the story even though it must have been the hundredth time. The Dutch government had a 15 minute slot i

This is a show that aired in early 1990, looking at the consequences for Forces Radio in Germany following German reunification. It turns out this is an old building, but it is the one I remember visiting in Frankfurt. And the site at the end of this post some fantastic pictures of studios with rotary faders in them. You were not operating a studio - you were driving a finely-tuned machine! This picture of the old AFN Headquarters comes from this site run by C. Park Seward. Do visit his site to listen to more vintage AFN.

Turn the clock back 24 years and join us for a radio profile of what radio sounded like on the Caribbean island of Aruba. The World Cup in Mexico had just finished...and Pete Myers reports on what the ABU wants to do about radio in South Asia, Alan du Pre tells us how a UK commercial station is broadcasting DX news at just after midnight and the Media Network book review is 'Assigned to Listen' being the memoirs of those who worked at BBC Monitoring. Wierd that many of those same items come back in the news as though nothing has changed.

This is a follow-up to the visit to the Vintage Radio Wireless Museum in London. More great stories from Gerald Wells. I particularly love the stories about Bakelite and the Philips V7U radio which was a nightmare to repair. It was built without a chassis! The programme also looks at the work in the Netherlands on AM stereo developed by the late Professor Jan Geluk. I recall that Holland was successful in pushing for the 19 kHz pilot tone as a worldwide standard for FM stereo. Ken Mason Junior explains the US scene. Gerald Wells discusses the onion tube used in early televisions. We also review the Woody Allen film "Radio Days".

I remember visiting the UK's Vintage Radio Wireless Museum in Dulwich, South London as though it were yesterday. It's just an ordinary terraced house from the outside, but inside its a celebration of the tube (Valve) radio, especially in the era 1920-1950. What's more, Gerald Wells, who , was one of the world's experts on valves - and had a flood of stories about the famous names I heard second-hand as a child. Did you know that Vidor Batteries were named after the manufacturers two daughters? And what were the better brands of radios. Enthusiasts in the UK have since made a DVD about Gerald which I can recommend. Part Two of this programme I made in Dulwich one year later has also been released further. BBC World Service commissioned and broadcast an excellent portrait of Gerald on August 20th 2010. I am sure you could have visited Gerald 1000 times and still take away new and different stories about this era of broadcasting. Anyone restoring early iPods?

In this edition of Media Network from July 1987 we were covering the crash of the Virgin Balloon and how it was possible to monitor the rescue of Richard Branson on shortwave. Piece by Mike Bullen (who later went on to write the series Cold Feet and now lives in Australia) on the Voice of Tamil Eelam. Results of a direction finding survey on the stations targeting Cuba. Professor John Campbell (pictured in this entry, but more recently than this show) who discusses Indonesia and Irish stations. Gary Newman's single called Radio Heart is discussed by Lou Josephs. Wolf Harranth reviews a shortwave log program called Swiss Log. We also tested a double notch filter to get rid of whistles and RTTY signals. We also look at clandestine stations in Africa. Propagation from Mike Bird.

Ireland once had its own shortwave transmitter in Athlone, long before RTE rented airtime on shortwave to broadcast programmes from its broadcast centre just outside Dublin. In 1987, we visited Dublin and met up with colleagues at RTE who had unearthed the (short) history of Ireland on shortwave. (Prof John Campbell later took up the stories of the Irish pirates, but that's for another edition). One of the first uses of shortwave was to relay programmes from the Vatican on the 100 kW transmitter in Athlone. The history of the station goes back in 1939. Note that the transmission date of this programme was corrected in March 2020.

It is 1991 and the Russian radio monopoly is being broken by all kinds of stations, including Radio Roks. Jeff White investigates the return of Radio Impacto, or at least the old transmitters of the station which had targeted Nicaragua in the 1980's as part of a US-backed clandestine media operation. And we hear from the late Dave Rosenthal on what Dxers have been up to in Eastern Canada as part of the Ontario DX Association Summer Camp.

This programme dates back exactly ten years ago to June 23rd 2000. What fascinates me in that how little has changed. England was exiting a football tournament, DAB was still trying to get adopted (to be fair its doing better in the UK and Denmark these days) and Worldspace still pumping out claims that they were going to be the platform of choice for the developing world. Ten years on Worldspace is no more, although I keep hearing of rescue attempts, cause the satellites are still up there. Does anyone believe the idea is not broken beyond repair?

This is the second of three programmes Jonathan Marks made in the Pacific.  It follows on from the previous week's edition made in Auckland New Zealand. Jonathan was sent to represent Radio Netherlands at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union at a very expensive hotel in Sydney. But he escaped some of the rather dry "working groups" to explore some of the stations, including the SBS and ABC. It didn't seem sensible to travel so far from Europe just to sit in a hotel room. Mike Bird, (pictured) our propagation man in Melbourne took the one hour flight to Sydney and we walked around the harbour recalling how media was changing at the start of a new century. I see the in Dutch - I would have thought the audience had really dwindled away to nothing by now.

More mysteries solved. In May of 2000 Diana Janssen and I rounded off our memories of the Millennium by recalling some of the magic that has gone into Media Network from its start in 1981 until the 1000 edition. That included the incident with George Wood and why people arrived outside my house at the start of the first Gulf War. We ended the show with a review of the (currently) defunct Worldspace system, concluding then that this was a very expensive way to listen to international broadcasting. Although I hear stories of all kinds of rescue plans in 2010, I think the window of opportunity has closed on the Worldspace system. To illustrate this podcast, a photo of us both taken around the same period. It was a case of the bald and the beautiful, although on that photo it is the other way round.

I don't deny I had a lot of fun making this programme. It is March 1989 and I realise there is nothing in the RNW archive about the great work that goes on at the relay stations and the story of how the satellite changed an entire industry. I combined it with reportages on the other ABC islands. Curacao was nice, but the beauty on Bonaire, especially under the water, was spectacular. I remember meeting a great Aruban engineer working at the station who actually swam to work. This programme was made before the admin building in Kralendijk was closed and the building expanded for the DRM capable transmitters. In November 2012, the transmitter towers were blown up as part of the closedown of the facilities on the island. An era has closed.

The date is August 13th 1981. Time to launch an expedition to the Radio Netherlands transmitter site at Lopik. It has been there since 1957 when it took over from the low power site in Huizen. But the 100 kW and 10 kW units are wearing out and plans are afoot for a new transmission centre somewhere on the Flevo polder. A visit to the Bonaire transmitter site in 1989 is the next programme in this mini series.

In this programme we tell the fascinating story of the Kootwijk transmitter built in the centre of the Netherlands on the heathland. In the early 1920's the main goal of the station was to maintain contact with Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies. It was pretty amazing bearing in mind they were using the wrong frequency band because the existence of short-wave radio was as yet unknown. The listening site in Eemnes mentioned in the programme is still there, although I believe the station is part of the monitoring network used by the military. The original airing of this programme was on March 3rd 1988. We went back at the end of the Millennium for the close of the station - those shows have yet to be re-released. It was a great story to make, even though its about a "utility" station not a broadcaster. In fact, the same place was used for a short period after the Second World War for longwave broadcasts.

Now this is something that won't ever be repeated. If you had a shortwave radio around August 1991 then it was probably tuned to Radio Moscow, but also other international broadcasters, because of an attempted coup. http://tiny.cc/tyfri Again this is an example of listener participation well before the web and mass use of email, as well as great inside stories from Vasily Strelnikov, a former presenter at Radio Moscow World Service. I love his story about how his "filling in the time" almost caused a diplomatic incident. He also explained how the news reading translation system worked, which solves another mystery from the Cold War era.

BBC Monitoring has been the owner of Caversham Park House since the end of World War 2. This imposing mansion - the large building you see on the hill as you pass through Reading on the train - has long been a major employer in Caversham. But it has also always been very low-key. And, because historically it has also attracted so many foreign nationals from many parts of the world to work there, overall BBC Monitoring's presence has contributed immeasurably to the quality and richness of life in Caversham. This visit to Caversham was designed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of operations - a period where radio was still the mainstay of the work and satellite TV monitoring was only just starting. 500 people worked there at the time from 50 countries. The second part of the programme has some rather dramatic developments surrounding Radio Caroline which prompted a lot of calls to the Radio Netherlands answerline.

This programme begins with an illustrated call for entries for the Memory of the Millennium competition (programmes and stations that no longer exist) and then moves into a feature about the time signal station WWV and WWVH in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. Thanks to Alfonso Montelegre for grabbing the interview material (he went to Fort Collins, not me) and also to the late Dave Rosenthal who shared a fascination in these ticking clocks. These stations now have a website full of photos and even more technical background than we had time for. Check out http://tf.nist.gov/stations/wwvh.htm

Eleven years after the first show on jingles (republished last week) I revisited the subject of jingle production in the 1990's, this time talking with makers on both sides of the Atlantic. This edition was originally broadcast on the last Thursday of 1994. I've posted it following nice comments on the first one!

We made several visits to the topic of radio jingles, how they are made and what programmers in the early 1980's thought they were for. Their use seemed to go in waves, sometimes stations overused them and there were periods when stations hardly used them at all. There were enthusiasts like Tom Konard who made vast collections of station idents and sweepers. Some are still on line - check this reference. http://www.reelradio.com/af/index.html . This show was broadcast on December 29th 1983 and I remember the recording well. Technican Pim Wijmer thought it would be a simple mix and wondered why I had booked four hours of studio time. Today, you can make the same show on a laptop using free multitrack software. In those days you had to cut and splice audio tape and cue everthing with yellow leader. There was more yellow leader on those montages than tape. Fun, nonetheless. Let me know if you want to hear more of these kind of features.