Media Network Vintage Vault 2018-2019

We take you now to a Thursday in May 1986, when we did a lot "with" the public, ten years before e-mail was mainstream. The show starts with a report on the balloon hunt organised by the NOS Hobbyscoop programme. The interview is with the late Hans G. Janssen, with whom I worked on the BASICODE project. Then, Trevor Brook of Surrey Electronics (now editor http://www.radiojackie.com) reports from Spain on something he saw from his hotel balcony. He went off to find out more rather like a fox chasing chickens. Knowing this show had been found, he wrote back to me just a few days back. He writes. Here are a couple of photos that you are welcome to use. Shots with the mast are very rare. At the time I did the report, the ship was a kilometre offshore at Santander, an overcast evening and a drab rainy morning I seem to remember. Telephotos can't fix everything! The rest of the holiday had been solid sunshine." There's also a story on Radio Wapping in UK and Prof John Campbell review

It is April 30th as this entry is published. Its a national holiday to celebrate the Queen's Birthday, although Beatrix is not actually having a birthday today. Her late mother was born on April 30th and this is a better time of year than the queen's official birthday on 31st January (1938). So when she was inaugurated in 1980, Queens Day didn't move. The programme attached to this entry is also from Queens Day, but as broadcast on Thursday 30th April 1987....23 years ago. In this show we learn that VOA Europe goes stereo and will also carry commercials, through a barter arrangement with Westwood One We hear the plans for satellite scrambling in MAC mode. AWR Guam signs on. There's also a feature on Audience research - Tom Fikkert of Radio Netherlands and Graham Mytton who was Head of the International Broadcasting Audience Research department at BBC World Service. I find it fascinating to hear how shortwave was declining back then. Finally, clandestine radio expert John Campbell reports on so

As 1999 came to a close, Jonathan Marks was fortunate enough to attend a broadcasting conference in Australia for Radio Netherlands. He grabbed the opportunity to make a short visit to Auckland, New Zealand to examine the amazing radio scene that was emerging at that time in the Pacific. The local members of the NZ Radio DX League did us proud with a very warm welcome right in the middle of the . Our narrative steers a different course as we explore radio history in New Zealand. New Zealand is also home to the great . In this programme you'll hear the voice of Media Network's correspondent Bryan Clark who explains his interest in radio was sparked in the mid 60;s by the offshore ship i which had a major impact on NZ public radio. The station still operates today (2019) and their logo still reflects the nautical past. in 1999 the old Hauraki MW frequency of 1476 was reused for a rather ingenious listener-sponsored relay of the BBC World Service. The sped up the programmes from London slightly so as to be able

The first half of the programme is devoted to an interview with the developer of secret radio transmitters used by the agents working for the Special Operations Executive during WW 2. The sets were remarkably crude because the budget was a pittance. We then cross to southern Germany at the command centre for the European Space Agency. Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels was aboard SpaceLab 1 at the time. Those were the days when any space mission got ample coverage.

This show, broadcast on 14th November 1985 has an in-depth feature on the offshore station Laser 558 being escorted by a sister ship hired by the UK DTI authorities. Lack of power forced the station to ask for assistance. Interview with station representative John Catlett and former owner of the ship, the Guardline Seeker. We also caught up with Bob Horvitz, at that time running the Woodpecker Project, which involved watching the Russian Over The Horizon Radar. There is also a visit to VOA Europe in Munich, African Media News with Richard Ginbey and the Propagation Report from Mike Bird. I remember I had the flu that Thursday, so excuse the croaky voice.

Seeing that Thailand is in the news as I write this, I picked this programme broadcast from Bangkok on 4th December 1987. This includes an interview with Richard Jackson who was working for many of the stations there at the time and who was instrumental in bringing the show together. We looked at the 60 years celebration of Thai King's Birthday and noted the poor quality of AM transmitters. NBT runs two services. including HSK-9, Radio Thailand's external service. VOA also has a special service called Voice of Free Asia. There were clandestine stations from Communist Party of Thailand via Beijing. Thanks to telmo32 on flickr for sharing the photo under Creative Commons. http://www.flickr.com/people/telmo32/

In this edition, we're going back to May 23rd 1985 when I was fortunate to visit Sri Lanka for the first time, as part of a stop-over on Air Lanka to Tokyo. Actually, it was great to spend some time with two long time friends of the Media Network programme, Victor Goonetilleke (pictured) and Sarath Weerakoon. This was just before a new round of hostilities broke out in the North and East of the country. I travelled with Adrian Petersen (AWR) to see the Deutsche Welle Trincomalee relay station - a trip of almost 8 hours. We stayed in the Moonlight Bay hotel, which I found out later was blown up a few weeks later. On our return, Victor had organised a meeting of Radio Netherlands' listeners and I was amazed to discover that some people had travelled over two days just to say hello and express their appreciation for Media Network and Pete Myers show at the time called Mainstream Asia. Again, as you listen to this it important to realise this is 10 years before Internet had mass appeal, only a few satellite TV ch

In August 1992, Media Network contributor Lou Josephs took me in his car to a poison-ivy infested ruin on a hill over-looking the Atlantic Ocean. It was from this point in Scituate, Massachusetts that WRUL, WNYW and WYFR broadcast programmes for several decades. Lou was working then for WROR in Boston, but in earlier years he had a Saturday job working in the New York City offices of WNYW. Luckily he also owned one of the first cassette recorders (so new they didn't know how to pronounce it on DXing Worldwide). I always thought that at its peak in the late 60's the station radiated remarkable energy. Perhaps it was because distance still had magic. More from Lou are still floating around the Internet. Thanks to Jim Cutler for the photo of the old WNYW site. Lou tells me that Larry Yount has passed away. He was a versatile news anchor in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, working at stations that included WVNJ, WRFM (and its sister shortwave station, WNYW) and WQXR. Yount died August 25th 2011 in Hickory,

In the early hours of Thursday August 2nd 1990, Iraq launched an invasion on Kuwait. Initially, Iraqi forces managed to capture the studios of Kuwait Radio & Television at the Ministry of Information building. But after a period of silence, people running the shortwave transmitter of Radio Kuwait succeeded in getting the station back on the air with an announcement on all Radio Kuwait's frequencies. In this edition of Media Network we examined the media aspects of the Iraq-Kuwait conflict and some rumours that started to lead a life of their own. The show is an example of how important shortwve external broadcasting was during that era in trying to follow all aspects of a story. Remember this is well before the influence of Internet or satellite television in the region. The show is also a good example of how the audience took part in sharing their observations alongside the "official" sources. I was always amazed at peoples' willingness to contribute, especially when mak

In the course of its life as a radio show, Media Network covered the mystery of the numbers stations in between the broadcast bands on several occasions. The first time we devoted most of the programme to the strange voices shouting numbers was on August 2nd 1990. So turn back the clock 20 years and find out what was intriguing international radio listeners before the Internet had any form of mass appeal.

Media Network was one of the first international programmes of its kind to encourage and get collaboration from the audience. Listeners were encouraged to do their own detective work and report on their results, usually with audio clips of what they had heard. In a time when a call from Australia to Holland cost around 2 Euros a minute, this was no mean feat. As well as doing mini documentaries, Media Network also became a news magazine show about communications and international broadcasting. In this edition, broadcast on January 27th 1991, the focus is on the crisis in the Middle East. For me it seems hard to believe it was more than 19 years ago.

First broadcast on the 10th of December 1982, this Media Network programme looks at the broadcasts from North & South Korea aimed at each other and to other parts of the world. Professor John Campbell, then head of the computer science department at UC London, had a regular column on the programme, following on from his articles on clandestine radio in the World Radio TV Handbook and Passport to World Band Radio. Check out the wikipedia entry about this place. The programme concludes with a contribution from the late Richard Ginbey, who regularly shared a unique collection of off-air recordings from his base just outside Johannesburg.

Media Network Wartime special. Looks at Lord Haw Haw, Liberty from Argentina during Falklands War, Voice of Vietnam's Hanoi Hannah. The rest of the programme then focuses on Tokyo Rose, with an in depth interview with author Russell Warren Howe who has been one of several people to dig deep into the background of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who broadcast as "Orphan Ann" during the 15-20 minute DJ segment on Radio Tokyo's The Zero Hour program. For more information, check out the wikpedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Rose. This programme was first broadcast on 14th June 1990.

This is Part Two of a two-part documentary about black clandestine propaganda from the UK towards Nazi occupied Europe. The late Harold Robin explains why Canadian soldiers dug a hole in one of hills near , Sussex and how the high power mediumwave transmitter sent from the US was buried underground. George Jacobs explains the mysterious Glenn Miller Jazz programmes made for German soldiers. Aspidistra, as the transmitter was called, could change frequency quite quickly and did more than broadcast fake German forces radio programmes. This must be the ultimate in "fake news" networks. After the war, the transmitter was handed over to the BBC and later sent to Orfordness, Suffolk. Bits of the original transmitter survive in the transmission hall of that site. The original transmitter site in Sussex is now a police training ground. The photo shows the transmitter shortly after installation. The bunker was designed by an architect who built cinemas before the war. You can find the first part of the documentary .

Take your mind back to January 30th 1996. Audio on the web sounds like early wax cylinders. Mobile phones are catching on. Jonathan Marks recounts an expedition to Lemmenjoki, near Ivalo in Northern Finland, well above the Arctic Circle. The reason to head up to the frozen North was to listen to mediumwave radio with friends of the Finnish DX Association and to understand the fascination of hearing stations from all parts of the globe. This was a time when distance still had magic, especially as you never knew what might fade in next. The temperature outside was -26 C. Inside the log cabin we were listening to Japan on mediumwave starting a new day. What's the fascination? You're able to hear the world talking to itself live. Even though the number of mediumwave stations has decreased in the world, the Dxpeditions still continue. Check out this link for news of a new location that opened in 2010. Tip of the hat to Daneen Vol for sharing the photo via Flickr. Must look for my negatives.

A few nights before the Americans went into Kuwait with Operation Desert Storm on 17th January 1991 to liberate it from the Iraqi's, Russian troops went into Vilnius, the capital of what is now the independent country of Lithuania. This is the story of that Russian invasion as recounted by Radio Vilnius, operating at the time from the recording studios of the blind foundation. It is also an amazing story of how listeners to Radio Vilnius got a front-row seat in what was happening. The sign-off music from the station is one of the most evocative you will ever hear and always remember.

This is a flashback to a Media Network in 1991 which contained an interview which solved the mystery behind the broadcasts in 1977 from Tripoli Harbour, Libya which contained cryptic references to Radio Northsea International. We talk with Jules Retro who was on the ship at the time. The programme was originally aired on March 21st 1991. Photo by Rainer Knebel

This is Part One of one of the most popular documentaries broadcast in the Radio Netherlands Media Network programme in 1993, looking at UK black propaganda during the Second World War. In 2019 we might call it deliberate "fake news".  This programme features an interview with the late Harold Robin, the Foreign & Commonwealth broadcast engineer who put a number of "fake" resistance stations on the air from a transmitter site not far from Bletchley Park. I was glad to see that they haven't forgotten the role of these broadcasts - it's mentioned in the exhibition at Bletchley. The second part of this 30 minute documentary can be found  (see March 22nd 2010). The second part deals more with the Aspidistra transmitter built very near Crowborough, Sussex and still used by Sussex Police as a training ground. Little known fact is that it was also used a for an episode of BBC's Dr Who. The only remaining parts of the Aspi 1 transmitter were hanging in the entrance hall of the Babcock transmitter site at Ordfordn

This edition of Media Network included a fictious horse race between several international broadcasters as well as a profile of Mozambiquan radio compiled by Eric Beauchemin. I am pleased to note that there is a website recalling the early days of Radio Clube de Mocambique and Lourenco Marques (LM) radio, thought to be the first commercial radio station in Africa. I note on the list of DJs at LM Radio, the name of Fritz Greveling, one of the presenters of Media Network's predecessor. Fritz Greyling (as he called himself in English) was born on 10 October 1947 in Hengelo in the Netherlands, but grew up in Kroonstad in the Free State. He was fluent in English, Afrikaans and Dutch and joined LM where he was known as 'your tall groover' from 1969 until the station closed in 1975. Later he joined Dions stores in Johannesburg where he worked with Paul Nel in the record division. He then decided to return to Holland where he worked for a long time as a presenter with Radio Nederland Wereldomro

This programme was the last in a series of five, broadcast in the summer of 1982. The episode examined the curious media situation between the Dutch and Republican forces looked at the time of Indonesian independence in 1949 as well as clandestine broadcasts during the Angolan civil war.