DX LISTENING DIGEST 5-075, May 6, 2005 Incorporating REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING edited by Glenn Hauser, http://www.worldofradio.com Items from DXLD may be reproduced and re-reproduced only if full credit be maintained at all stages and we be provided exchange copies. DXLD may not be reposted in its entirety without permission. Materials taken from Arctic or originating from Olle Alm and not having a commercial copyright are exempt from all restrictions of noncommercial, noncopyrighted reusage except for full credits For restrixions and searchable 2005 contents archive see http://www.worldofradio.com/dxldmid.html NOTE: If you are a regular reader of DXLD, and a source of DX news but have not been sending it directly to us, please consider yourself obligated to do so. Thanks, Glenn NEXT AIRINGS OF WORLD OF RADIO 1273: Fri 2200 WOR ACBRadio Mainstream Fri 2300 WOR Studio X, Momigno, Italy 1584 87.35 96.55 105.55 Sat 0000 WOR ACBRadio Mainstream Sat 0800 WOR WRN1 to Eu, Au, NZ, WorldSpace AfriStar, AsiaStar, Telstar 12 SAm Sat 0855 WOR WNQM Nashville TN 1300 Sat 1030 WOR WWCR 5070 Sat 1130 WOR World FM, Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand 88.2 Sat 2030 WOR R. Lavalamp Sun 0230 WOR WWCR 5070 Sun 0300 WOR WBCQ 9330-CLSB Sun 0330 WOR WRMI 7385 Sun 0630 WOR WWCR 3210 Sun 0830 WOR WRN1 to North America, also WLIO-TV Lima OH SAP Sun 0830 WOR KSFC Spokane WA 91.9 Sun 0830 WOR WXPR Rhinelander WI 91.7 91.9 100.9 Sun 0830 WOR WDWN Auburn NY 89.1 [unconfirmed] Sun 0830 WOR KTRU Houston TX 91.7 [occasional] Sun 1100 WOR R. Lavalamp Sun 1200 WOR WRMI 7385 Sun 1300 WOR KRFP-LP Moscow ID 92.5 Sun 1500 WOR R. Lavalamp Sun 1730 WOR WRMI 7385 [from WRN] Sun 1730 WOR WRN1 to North America Sun 1900 WOR Studio X, Momigno, Italy 1584 87.35 96.55 105.55 Sun 2000 WOR RNI Mon 0230 WOR WRMI 7385 Mon 0300 WOR WBCQ 9330-CLSB Mon 0330 WOR WSUI Iowa City IA 910 [1272] Mon 0430 WOR WBCQ 7415 Mon 0900 WOR R. Lavalamp Mon 1600 WOR WBCQ after hours Tue 0600 WOR WPKN Bridgeport CT 89.5, WPKM Montauk NY 88.7 Tue 1600 WOR WBCQ after hours Wed 0930 WOR WWCR 9985 Wed 1600 WOR WBCQ after hours MORE info including audio links: http://worldofradio.com/radioskd.html WRN ON DEMAND: http://new.wrn.org/listeners/stations/station.php?StationID=24 OUR ONDEMAND AUDIO [also for CONTINENT OF MEDIA, MUNDO RADIAL] WORLD OF RADIO 1273 (high version): (stream) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1273h.ram (download) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1273h.rm WORLD OF RADIO 1273 (low version): (stream) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1273.ram (download) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1273.rm (summary) http://www.worldofradio.com/wor1273.html WORLD OF RADIO 1273 in true shortwave sound of Alex`s mp3: (stream) http://www.dxprograms.net/worldofradio_05-04-05.m3u (download) http://www.dxprograms.net/worldofradio_05-04-05.mp3 ** CANADA. Re: Is it me or is it CBC? "As It Happens" is a shadow of its former self in my opinion and it is available on my local FM station every evening at 1830 local (Joe Buch, DE, swprograms via DXLD) Joe, what makes AIH less compelling nowadays? I always enjoyed the offbeat interviews with interesting people who were movers behind key stories -- I recall the interview with someone who had figured out how to diagnose one of the first Internet worms that bogged things down. It seems the interviews are more mainstream, less off-center, at least to me (Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA, ibid.) I remember AIH as a really bold program which spared no expense to bring live, spontaneous interviews with world leaders to the CBC/RCI audience. I even remember one day they called the Vatican to get an interview with the pope. The pope was not available but you have to give them an "A" for cojones. I noted that about the time of the first CBC budget cuts I started to lose interest in AIH. When I first began posting advance program info on CBC programs to this list, AIH topics to be covered in the next day's program were included in the daily hotsheet releases. The omission of such advance detail happened right after the cuts and I sense a cause and effect relationship between the two events. I get the impression AIH cannot predict what they will cover tomorrow because they are not doing as in-depth a job of reporting so they need not make assignments as far in advance. Thorough research and production is not required if stories concentrate on shallow fluff. I also noted a shift at about this time in focus from world and international issues to covering internal Canadian issues. I think that shift in emphasis occurred about the same time CBC realized that most Canadians were not listening to CBC so, in order to survive, CBC management decided to make their content more relevant to their Canadian audience. Having once lived in Canada for three years, I am probably more interested in Canadian topics than the average US listener, but I am not interested enough to tune in regularly. Michael Enright is one of the best interviewers I have ever heard on any radio service. He is right up there with BBC's David Frost and ABC-TV's Barbara Wawa in my opinion. Michael Enright was moved from AIH to the Sunday morning Sunday Edition graveyard when Peter Gzowski retired as I remember. I still listen on Sunday Mornings at least to the first hour of the Sunday Edition show to hear Michael Enright's opening commentary and his listing of what will be heard on that day's program. Neither Enright nor any contemporary CBC person can compare with the delivery of a previous AIH host, Alan Maitland, who has now been relegated to a Christmas Eve ritual reading of John Forsythe's story of the RAF aviator lost in fog over the North Sea. Last but not least, when AIH is on the air at 1830 local, it is competing with the evening network TV newscasts, Nightly Business Report on PBS, and reruns of old Simpsons episodes. The rebroadcast on RCI is so poorly received recently since they dropped the 49 meter band frequency that it is hard to listen to even though it does not compete with other programs of interest at that hour. With no advance tease of what AIH will be covering on any given evening, I just forget to tune in. I should probably record the show for later playback but I'm just not that motivated anymore because I have gotten out of the AIH habit (Joe Buch, ibid.) I think in general we can say that CBC Radio-produced current affairs programming is of a lesser quality and less daring and provocative than it once was. I did read somewhere some time ago that the number of people working at the various current affairs programs like AIH, Sunday Edition, The Current and Sounds Like Canada is considerably reduced from the staffs that used to produce shows like Sunday Morning, Morningside and AIH. This is due, of course, to budget cuts; but also to some rather damaging changes in programming philosophy after the retirements and passings of truly legendary figures (like Gzowski, Frum et al) that helped to shape and produce that great CBC radio renaissance of the 70s. It also puts the lie to the statement that one can always do more with less. To me, the Sunday Edition's precursor -- Sunday Morning -- was a stronger program and at its best when Ian Brown was the host. IMHO, Enright had some problems fitting into the Sunday morning format initially (having been the voice of AIH for some time with its harder edged approach), but over time he and the program have sort of form fitted to one another to the point where I agree with Joe... he is one of the finest interviewers on radio today. The Sunday Edition is not nearly as compelling a listen as Sunday Morning was, but Enright has done a good job working with the resources he has. It's a different program, but I like it all the same. I just don't feel as bad about missing it as I did when I missed hearing Sunday Morning on a given week. The daily morning programs now aren't even a shadow of what Morningside once was. Anna Maria Tremonti is good, but the format of the The Current doesn't use her talents to their best effect IMHO. Shelagh Rogers would have seemed to be the natural heir apparent to Gzowski, given her long association with his show and her experience with its strengths; but these haven't been translated into Sounds Like Canada. Rogers seems a fish out of water in SLC, which is probably more due to the rather fuzzy focus of the program and its more limited budget (viz Morningside) than it is to any shortcomings of her own. At least that's how I see it (John Figliozzi, Halfmoon, NY, ibid.) I agree with much of what Joe and John have said here. CBC Radio is indeed much less listenable than it used to be. I never did much like AIH. In my opinion, it was a waste. (Such a waste!) After the flagship news programme, we are stuck with such dross. Way too many interviews with political spin-masters, and those who have some off-beat and excessively petty story to tell. As I said, what a waste. Sunday Morning is arguably the best of the lot on CBC R1. (I admit that this is not saying much.) Michael Enright is a great interviewer, and most of the items are worthwhile. But a few duds still slip in. Nice to have a news programme that moves away from hard news, yet still is fun to listen to. Another good programme is TWTW [The World This Weekend]. I especially like the min-docs contained within it ("packages", British broadcasters would call them, I think). It is an overlooked show, and much more interesting that The World at Six, (That could be due to the fact that I have only a passing interest in Canadian politics--TWTW has far fewer Canadian stories that the World at Six). The Current is a real disappointment. Anna-Maria is not a great interviewer at all, and the stories are frequently not newsworthy or interesting. Such a waste! SLC is full of small-town stories which are of limited interest to others. Part of the CBC's mandate, unfortunately, is to reflect Canada to Canadians. And to do this, the producers often focus on local/regional stuff. Thing is, most of this stuff is as boring as watching grass grow. Ms. Rodgers is too much of an eager beaver for Canada--puts me right off. What a waste! The Roundup? Fluff, fluff, and more fluff. What a waste! (Yes, I know that I keep repeating myself. Get the message?) I console myself, however, by thinking of CBC Radio Overnight [when foreign stations are carried]. No, Joe, it's not you, it's the CBC. 73, (Peter Bowen, Canada, ibid.) One show I often enjoyed in the evening from RCI which is not available on FM or Sirius, to my knowledge, was the Global Village. After spring changes, I have lost track of it again. Please let me know when and on which frequencies I may best hear that program on the east coast of North America. Thanks. (Donna Ring, swprograms via DXLD) Try Sundays 0100, 9755 kHz, targeting NA. Also in use are 11990 and 13710 kHz but these higher frequencies generally haven't been working as well overall. Global Village is webcast at numerous times on the 24/7 English and 24/7 Multilingual services, in addition to the local air times for CBC R1 and R2 stations. Kevin Kelly's Public Radio Fan website, showing the webcast airtimes for Global Village, is here: http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgi-bin/program.pl?programid=127 (Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA, ibid.) ** ECUADOR. We just found out in last few weeks that the new airport will be closer to our Pifo transmitter site than we thought, which lowers the ceiling below which we have to keep our towers. There was some hope we might be able to keep operating from Pifo after lowering some of the towers, but this is no longer an option. The previously planned coastal site was too far from our hydroelectric plant to be cost-effective, so we are looking for another site closer to Quito (Ralph Kurtenbach, HCJB, on VOA Talk to America May 6, notes by gh for DX LISTENING DIGEST) See USA for audio link ** FINLAND. SWR's 6-7th May transmission --- Dear listeners, Scandinavian Weekend Radio's next transmission starts today 6th May 21 hours UT. Actions are on 25 mb (11690/11720 kHz), 48 mb (5980/5990/6170 kHz). and MW 187 meters 1602 kHz. more info: http://www.swradio.net Our technicians have made some changes to our MW-antenna and so all observations of audibility there are very welcome. Postal address of SWR is: P. O. Box 99, FI-34801 VIRRAT, Finland Programe schedule: 21-23 TrickyTrev Show 23-24 JarióJiriBand-illanvietto. Vetäjinä dj J-for & Wsi -0,5 00-01 01-05 Yökyöpeli - NightOwl by Häkä 05-06 Science corner by Esa. Science news from NASA. 06-07 Lauantailuotain. Haastateltavana rikosylikomisario Juha Rautaheimo Helsingin rikospoliisin väkivaltayksiköstä. Uusinta maaliskuulta 2004. By Pena-Setä 07-08 MSDXK Lost Tapes III osa 08-09 Mukavaa, mutta silti hauskaa. Ohjelma, jossa puuhaillaan muuta ilman synergiaetuja. By Pena-setä 09-10 Studiossa dj Janne 10-11 Levyraato by Peeveli 11-12 TrickyTrev 60s-70s show. 12-13 JarióJiriBand-illanvietto. Vetäjinä dj J-for & Wsi -0,5 12-14 Partytime with TrickyTrev 14-15 Levyraato by Peeveli 15-16 "Pena-Sedän Osaamiskeskus". "Ohjelma sisältää irtoavia osia. Ei alle 30v." 16-17 Special quest and visiting DJ (name later) from Poland. 17-18 Special quest and visiting DJ (name later) from Poland. 18-19 Saunan lämmitys by Häkä 19-20 20-21 Closing seremony Take it baby! (Alpo Heinonen, Scandinavian Weekend Radio, May 6, DX LISTENING DIGEST) Remember that these transmitters are very low power, about 100 watts, I think. Some Europeans manage to hear them, but they are quite a catch in North America, depending on which channels are really clear and favorable propagation (gh, DXLD) MW: 1602 kHz (whole day long) 48 mb: 21-06 UTC: 5980 kHz 06-11 UTC: 6170 kHz 11-17 UTC: 5980 kHz 17-18 UTC: 5990 kHz 18-21 UTC: 5980 kHz 25 mb: 21-06 UTC: 11720 kHz 06-11 UTC: 11690 kHz 11-18 UTC: 11720 kHz 18-21 UTC: 11690 kHz (Alpo Heinonen, dxing.info via DXLD) ** ITALY. Next edition of MediaLine Radio (7 May 2005) * A VOA report about the delayed US space shuttle flight. * An interview with Joe Moell of homingin.com about Radio Direction Finding as a hobby and a tool for wildlife tracking. * An episode of the popular western series Gunsmoke from the 1950s. This programme airs on Saturday 7/14 May at 1930 UT on 5775 kHz and at http://mp3.nexus.org Additional airings are on Saturday 7/14 May at 1330 UT at http://mp3.nexus.org For more information, please visit http://www.nexus.org/radio.htm (Henry Brice, BDXC-UK via DXLD) ** KOREA NORTH. Here`s another version of VOK A-05 schedule, showing azimuths, data not usually available, reworked here by gh to fit DXLD. Note that the out-of-band `feeder` channels such as 3560, 4405 are not included; are they still actually in use? More below on the azimuths. 00 Chinese 13650 238 15100 238 SEAs 00 Korean (PBS) 7140 ND 9345 ND 9730 ND NECHN 00 Spanish 11735 28 13760 28 15180 28 CAm 01 English 7140 ND 9345 ND 9730 ND NEAs 01 English 11735 28 13760 28 15180 28 CAm 01 French 13650 238 15100 238 SEAs 02 Chinese 7140 ND 9345 ND 9730 ND NECHN 02 English 13650 238 15100 238 SEAs 02 Spanish 11735 28 13760 28 15180 28 CAm 03 Chinese 13650 238 15100 238 SEAs 03 English 7140 ND 9345 ND 9730 ND NEAs 03 French 11735 28 13760 28 15180 28 CAm [Kim Jung-Il`s siesta time] 07 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 9650 109 11865 109 J 07 Korean (PBS) 7140 ND 9345 ND NECHN 07 Russian 9975 28 11735 28 FE 07 Russian 13760 325 15245 235 Eu 08 Chinese 7140 ND 9345 ND NECHN 08 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 9650 109 11865 109 J 08 Russian 9975 28 11735 28 FE 08 Russian 13760 325 15245 325 Eu 09 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 6070 109 9650 109 11865 109 J 09 Korean (KCBS) 7140 ND 9345 ND NECHN 09 Korean (PBS) 9975 28 11735 28 FE 09 Korean (PBS) 13760 325 15245 325 Eu 10 English 11710 28 15180 28 CAm 10 English 11735 238 13650 238 SEAs 10 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 6070 109 9650 109 11865 109 J 10 Korean (PBS) 7140 ND 9345 ND NECHN 11 Chinese 7140 ND 9345 ND CHN 11 French 11710 28 15180 28 CAm 11 French 11735 238 13650 238 SEAs 11 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 6070 109 9650 109 11865 109 J 12 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 6070 109 9650 109 11865 109 J 12 Korean (KCBS) 11710 28 15180 28 CAm 12 Korean (KCBS) 11735 238 13650 238 SEAs 12 Korean (PBS) 7140 ND 9345 ND NECHN 13 Chinese 11735 238 13650 238 SEAs 13 English 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 13 English 9335 28 11710 28 NAm 13 Korean (PBS) 9325 325 12015 325 Eu 14 French 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 14 French 9335 28 11710 28 NAm 14 Korean (KCBS) 11735 238 13650 238 SEAs 14 Russian 9325 325 12015 325 Eu 15 Arabic 9990 296 11545 296 ME, NAf 15 English 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 15 English 9335 28 11710 28 NAm 15 Russian 9325 325 12015 325 Eu 16 German 9325 325 12015 325 WEu 16 English 9990 296 11545 296 ME, NAf 16 French 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 16 French 9335 28 11710 28 NAm 17 Arabic 9990 296 11545 296 ME, NAf 17 Korean (KCBS) 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 17 Korean (KCBS) 9335 28 11710 28 NAm 17 Russian 9325 325 12015 325 Eu 18 German 9325 325 12015 325 WEu 18 English 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 18 French 7100 271 11910 271 SAf 18 French 9975 296 11535 296 ME, NAf 19 German 9325 325 12015 325 WEu 19 English 9975 296 11535 296 ME, NAf 19 English 7100 271 11910 271 SAf 19 Spanish 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 20 French 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 20 Korean (KCBS) 9975 296 11535 296 ME, NAf 20 Korean (KCBS) 7100 271 11910 271 SAf 20 Korean (KCBS) 9325 325 12015 325 WEu 21 Chinese 7180 ND 9345 ND NECHN 21 Chinese 9975 271 11535 271 CHN 21 English 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 21 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 9650 109 11865 109 J 22 Chinese 7180 ND 9345 ND NECHN 22 Chinese 9975 271 11535 271 CHN 22 Spanish 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 22 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 9650 109 11865 109 J 23 Japanese 621 ND 3250 ND 9650 109 11865 109 J 23 Korean (KCBS) 7180 ND 9345 ND NECHN 23 Korean (KCBS) 13760 325 15245 325 WEu 23 Korean (KCBS) 9975 271 11535 271 CHN (via Arnulf Piontek, Germany, via wwdxc BC-DX May 4 via DXLD) Besides ND there are only six azimuths involved; Great Circles checked on my NGS globe with geometer. Note that the `CAm` beam misses CAm; however by that distance it will be very spread out (and weak); and any slews are not indicated. For a long time, P`yongyang did not admit to broadcasting to NAm per se, but that 28 degree beam slices right thru the middle of the continent. Perhaps something similar is set up for the DPRK`s nuclear missiles. 28 for FE, N & CAm [Magadan-ANWR-Brandon-St Louis-Habana-Bogotá] 109 for Japan 238 for SE Asia 271 for China, S Africa 296 for ME/N Africa 325 for Europe [Chita-Berezovo-Tallinn-Hamburg-Paris-Lisboa-Práia- Recife-Rio de Janeiro] (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) VOK now on EVEN frequencies! Checked all VOK channels in past days. I can state that the station has OVERCOME now the serious main power problem, usually happens during Korean winter season. Voltage drops down then, which forces the transmitters to operate at slight odd frequencies on reduced power. Power tolerance of the Swiss made Brown Boverie Cie transmitters seem very wide. All VOK transmissions are now on even x.00 frequency, much improved against main power suffer in winter season. Newly selected frequencies - mostly in-band - suffer much from co-channel QRM here in central Europe: 15245 French 1600, by DW Bosnian from Sines-POR, 250 kW powerhouse. 13760 French 1600, by CRI Kashi English, 500 kW powerhouse. 12015 German 1600, by RMI / DTK Juelich, "Radio Minivan" to Maldives. (Jeff White - R Miami International brokered). 9990 English 1600, by R Cairo Abis-EGY, in Albanian, latter produces 100 Hertz off buzz tone on 9990.10 kHz. 73 wb (Wolfgang Büschel, May 6, dxldyg via DXLD) What about 6070v? (gh) ** NETHERLANDS ANTILLES. Do you hear splatter +/-110 kHz from 9735 kHz? Strong splatter from DW program relayed via RN Bonaire on 9735 now heard 5 days consecutively. I hear it at and around 9845 and 9625, i.e., +/-110 kHz. Pretty sure it's not caused by receivers (DX-394) because: a) Cannot imagine what mechanism would cause symmetrical intermod product like this; b) Splatter is attenuated proportional to signal by inserting the 20 dB pad so does not behave as an overload would; c) Splatter is unintelligible, has no carrier and does not appear to have spectral distribution conforming to a sideband so does not look like an internal intermod product or leakage through IF filters; d) I don't observe this problem with other strong stations in the same band. To be sure, I need confirmation that someone else hears it. The transmission schedule is 0200-0600 UT to North America and you probably need to receive 9735 at needle pinning signal strength to hear the splatter. It helps to have two radios, one tuned to either splatter frequency, the other to 9735 so you can hear the synchronisation between the splatter and the program. DXing transmitter faults - now there's a new wrinkle to SWL! (Tom Holden, VE3EMO, Toronto, May 6, ODXA via DXLD) Not new --- I do it all the time, tho I would rather not (gh) Sure!! Radio Netherlands Bonaire site has one of the old transmitters acting up for the past several days!!! Today I heard a similar problem on another band, and the signal was coming from the same source, so it is evident that they have a severe transmitter problem. Maybe someone can get in touch with the Radio Nederland engineering department and help them by alerting about the problem, as they may be losing very expensive transmitter components because of that problem. Anyone that has worked with high power short wave transmitters knows that when this kind of problem begins, if it is not dealt with immediately, it may result in extensive damages, including losing very expensive power output vacuum tubes!!! Hope that the message gets trough to the Netherlands or Bonaire ASAP !!! 73 and DX (Arnie Coro, Cuba, ibid.) Thanks, Arnie. I had posted this previously on rec.radio.shortwave but the only respondent who actually listened was in California and did not hear the splatter. When we determined that he was only getting S9+10dB, I surmised that the splatter signal was below other noise or interference. So I thought I would post where some fellow SWL's within a few hundred miles of my QTH might tune in as they would have propagation conditions similar to mine. I have sent messages to DW's general mailbox and to an engineer in RNW with whom I have had dialog about DRM from Bonaire. But I am wondering what the specs are for off frequency suppression for high power transmitters. Suppose 1 megaWatt radiated power. 50 dB suppression at +/-110 kHz sounds like a pretty good number. But that's still 10 watts. So they must have to be a lot better than that. Do you know? 73, (Tom VE3MEO, ibid.) Dear amigos: Specifications for the so called "non essential radiation" from transmitters have changed over the years. ITU has provided a guide to the levels that have been considered adequate: -60 dB ?? over full carrier output (and "forget" the gain of the antenna system); -50 dB?? Anyway, what is happening at the Bonaire Radio Netherlands relay site is obviously putting out a level of RF much higher than what's normally accepted, especially if you consider that the "splatter" is not a harmonic frequency. I remember years ago, with our old SNIEG Soviet built transmitters that we had a big problem with the 9505 kilohertz frequency's third harmonic, 28515 kHz to the great anger of radio amateurs, including myself. All attempts to take the level of that third harmonic to a level that it won`t be heard when the 10 meters amateur band was open during the peak years of the solar peak proved to be a failure, until yours truly applied a radical modification to the SNIEG. The problem was also complicated by the use of a phased array of two dipoles that offered a very nice and low standing wave ratio to the 28515 kiloHertz frequency!!! So called "squegging" or also excessive "splatter" is a totally different problem, and may be related to a condition at the grid of the final amplifier stage, that produces a susceptance equal to ZERO at frequencies that are not the one you are amplifying with the Class C stage --- and zero susceptance equals to the condition for oscillation at a certain frequency, so the output stage vacuum tube may be amplifying the "wanted" carrier frequency and at the same time it may be behaving as an oscillator at another frequency or frequencies. That dual condition may be produced only during modulation peaks, or when the antenna impedance changes due to an arc over, etc., etc. So, it`s quite a headache for the transmitter engineer, who may find a vacuum bypass capacitor with the glass cracked, so it does not work anymore as a bypass capacitor at all!!! Just to give you an idea of how difficult to deal with these type of problems are --- just moving the grounding point of a bypass capacitor a few centimeters may turn an otherwise stable output stage into a giant class C oscillator at any frequency!!! That's why it is so difficult to design, build and assemble at its final destination site a high power short wave transmitter that will work flawlessly from 5.9 to 22 or 26 megaHertz as required for international broadcasting!!! 73 and DX (Arnie Coro, CO2KK, Host of DXers Unlimited, ibid.) Please be assured that the staff at Bonaire have been advised of the problem. 73, (Andy Sennitt, May 6, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NIGERIA. NIGERIAN UNIONS THREATEN FURTHER STRIKES OVER MEDIA WORKERS' DEMANDS | Text of report by Radio Nigeria from Abuja on 6 May [Presenter] The general-secretary of the amalgamated union of public corporations, civil service, technical and recreational services employees, Comrade Sylvester Ejiofor, wants the federal government to reflect on the plight of workers affected by the non-payment of the monetized benefits. Comrade Ejiofor made the call yesterday at a news conference in Abuja. He said the three-day warning strike [by media workers] which ended at midnight [5 April] was to enable the government to ponder on whether the affected workers deserved the treatment being meted to them. Correspondent Adorer Okumkor [phonetic] has more on the story: [Okumkor] At a news conference attended by NUJ [Nigeria Union of Journalists] national president, national vice-president and general- secretary of Rattawu [Radio Television and Theatre and Arts Workers Union], Comrade Ejiofor explained that the monetization policy of government which had been extended to all civil servants had excluded the parastatals. Comrade Ejiofor said that leaders in the affected union will meet next week deliberate on the appropriate steps to ensure that employees in the parastatals working under more hazardous conditions benefit from the monetization policy. [Ejiofor] Those who have retired in all these sectors had lost out. Their counterparts in the [words indistinct] civil service gradually [words indistinct] those level had a similar benefits calculated with [words indistinct] skills. [Words instinct] the way between now and the December what you [words indistinct] what are the chances? [Okumkor] Comrade Ejiofor was not happy that government set up a committee on implementation after the 30 April deadline lapsed as if the entire concept was new. He thanked National Assembly for its intervention and noted with satisfaction the resolution of the senate which urged the federal government to ensure that impasse was resolved. In his remark national president of NUJ, Mr Smart Adeyemi, said that the non-payment of monetized benefits to workers was morally wrong and unacceptable. Mr Adeyemi stressed that the essence of the warning strike was to let the president know that people were suffering. [Adeyemi] We have resolved, and when I say we have resolved I mean all the stakeholders in [word indistinct] that are yet to benefit that there is no going back. government must pay us all our entitlements under [word indistinct]. [Okumkor] He expressed the hope that the matter will be resolved amicably, but, however, warned that otherwise the next step of action which will include other influence groups will be total and indefinite. This has been Adorer Okumkor in Abuja. Source: Radio Nigeria-Abuja in English 0600 gmt 6 May 05 (via BBCM via DXLD) ** PAPUA NEW GUINEA. PAPUA NEW GUINEA CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING NETWORK Wantok Radio Light Progress Report April 29, 2005 [includes illustrations, captions originally in italics; see original at]: http://missionaryradio.info/Partnership newsletter 4-2005.doc {yes, there are spaces in the URL as displayed, but I got to it} Dear Radio Missions Partner, It has been several months since I last provided an update on the Papua New Guinea radio project. We have been working aggressively with our team in PNG and the wonderful engineers at the HCJB Engineering Center in Elkhart, Indiana. The ``Mother`` Station The flagship station has been on the air for over 3 years, broadcasting the new life that is available in Christ. It continues to be the most highly listened to radio station in the capital city, Port Moresby. In a recent ``man on the street`` survey conducted by a demographics expert from the University of Papua New Guinea nearly 80% of the 400,000 population of Port Moresby claims ``Wantok Radio Light`` as their most listened to radio station. That`s not a typo! Nearly 80%! This study is available in its entirety at our web site http://www.missionaryradio.info [Viz.: http://www.missionaryradio.info/PNG Survey Results.doc – barely acknowledges existence of another ``Christian`` outlet which beat them onto SW, Catholic Radio Network --- gh] When we put that first radio station on the air we planned for it to become the parent station for the entire network nationwide. After several ``slow downs and step backs`` things are moving quickly! The Shortwave Station Last scheduled for this past September, the installation of the Shortwave station was delayed again due to government red-tape. God finally broke through that red tape and all systems are go! The engineers from the HCJB Engineering Center are leaving in several days to finalize the installation process. They will be in PNG most of the month of May. This ``tropical band`` shortwave station will re-broadcast the audio from the Port Moresby FM station and will cover the nation! Unlike Americans, the people of Papua New Guinea are very accustomed to listening to shortwave. That type of radio has been used extensively by the government of PNG and many people own a shortwave radio. In fact, often their vehicles will have all three radio bands: AM, FM and Shortwave! Two used heavy gauge steel shipping containers have been re- conditioned, weatherized and air-conditioned to house the Shortwave transmitter, back-up electrical generator, and guard house! The containers were refurbished in town at one of our board member`s restaurants, then moved to the Shortwave antenna site. On site and ready for the final installation near Port Moresby! Ready for the transmitter! Roofed and fenced! Even though it took us many more months than anticipated to secure all the government zoning ``permissions``, this piece of land, near the Port Moresby international airport, will be used of God to ``fly`` the good news to a nation of over 5 million! The government logging industry donated six very large 60 foot ``telephone poles`` to be cut, treated, and shipped from the Highlands. They will be used to hold up the special antenna. Our team hand dug six holes, 10 feet deep and six feet wide!! Could I be this happy to dig so deep in 100+ degree heat? A big international ``thumbs up`` for Christian radio for Papua New Guinea! The FM Repeaters Equipment has also been shipped to install the next 4 FM repeater stations. Joe Emert and Doug Doran, from WMVV in Griffin, GA, will fly to PNG May 26 to join HCJB engineer Dave Olson as they install these 4 additional stations in the Highlands. These stations will all broadcast at the same frequency of 93.9 FM, the same frequency of our flag-ship station in Port Moresby. The government told us we could use the 93.9 FM frequency nationwide for each of the repeaters!! This is not possible in many other countries and will make it so much easier for the listeners to find each station as they travel or tell their friends to listen. These four history- making FM repeater stations will be installed on a schedule determined by our local team and our engineers. Lae, Capital city of the Morobe Province and ``sister station`` to Radio Station WTLR – State College, PA. Thanks Garry Sutley at WTLR!! Goroka, Capital city of the Eastern Highlands Province and ``sister station`` to KXEI and Your Network of Praise`` in Havre, Montana. Thanks Ed Matter at KXEI!! Rabaul, Capital city of the East New Britain Province. Wagume, Between Ialibu and Kauapena near Mt. Hagen in the Highlands Thanks to a special three year matching gift of $24,000 per year from a very special couple, we will be able to deliver the audio signal to the FM repeaters via satellite. Yes, satellite in PNG! We will lease satellite space (bandwidth) from the local television network serving the country. They are headquartered in Port Moresby and offered us the opportunity to ``piggyback`` on their satellite uplink, making it possible for us to downlink anywhere in the country. The television company requires $4,000 per month to uplink the signal. This would include the uplink equipment, use of their tower, dish, electricity, transmitter building, security, etc. at each of their downlink sites across the country. It`s actually quite a good arrangement! Following these four FM repeaters, the next few to be installed will be this Fall at Ukarumpa and Mendi. And, there is a possibility that they could be installed sooner. The funds have been raised for these two additional locations but HCJB wants to insure that all is prepared and in order before they are installed. June 11 --- The Celebration and Dedication! Following the installation of the Shortwave station, and the first four FM repeater stations, a maximum sized crowd is expected on June 11! Just three years and five months, to the day, after the first Christian radio station began broadcasting in Port Moresby, the nationwide network will be launched! A National Planning Committee has been working for months on the plans for a dedication and launching event in the Highlands. Over 5,000 people are expected to turn-out for this first nationwide Christian radio broadcast from Kaupena, near Mt. Hagen. Over 50 years ago, pioneer missionary and missionary broadcaster, G.T. Bustin (founder of 4VEH in Haiti) founded a mission work at this same site. His daughter, Lanita Bustin, worked and died at this mission location, after giving her life to the people of Papua New Guinea. She was lovingly buried at this site, which will now give birth to a nationwide Christian broadcasting network! Her brother and long-time missionary to PNG, Gerald Bustin, will attend the service and represent EBM International, one of the lead-partners in the establishment of Wantok Radio Light. He serves on the board of the PNG Christian Broadcasting Network, along with Joe Emert and a number of Papua New Guineans. Finally, Help Is On The Way! Thanks to a special arrangement with HCJB World Radio, Dave and Patti Olson have arrived in PNG as our engineering ``Missionaries On Loan``! Dave and Patti came almost directly from Quito, Ecuador to begin their two year tour of duty in PNG. Already, they have proven themselves extra-valuable to the work. Both are experienced broadcasters, Ham operators, and Dave is a Professional Engineer (PE). Thank you Dave and Patti Olson! Feel free to check out their web site at http://www.heart-to-serve.com Also, we are so pleased that Alan and Sarah Good will be departing in June from the HCJB Engineering Center in Elkhart, Indiana to serve two years in PNG. Alan`s computer savvy and engineering experience will be a tremendous asset. Sarah has already wiggled her way into the hearts of the PNG people on previous trips! Alan was on our original team when we installed the first radio station over three years ago. Their dedication and friendship have been a real encouragement. Sign up for The Good Report by writing to Sarah at sgood @ hcjbeng.org What a tremendous blessing our partnership with HCJB has been. I have never seen so much ``brain power`` dedicated to the work of God and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Thank you HCJB and the Engineering Center for your dedicated service and commitment. Rush Limbaugh! Move over! These folks also have ``talent on loan from God!`` But wait! There`s more! Stay tuned! Doug and I will be sharing ``live updates`` via e-mail with you from PNG during our trip. In the meantime, check out the new web site of Wantok Radio Light at http://www.wantokradio.net Joseph C. Emert, President, Life Radio Ministries, Inc., Radio Station WMVV, 100 S Hill Street, Suite 100, Griffin, GA 30224 (770) 229-2020 jemert @ wmvv.com http://www.MissionaryRadio.info Life Radio Ministries is an official radio-planting partner with HCJB World Radio (via DXLD) WTFK? This has repeatedly been reported previously, but nowhere in these pages, as 7120 kHz, but that is definitely NOT a ``tropical`` band as mentioned above!! Wantok Radio Light, April 29 progress report on installing SW system, including 8 poles for some unspecified kind of antenna, with lots of illustrations: http://www.missionaryradio.info/9Mile%20Prep%20Report.pdf (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** RUSSIA. Scripts for Voz de Rusia ``Frecuencia RM`` DX programs are here; sometimes including some SW DX news: http://www.vor.ru/Spanish/Frecuencia/frec_RM.html (via Dino Bloisse, condiglist via DXLD) ** SINGAPORE. WEB LOG SHUTS DOWN AFTER GOVERNMENT THREAT OF LEGAL ACTION | Text of press release by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on 5 May New York, 5 May: The threat of legal action has prompted Singaporean blogger Jiahao Chen to shut down his site and post an apology for comments criticizing a government agency and its chairman. The Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ] said today it is alarmed that the threat of defamation lawsuits is being used to inhibit criticism of the government in cyberspace, much as it has in Singapore's traditional media. A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) acknowledged that it threatened to lodge a defamation suit against Chen, Channel NewsAsia reported yesterday. Chen, who is currently pursuing graduate studies in the United States, was formerly a scholarship student through the agency. Under the pseudonym Acid Flask, he posted comments on his web log criticizing the agency's policies, according to other internet news sources. On 26 April, Chen shut down his site and posted a statement that "the price of maintaining the content... [ellipses as published] has become too high for the author to afford." He apologized to A*Star and to its chairman, Philip Yeo, "for having hosted or made remarks which Mr. Yeo felt were defamatory to him and the agency that he leads," and promised not to mention the chairman or the agency by name on the web site. Government agencies and officials in Singapore have often lodged civil and criminal defamation complaints - which can bring large fines and jail time - against traditional media outlets that criticize them by name. The London-based Economist magazine paid 230,000 US dollars in damages to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father last year after noting a "whiff of nepotism" in the appointment of the prime minister's wife as chief of a government investment company. Bloggers who criticize Singapore's political or social policy often do so anonymously. Following the threat of legal action against Chen, lawyer Gilbert Koh shut down his web log. Koh wrote that he had not received any threat of legal action, but that he could not risk a defamation suit by writing under his real name. In his last posting, he offered tips to other bloggers to avoid defamation complaints by remaining anonymous, refraining from naming officials or agencies in their criticism, and removing remarks posted by others that might be construed as defamatory. "Defamation suits are used as a club by the government of Singapore to silence critical thinking and reporting in the media," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "We are troubled that the government has raised the specter of costly legal action to chill commentary on the internet." Source: Committee to Protect Journalists press release, New York, in English 5 May 05 (via BBCM via DXLD) ** SYRIA. ANALYSIS: SYRIAN MEDIA SLOW TO OPEN UP | Text of editorial analysis by Amani Soliman of BBC Monitoring Media Services on 6 May 2005 The media in Syria have experienced only minor changes since the Ba'th Party came to power in 1963. In 2000, after Bashar al-Asad became president following the death of his father Hafiz al-Asad, a brief period of increased press and political freedom ensued. But efforts to consolidate reform stalled. A crackdown began in early 2001, and during the following year the government jailed several pro-democracy activists. The media sector in Syria is now strictly controlled, with most publications and media outlets owned by the state. In the face of growing international political pressure on Syria to open up to the rest of the world, there are cautious steps in that direction. The Syrian government hoped to change its image in the eyes of the rest of the world with the decision by the Regional Command of the ruling Ba'th Party to issue a licence to the "Syrian Public Relations Association" to become the first private undertaking whose goal is to help "create a Syrian image" at home and abroad. Syria came 155th in the annual Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) worldwide index of press freedom announced in October 2004. President Bashar al-Asad has been put on the organization's list of 32 "predators of press freedom" around the world. Media centre in London In January 2005, Syria opened a media centre in London. Yahya al- Aridi, head of the centre, noted that its objective was to "present the Syrian message to the British media and other international and Arab media in the British arena". In an interview with the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah said: "The reason for choosing London is the importance of the British capital in international politics and in the media as well. Here, there is a large assembly of Arab journalists and a large number of Arab communities. The Syrian Media Centre in London is the first of its kind, but it will not be the only one. We hope to be able to open other centres in important world capitals like London." Asked about the main issue on which the Syrian media will focus abroad, Dakhlallah replied: "Improving the image of the Arabs in general and Syria in particular among the British public and explaining the justice of the Arab cause." Opening up Other efforts have included steps to open bureaus for the Syrian News Agency, SANA, in Moscow, Washington and Brussels after studying "the positive and negative aspects of the Media Centre in London". These offices will launch "public relations campaigns, away from the Syrian embassies and the official establishment". The Public Relations and Foreign Media Department at the Information Ministry, Dr Nizar Mayhub and 10 others submitted an application to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour for a licence to establish the Syrian Public Relations Association. The objectives of the association include "adopting and encouraging research, studies and activities that help in promoting and applying the concept of public relations". Steps to support private activity include the Social Affairs and Labour Ministry issuing a licence to the Press Correspondents Association in Syria to facilitate the work of foreign organizations to carry out local civil projects. First private radio In 2002 the government set out conditions for licensing private, commercial FM radio stations. But it ruled that the stations could not broadcast news or political content. In May 2003 the government gave initial approval to license four private commercial FM radio stations. At the end of January 2005 the first private radio station, Al-Madina FM, launched test transmissions in the city of Aleppo, in the north of Syria. The official launch took place at the start of March 2005, and eventually the station plans to cover all of Syria's governorates with live 24-hour transmissions. The station will also transmit via satellite to the rest of the world, as well as through its web site. Al-Madina FM does not broadcast news; its output includes a mix of entertainment, cultural and health programmes. The station produce its own programmes and commercials "using modern technology and trained Syrian resources through its five studios". New non-Ba'thist Head of Syrian TV Journalist Diyana Jabbur, who is not a member of the ruling Ba'th Party in Syria, was appointed director of state-run Syrian Television in April 2005. According to Jabbur, this post had usually been assigned to Ba'thists. Media corporations merge Syria has a restrictive law on printed media. However, the Syrian government has endorsed draft legislation to merge the Tishrin, Al- Wihdah and Syrian Arab publishing and distribution corporations into a single entity, the Ugarit Press, Printing, Publishing and Distribution Corporation. (Ugarit is the name of an ancient capital in Syria.) The new corporation, which reports to the information minister, is tasked with issuing various newspapers, magazines and periodicals. It will also carry out printing work for both the public and private sectors, conduct research and strategic studies and distribute local, Arab and foreign newspapers and magazines inside Syria and abroad. Opposition radio abroad Radio Free Syria, launched in June 2004, is a media outlet for the Syrian opposition abroad which is operated by the US-based opposition Reform Party of Syria (RPS). The station's operators have invited opposition movements in Syria to participate in the radio's programmes. In a statement sent to the Elaph web site, Ali al-Haj Husayn, the official spokesman of the RPS, said: "We are in contact with several political movements, civic institutions and cultural organizations belonging to Syrian nationalities and ethnic groups. They will be able to air their special programmes on Radio Free Syria gratis." Al-Haj Husayn added: "The door to participation is open to independents, human rights activists and civic society activists of all sectors of Syrian society, in the homeland and abroad". Media freedom - "give and take" Despite these efforts, however, in the eyes of the world, Syria is still regarded as one of the most restrictive regimes in the world. The RSF 2005 annual report's section on Syria, published on 3 May 2005 (but compiled in December 2004), states: "Diplomatically-isolated Syria keeps tight control of all news. In 2004, the authorities gave some ground and took some back, alternating harsh repression with a few slight signs of opening up. Dissidents have been encouraged by the changes in neighbouring Iraq and are increasingly pressing for political liberalization. "It was risky interpreting the significance of the October [2004] appointment of Mahdi Dakhlallah, former editor of the official Ba'th Party paper Al-Ba'th, as information minister. Very little changed in the media scene during the year... "The print media, as well as radio and TV (which is a state monopoly), is obliged to echo the government line. A law passed in early 2002 allowed the setting up of private radio stations, but they were only authorized to broadcast music and advertising. The only critical newspaper, Al-Dumari, launched in February 2001, was forced to close two years later after constant bureaucratic harassment. Resident foreign reporters in Syria are also under surveillance and have great difficulty getting their annual accreditation renewed. The pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera has never been allowed to open a permanent office. Many internet web sites are censored in Syria."... "Syrians have little confidence in their own media and are keen fans of satellite TV news stations such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation) and the US station Al-Hurra to find out what is happening in their own country..." US-funded broadcasters' correspondents banned In 2005, according to the Al-Jazeera English web site, Syria banned the correspondent of US-funded Arabic-language television Al-Hurra and Radio Sawa for lacking accreditation. "Ammar Musara reportedly had accreditation," a Syrian human rights lawyer said, "but it was withdrawn because of his coverage of an opposition sit-in in Damascus." In response, a Syrian Information Ministry official said on 15 March 2005: "In Syria, we open the doors to the media, particular foreigners, to allow them to transmit a real image of what is happening in the country. We have no hostility towards the Al-Hurra chain or Radio Sawa, but their correspondent does not have the proper accreditation." Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni said Musara's coverage of an opposition demonstration on 10 March in front of the capital's Palace of Justice to call for the scrapping of Syria's emergency law and of special courts had irked the authorities. Al-Hurra was launched in 2003 to improve the image of the United States in the Middle East and to counter the influence of the Arabic satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Radio Sawa began broadcasting in 2002. Both are funded by the US Congress. Source: BBC Monitoring research 6 May 05 (via DXLD) ** U S A. Re VOA Talk to America: I think TTA is repeated at 0900-1000 -- and I think that means Monday morning for the Friday TTA. Frequencies per voanews.com (can't vouch for accuracy) are 9705, 15205, 17745 [sites would be Greece, Greece, Sri Lanka --- gh] I was going to play excerpts of Washington talk radio, conservative and liberal, but we had too many calls and e-mails today. RealAudio of the [May 6 with HCJB guests] show should be available soon at... http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/TTA-Archive-Page.cfm 73 (Kim Elliott, DC, May 6, DX LISTENING DIGEST) Ya at 2045 UT Fri. Starts with discussion of Smith-Mundt Act, and HCJB from 11 minutes into the file. See ECUADOR (gh) ** U S A. GOOD, GRAY NPR --- by Scott Sherman, The Nation In January 2002 National Public Radio launched The Tavis Smiley Show, a daily one-hour magazine program featuring a high-velocity mixture of commentary, reporting and analysis, and hosted by one of the most energetic and ambitious young media personalities in the country. The first new daily program produced at NPR in a generation, The Tavis Smiley Show was directed at an audience poorly served by public radio: African-Americans. According to NPR, it did quite well in terms of ratings. But the honeymoon didn't last: Smiley felt that NPR was not doing enough to promote his program among nonwhite listeners, and his contract negotiations with the network collapsed in late 2004, after which he went on the offensive against NPR. "It is ironic," he informed Time, "that a Republican president has an administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media- elite network." Smiley directed his firepower at an organization that has accomplished a great deal in recent years. Thanks in part to NPR's comprehensive foreign coverage, its listenership has soared since 9/11: In the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington, NPR gained (and has kept) nearly 4 million new listeners, and the network's various programs now reach 23 million listeners a week on more than 780 member stations. Morning Edition is now the most listened-to morning show in the country. As the listenership grew, so did the philanthropic largesse: In November 2003 NPR received a stunning $236 million bequest from the estate of Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc. But Smiley ruined the party both by calling attention to the shortcomings of an institution that emerged from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and by underlining the gap between NPR's rhetoric -- in this case, about racial inclusion -- and reality. The entity that calls itself National Public Radio, he reminded us, is not serving the entire public. "You'd be amazed," he told Salon, "at the number of people of color who do not know what NPR is." In its journalism and its financial structure, NPR has indeed evolved into a somewhat different entity from what its founders envisioned. On May 3, 1971, it went on the air with the first broadcast of All Things Considered. The program began with a kaleidoscopic account of a major antiwar rally in Washington, DC, at which more than 6,000 people were arrested. "Excuse me," NPR's reporter asked a police sergeant attempting to quell the protests, "Is that a technique? Where the men actually try to drive the motorcycles right into the demonstrators?" Three decades later, rough-edged, in-your-face reportage has largely been supplanted by conventional punditry from the likes of Cokie Roberts, Daniel Schorr and David Brooks, and by consciously mainstream news reporting by correspondents whose voices are often indistinguishable from one another. To some extent, financial and political pressures help to explain NPR's turn toward mainstream respectability and high-minded professionalism: NPR's founders had every expectation that public funds would cover the budget, but Republican hostility to public broadcasting thwarted those early hopes and dreams. Three decades after its creation, NPR now draws a significant portion of its funding from corporations such as Wal-Mart, Sodexho and Archer Daniels Midland. Likewise, NPR had sound journalistic reasons for turning away from its edgy, countercultural roots. Over the past decade, as media conglomerates dumped public-affairs programming in favor of "infotainment" and tabloid trash, NPR recognized the void and moved to fill it with high-quality news reporting. That news-oriented model, by drawing in listeners hungry for substantial coverage of politics and public affairs, has enabled NPR to thrive: Today, it continues to add correspondents and bureaus at a time when most other major news organizations are trimming them. A fair-minded evaluation must conclude that if NPR has turned its back on some of the values enshrined in its original mission statement, it has also, in other ways and despite enormous political pressure from its detractors, remained true to them as well. But a price was paid on the road to respectability. With growth and stability has come stodginess, predictability and excessive caution. NPR was founded as an antidote to the mainstream media. Its founders had a unique journalistic and cultural vision that contrasted sharply with the values of establishment publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post. As NPR began its transformation into a middle-of-the-road, "hard news" entity in the mid-1970s, some of the founders warned that the experiment could end badly, with NPR sounding like an aural equivalent of The Congressional Record. That didn't happen, but today's NPR does, at times, seem quite empty and soulless, very much like the eminent daily newspapers its executives venerate. Some NPR veterans are acutely aware of what has been lost since NPR's birth in 1971. "Over the years, we've become much more sober," says Susan Stamberg, who was an early co-host of All Things Considered, and who remains a lively and mischievous presence at NPR today. "We've become the good, gray Times. They've put color on their front page" -- Stamberg pauses for her trademark cackle -- "but we're upholding the gray. We're not nearly as quirky as we used to be. And I miss it." NPR came into existence almost accidentally. The 1967 legislation that gave birth to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was intended solely for public television, but a small group of 1950s-era professionals from the world of educational radio managed to slip the phrase "and radio" into the legislation. In doing so, they displeased the power brokers in the new universe of public broadcasting and contributed to their own exclusion from the new public radio entity, which fell into the hands of a younger generation of educational radio managers, a few of whom had direct ties to the 1960s counterculture. Chief among them was Bill Siemering, who ran WBFO at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Under Siemering, WBFO provided coverage of the campus antiwar movement and the student strikes that were broken up by the police. But Siemering was interested in the world beyond the university: He set up a storefront studio in Buffalo's ghetto and encouraged local residents to learn the art of radio. He viewed public radio as a grassroots, bottom-up, somewhat anarchistic phenomenon. It was Siemering who wrote NPR's original mission statement in 1970, which called for "some hard news, but the primary emphasis would be on interpretation, investigative reporting on public affairs, the world of ideas and the arts." NPR's mission statement was not a radical document but a liberal and populist one. And the founders had every desire to serve an alternative audience: "urban areas with sizeable nonwhite audiences," "student groups studying ecology," "groups with distinct lifestyles and interests not now served by electronic media." Siemering's document was something of a blueprint for NPR in its first decade, but as the years went by, management lost interest in it. Not long ago, outside archivists requested the document from NPR headquarters, but no copy could be found. The first broadcast of All Things Considered led with the segment about the protest rally, followed by a zesty array of stories: a roundtable discussion with reporters from the Christian Science Monitor, which seguéd into a reading of two antiwar poems from the era of World War I; a dispatch from a barber shop in Iowa whose proprietor was reeling from lost income as more men chose to wear their hair long; a portrait of a nurse turned heroin addict; and, finally, a discussion between Allen Ginsberg and his father, Louis, about the merits and shortcomings of drug abuse. That quirky mix more or less characterized NPR through the mid-1970s, when the arrival of president Frank Mankiewicz laid the groundwork for NPR's transformation into something much closer to a "hard news" organization. Mankiewicz brought financial resources and visibility to NPR, but he also brought conventional journalistic practices -- for example, editors. Until 1975 or so, reporters at NPR had worked on their own, with minimal supervision and editorial guidance. Of the changes ushered in by Mankiewicz, Jack Mitchell, in his new book, Listener Supported, writes, "Gone was the notion, so central to the thinking of the first NPR board, of public radio as the people's instrument. The vox populi became the voice of the best professionals." Some of those professionals -- Nina Totenberg, Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer -- had close ties to the Washington establishment. They were the sort of "coolly objective journalists" Siemering and his colleagues had hoped would steer clear of NPR. But Wertheimer & Co. were more or less in control by the time NPR collapsed financially in 1983. That crisis resulted from financial incompetence and cuts in funding for public broadcasting, which hit public radio especially hard. Rescue came in the form of a substantial loan from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and from a vigorous fundraising drive by NPR's member stations. (Owing to the decentralized nature of public radio in the United States, the stations have a major say in how NPR does business. NPR itself owns no stations; it merely produces and distributes programming for the member stations. Some, like WNYC in New York and WBEZ in Chicago, produce programming that is regarded by many as often superior to NPR's.) Out of the crisis arose a new NPR -- leaner, better managed, more news-oriented, more enamored of audience research and more eager to demonstrate to the world that it was no longer an alternative or countercultural institution. Indeed, NPR executives had reason to be concerned about the network's image in Washington. Richard Nixon loathed public broadcasting, and nominated the ultraconservative industrialist Joseph Coors to the CPB board. Financially, public radio did well in the Ford and Carter years, but the arrival of Ronald Reagan led, in 1983, to a 20 percent reduction in the federal appropriation for public broadcasting. By the mid-1980s, NPR, still on shaky financial footing, was under pressure from political actors like the Heritage Foundation and The New Republic, which published a much-discussed attack on the network in 1986 by Fred Barnes, wherein he claimed that NPR had an inherent bias against conservatives and a reflexive sympathy for left-wing movements in Central America. Writing in Mother Jones in 1987, Laurence Zuckerman chronicled a series of newsroom conflicts over US intervention in Grenada and Nicaragua, conflicts that helped to determine the network's overall political direction in the Reagan era. At one point State Department officials complained that an All Things Considered segment was too critical of the US-backed contra rebels. Then-news director Robert Siegel, according to Mother Jones, invited those officials to lunch and concluded that the piece was indeed problematic. Gary Covino, who produced the controversial segment, told Mother Jones, "The way [Siegel] handled this story sent the message spoken and unspoken that this was not the kind of stuff NPR should be doing.... Many people picked it up very quickly and began censoring themselves." NPR's coverage of the 1991 Gulf War marked the network's arrival into the media big leagues. With a million dollars from CPB and the member stations, NPR for the first time sent a team of its own correspondents to cover a war from the field. In the 1990s, as profit-hungry television and radio stations retreated from in-depth reporting on politics and public affairs, NPR endeavored to take over that role. It did so with considerable integrity and professionalism. Awards were racked up; new foreign and domestic bureaus were created. Educated listeners gravitated toward NPR in times of political ferment and, with few options available to them for serious news, stayed for the long haul. By the mid-1990s, NPR was finally in possession of the professional recognition it had long desired. "NPR does a really rich mix of reporting and coverage of the United States," says Martin Turner, who heads the BBC's Washington office. "It's a pretty high standard." By and large, and with key exceptions, NPR's critics fall into three groups. There is little doubt that NPR is most concerned about the first, and most vocal, group: political conservatives. In 1994 Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans put public broadcasting on the chopping block, vowing to "zero it out" of the federal budget. The effort backfired, as viewers and listeners besieged Congress with calls and letters defending public radio and TV. Gingrich & Co. lost the battle to choke off public funds to NPR, but they probably emerged victorious in a larger quest: to anchor NPR in the political center. In a 1995 conversation with University of Maine professor Michael McCauley, who has written an authoritative new book, NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio, Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media admitted that he felt NPR aired less objectionable material in the 1990s than it did in the 1980s, when AIM first began to assail the network on ideological grounds. These days, Newt Gingrich himself is full of praise for NPR: "Either it is a lot less on the left," he remarked in 2003, "or I have mellowed." (NPR itself trumpets the Gingrich turnaround in its press packet as "an amusing fact.") The second camp of critics consists of people who object to the way in which NPR has ceded political space to the likes of Barnes, Irvine, Gingrich and Pat Buchanan (who once dubbed NPR "an upholstered little playpen of our Chablis-and-brie set"). These critics see NPR as too mainstream, too spineless and timid, too deferential to power. They point to a revolving door between the US government and NPR (president Kevin Klose, for example, was formerly the head of the International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Martí and TV Martí); they lament the narrow range of political opinion on NPR (no current NPR commentator, they note, has the progressive credentials of the late Michael Harrington, who had a regular slot on NPR in the 1980s); and they point to NPR's campaign against low-power radio stations [see Rick Karr]. One does sense a creeping caution and conservatism at NPR over the past decade. In 1994 it engaged death-row inmate (and former WHYY radio reporter) Mumia Abu-Jamal to do a series of brief commentaries on prison life and the death penalty but soon reversed itself in the wake of a vigorous campaign from Senator Bob Dôle and Philadelphia's Fraternal Order of Police ("A sterling parable for the new, mature NPR" was James Ledbetter's ironic description of the Abu-Jamal fiasco in his book Made Possible By...). In 1995 Andrei Codrescu, one of the few really pungent voices left on NPR, produced a commentary about Armageddon that drew 40,000 complaints from the Christian Coalition. To Codrescu's apparent dismay, NPR rushed to apologize for his segment, after which NPR executives informed Current, a trade newspaper, that they would step up their policing of the daily commentaries. In 2000 TV Guide and Current reported that NPR had allowed three officers from a specialized propaganda unit of the US Army based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to intern at its news programs over a nine-month period. At the time an NPR executive called the decision "a real goof." Since 9/11 NPR's ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, has devoted a number of his columns at npr.org to the network's coverage of the Bush Administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's perhaps too early for a definitive assessment of NPR's reporting on these subjects, but what's clear is that quite a few listeners are dissatisfied with the coverage of George W. Bush and his foreign policy. Consider a recent missive from Richard Steinman, a research scientist at Columbia University. On the weekend of March 19, 2005, Steinman turned on his radio, looking for coverage of the demonstrations that marked the second anniversary of the Iraq War. In a subsequent letter to Dvorkin, Steinman recounted NPR's programming choices that weekend: "a 'patriotic,' feel-good West Point piece; sports fans' feelings toward a baseball player (yes, steroids); more feel-good filler about an Iraqi-American painter and her use of color; Bantu Refugees Adjust to New Lives in America. Quote from the story: 'we give the government of America the high five'; Army Chefs Battle for Best-Dish Honors; a singing physics professor." NPR executives bristle at the implication that the programming is frivolous. "It is easy," says vice president of news and information Bruce Drake, "to carve out one small period or point of coverage and use it as a foundation for this kind of criticism -- but it wholly ignores the large body of work that NPR has done over the last two years." Drake has a point: Much of NPR's Iraq reportage has indeed been of high quality, and he has the awards (including a Peabody) to prove it. Yet listeners like Steinman are correct to ask searching questions about NPR and Iraq, especially since some of the network's luminaries have not been shy about expressing their own views on that subject. In October 2002 political correspondent Mara Liasson, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday, assailed two Democratic Congressmen for traveling to Iraq. "These guys are a disgrace," she said. "Look, everybody knows it's...Politics 101 that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the President of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know, resign." In the same vein, Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon -- who was an antiwar activist at the University of Chicago in the Vietnam era -- wrote a swaggering essay for the Wall Street Journal editorial page on October 11, 2001, titled "Even Pacifists Must Support This War," and, in a March 2003 speech in Seattle, he reportedly expressed support for the US invasion of Iraq. A third group of critics takes issue not so much with NPR's political orientation but with its monotonal sound quality; its often bland and homogeneous programming; its lack of aural experimentation; and its diminished cultural coverage -- which, they note, was an integral part of NPR's founding mission. These critics, many of whom work in the world of public radio, lament that on the road to becoming a "primary news provider" NPR has neglected its original mission to provide a wide array of top-notch, eclectic cultural programming. (They note, as evidence of NPR's bias against innovative, artistic fare, that the network turned down two of public radio's most popular programs -- Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion and Ira Glass's This American Life, both of which found a home at rival distributors.) "The notion that we are turning away from culture is not correct," says Klose, who cites programs like Performance Today, Jazz Profiles and a recent eight-part series on the state of regional theater as evidence of NPR's cultural vitality. Klose is right: Valuable cultural fare continues to flow from NPR. But the numbers show that news is clearly seen as more important: In 2002 NPR spent $41 million on news and information, and only $7 million on cultural and entertainment programming. "The NPR drone" is how some staffers describe the network's overall sound, and many NPR watchers concur with that description. "If you listen to a lot of NPR," Brian Montopoli averred in The Washington Monthly in 2003, "you realize how similar it all sounds: no matter who is talking, or what they are talking about." Writing in the New York Times in 1998, Greil Marcus took blistering aim at NPR's leading hosts and newscasters, and wondered why, year after year, their work imparts a sense of "boredom with the world." Klose takes issue with the notion that NPR is bland, detached and formulaic: "I think it's an urban myth," he says. "It's an armchair cavil that has no basis in fact." But at least one distinguished former NPR employee has a view closer to that of the critics. Two years ago Robert Krulwich, who many consider to be the network's finest correspondent from the late 1970s and early '80s, issued a blunt critique of NPR's programming -- and, by implication, its audience -- at a staff retreat. According to the notes of a staff member who was present at the talk, Krulwich made the following points: Politesse. NPR desires to be polite, to maintain dignity. It doesn't challenge its sources or interviewees. There is room for reporters to stiffen when they hear a lie and poke back. Scared of audience. The habits of your audience shouldn't be your habit. NPR writes too much for our expected listeners. We should disturb the audience occasionally. Tell them what they don't already know and what they don't want to hear. No joy. A mature organization grows accustomed to itself. NPR has lost the willingness to play. You don't hear much that makes you laugh or as many tears. Too much in the mind. NPR needs more people who scream, suffer; people who are playing. Might the Kroc money, by providing NPR with a solid financial cushion, pave the way for more quirky, spontaneous and risky programming? Says Susan Stamberg: "The Kroc money, actually, will probably reduce the quirk level even more, because with it we can pay for more and more sober reporters out in the field." One subject on which the critics agree is that NPR can do much more to reach nonwhite listeners. In the 1980s audience research data urged public radio stations to concentrate on a specific type of well-educated, self-motivated individual. According to Jack Mitchell's Listener Supported, that data boiled down to the following: "success for public radio meant having great appeal to a subset of the population and none at all to the vast majority of the population." This helps to explain why nine out of ten NPR listeners are white. And these facts form the backdrop to Tavis Smiley's dispute with NPR. (It has to be said that the reasons behind Smiley's divorce from NPR remain murky: On one side is his assertion that NPR wasn't doing enough to promote the show. But NPR, which rushed to create a new black-oriented show hosted by Ed Gordon, claims that Smiley insisted on a $3 million promotional budget for his show, when its entire advertising budget is less than $200,000.) In any case, some station managers saw Smiley's show as a vital bridge to nonwhite audiences, and they regret its disappearance from NPR's airwaves. One station manager in a major metropolitan market recalls a series of focus groups composed of African-American and Hispanic adults who had never before listened to public radio. He notes that they reacted indifferently to nearly all of the programming on his station -- except for Smiley's show, whose energy and verve fully captured their attention. "There is a belief out there that NPR has no interest in reaching African-Americans and Hispanics," says Maxie Jackson, program director of WETA in Washington, DC. "I don't believe that. I firmly believe that they would love to increase the audience of people of color for public radio programming. That is also true of Public Radio International and the other program suppliers. The problem lies in the fact that none of them have the research, the research budget, the marketing expertise and the communication strategy expertise to do that.... The biggest and fundamental issue at hand here is that none of these organizations have reached out to people of color in the past. None of them know how to do it." Critics who wish to see NPR move in a more progressive direction are likely to be disappointed. At the moment, NPR's center of gravity is in the middle of the spectrum. Twenty-eight percent of NPR listeners, according to an internal document, consider themselves either "very conservative" or "somewhat conservative." Thirty-two percent defined themselves as "somewhat liberal" or "very liberal." But 29 percent chose the category "middle of the road." Given this data, NPR executives will no doubt play it safe in the years to come. Indeed, the economic structure of public radio more or less guarantees a centrist editorial formula. Less than 2 percent of NPR's budget consists of funds from the taxpayer-funded CPB. (In the 1970s NPR received 90 percent of its budget from the CPB.) But the member stations, which in some sense "own" NPR, and on which NPR relies for much of its additional revenue, receive a hefty 12.7 percent of their budget from the CPB. To compensate for diminishing federal support, NPR has been forced to rely on corporations and foundations. In 2002, the last year for which data are easily accessible, NPR accepted $250,000 or more from each of the following corporate "underwriters": Procter & Gamble, Sodexho, Microsoft, Saab, Citibank and the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Wal-Mart became an underwriter in 2004. Both NPR and Wal-Mart refuse to disclose the dollar amount. A public radio system that is substantially dependent on corporations will not, in all likelihood, produce a new generation of I.F. Stones, Jessica Mitfords and Sy Hershes to investigate chicanery in corporate America. If it is relatively easy to discern NPR's (and public radio's) aversion to political risk-taking, it's somewhat more difficult to explain its resistance to freshening up its programming along the lines suggested by critics who crave innovative, sound-rich fare. NPR staffers interviewed for this article point a finger at NPR management in general and two sober executives in particular: Bruce Drake, the vice president of news and information, and Barbara Rehm, managing editor. Before coming to NPR, Drake worked at the New York Daily News for twenty-one years. Rehm is a ten-year veteran of the Daily News, after which she spent four years in the early 1990s at Voice of America. Staffers describe them as bureaucrats who possess a narrow political and cultural imagination. For years Drake has opposed the creation of an investigative unit, and NPR is currently without one. Last May NPR hired, as a second managing editor, the highly regarded editor of the Baltimore Sun, Bill Marimow, who was fired from the newspaper after he raised one too many complaints about the Tribune Company's inexorable quest for high quarterly profits at its Baltimore property. Marimow, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for stories about police brutality, has overseen the creation of a number of new beats and staff positions, and he is pushing his reporters to do more investigative reporting and hard-hitting journalism. His main accomplishment so far is an award-winning series by Daniel Zwerdling that documented brutality against immigrants at New Jersey detention facilities. But NPR sources anticipate future discord between Drake and Marimow. Regardless of what Marimow does, NPR's political reporting will undoubtedly remain relatively bland and cautious. But in a rapidly changing media landscape, it's not at all obvious that a play-it-safe editorial formula will enable NPR to prosper. The average listener is 50 years old and white. Down the road, will younger listeners embrace the polite reporting model that NPR currently adheres to? Possibly. But it's also possible that they will opt for tastier, more opinionated fare on the Internet or satellite radio, especially now that "podcasting," a way of posting audio content online, allows listeners to create their own radio menus. One way, perhaps, for NPR to confront the challenge is by re-examining the values of its original mission statement, which called for interpretation (in contrast to strict adherence to "hard news" reporting), artistic innovation and gutsy investigative reporting. That approach points toward a journalism that pokes back at lies with outrage and indignation, and programming that is pungent, offbeat and passionate -- qualities that NPR's competitors, Public Radio International and American Public Media, have brought to bear with outfits like the American RadioWorks documentary unit, and shows like Marketplace, This American Life, To the Point and The World (and as independent producers David Isay and Joe Richman have done on NPR itself). What might fresher programming sound like? Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, who is one of NPR's more incisive critics, points to an All Things Considered documentary by Noah Adams on the origins of the civil rights song "We Shall Overcome." "As he traced the roots of the song," Dvorkin explains, "and how it so powerfully affected people, the documentary went live to Spelman College in Atlanta, where the school choir performed it straight into All Things Considered on Martin Luther King's birthday.... It showed the true power of radio and NPR at its best." But change won't be easy, according to Bill Buzenberg, who was vice president of news and information at NPR from 1990 to 1997 and is now senior vice president of news at American Public Media. "NPR has a fear of doing kick-ass journalism at the highest level," he says. "They're not hungry enough." This article can be found on the web at: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050523&s=sherman Visit The Nation http://www.thenation.com/ Subscribe to The Nation: https://ssl.thenation.com/ (via David Goren, swprograms via DXLD) Couple comments: 1. The notion of political balance mentioned here may be misleading. While listenership may be roughly 1/3 each Conservative, Center, and Liberal, this does not match population demographics. When that statistic was first reported, a parallel statistic was reported on the US population demographics -- which are roughly 35% conservative, 45% center, and 15-20% liberal IIRC. So the political demographics of NPR listeners are more liberal than the nation as a whole. 2. I exchanged e-mails with Bill Buzenberg the other day over the APM "Think Global 2005" week of special public radio programs coming up mid-Month. Nice guy --- I had asked him if he knew why none of the TG2005 programming had been scheduled on CBC, RNW or the BBCWS -- even though these three international broadcasters had produced programming for the series. Good news is that, with NPR not the only game in town, other organizations can stake a claim to riskier programming. But will anybody listen? (Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA, ibid.) So what did he say? I had been wondering about this myself (Peter Bowen, ibid.) Bill said he wasn't aware of any scheduling of TG2005 programming on the BBC, RNW, or the CBC, but the broadcasters had full rights to the programming if they cared to use it. He felt that the programming was targeted to an American audience and might not be global enough in scope to be of interest to these 3. I sent a note to a BBC contact regarding the series but I have yet to hear anything back. I should zap a note to RNW but haven't yet (Rich Cuff, ibid.) I thought the article overall was a credible rendering of the history of NPR and public radio in general in the US and it offered important insight into the various philosophies vying for primacy over the course of the institution's history. Furthermore... IF one believes the polls and IF the definitions of these overused and --- to me --- increasingly less helpful generalizations are understood to be the same in both contexts (John Figliozzi, ibid.) No arguments with the overall value of the article. You are correct in your caveat regarding the application or misapplication of statistics. They were quoted together in the piece I'd heard, but that doesn't mean the survey instruments were correct (Rich Cuff, ibid.) ** U S A. WXEL SALE TO WNET NOT A DONE DEAL; DOES FAU HAVE A CHANCE? By Anthony Man http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-fwxel06may06,0,2821680.story?coll=sfla-business-front Legislative language mysteriously tucked into the state budget might allow Florida Atlantic University to muck up the pending sale of WXEL public television and radio. The stations' owner, Barry University, has an agreement to sell them to a partnership between the Community Broadcasting Foundation of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast and Educational Broadcasting Corp., owner of WNET-Ch. 13 in New York City and WLIW-Ch. 21 on Long Island. The transfer requires approval of the state Board of Education. Someone, however, added language to the state budget that reads: "In approving the transfer of any public broadcasting entity, the State Board of Education shall give priority consideration to in-state public postsecondary institutions." Of all the entities that expressed an interest in acquiring all or part of WXEL-Ch. 42 and WXEL 90.7 FM before a sale agreement was struck, Florida Atlantic University is the only one that fits those criteria. Inserting such language in the budget would require someone with knowledge of the legislative process to convince a senior legislator with influence to add the provision. No one was willing to claim ownership of the WXEL language on Thursday. "We'd need a forensic expert" to figure out who was responsible, said state Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton. State Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, is chairman of the Rules Committee and the man slated to become the next Senate president, making him one of the most powerful members of the Legislature. Pruitt said he wasn't the one who inserted the language in the new state budget. However, he's glad it's there. "I hope this deal falls through," he said. "I didn't go in and write it [the provision], but everybody in these buildings knows my position on this issue. I'm thrilled that it's there." FAU President Frank Brogan, a former lieutenant governor and state education commissioner with extensive Tallahassee know-how, said he had nothing to do with the language. He said in a phone interview he didn't learn about it until Thursday. "I have not seen the language. I didn't craft the language. I have not lobbied the language," he said. "The language is not ours." Thomas Barlow, FAU's lobbyist in the Capitol, said he hadn't seen the language as of Thursday morning. Brogan said the FAU community was "of course, disappointed" it wasn't selected by Barry to take over the stations, but had moved on. However, if the legislation opens another chance for FAU, Brogan said he'd seize it. Pruitt said FAU would be an ideal provider of public radio and television service in South Florida. "It's a natural fit for FAU. It's a public broadcast station," he said. "It takes FAU to the next level." Like Pruitt, Klein thinks FAU "has a very important part in the future of the radio and the TV station." He said the provision might "give a little hook for FAU to sit down and have a good conversation" with the buyer. Carmen DiRienzo, vice president and managing director of corporate affairs for WNET said she thought the legislative action was unusual, but didn't think it would affect the deal. "The selection process that Barry employed was incredibly careful, well-documented and well-reasoned," DiRienzo said, expressing confidence that the board of education would approve Barry's decision. (via Dino Bloise, Hollywood, FL, Sheldon Harvey, QC, DXLD) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PUBLICATIONS ++++++++++++ WRTH SUMMER SCHEDULES FILE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD WRTH is pleased to announce that a pdf file containing the summer 2005 schedules from nearly 250 International, Foreign Service, Clandestine and Target broadcasters is now available for download from our website at http://www.wrth.com The file contains 94 pages of schedules and frequency listings in the same format as WRTH and is just over 330k in size. You will need Adobe Acrobat 5 or later to open the file (a link to the Adobe website is provided on our site). Updates to this file will be posted on our website during the course of the Summer broadcasting season. We hope you find this file useful, both on its own and as a companion to the printed WRTH. Regards, Sean D. Gilbert G4UCJ/G4001SWL International Editor - WRTH (World Radio TV Handbook) E-Mail: sean.gilbert @ wrth.com Fax: +44 (0) 709 2332287 G4UCJ's Radio Website: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/g4ucj WRTH - THE Directory of Global Broadcasting WRTH2005 is now available - 688 pages (80 in full colour) visit http://www.wrth.com to order yours (Sean Gilbert, DX LISTENING DIGEST) RADIO EQUIPMENT FORUM +++++++++++++++++++++ SONY ICF2010/2001D CD ARCHIVE Dear Glenn, This year is the 21st Anniversary of Sony creating the amazing ICF2010/2001D radio which I suspect is owned and used by many readers of DXLD. I have been a keen user of this radio and some years back I published two booklets "Get the Best from your Sony ICF2010/2001D" and "Get Even more from..." Over the 21 years that the 2001D/2010 has been around, a huge amount of information has appeared in print & on the web. When I wrote "Get the Best from your Sony ICF2010/2001D" I collected lots of stuff. And over the years I've accumulated more material. Recently I archived my own files onto CD as a personal archive and I realised that I had material that was no longer available in print and which had vanished off the Internet! Over the years people have asked me if my two booklets were available electronically, but the answer at the time was always "no". Now however I included them on this archive CD. It then dawned on me that maybe other people would be interested in such a CD. I'm happy to reproduce it for anyone who wants it for their personal use and enjoyment - this is not a commercial enterprise. SONY ICF2010/2001D CD ARCHIVE ============================== The CD contains the following 1) Get The Best from Your Sony ICF2010/2001D 2) Get Even more from Your Sony ICF2010/2001D 3) Adverts (a selection promoting the 2010) 4) HotRodding (various items on how to modify/improve) 5) Miscellaneous -- Photo Gallery; including photos of different versions from different areas of the world 7) Repair Repair tips Parts; sources and spec sheets Repairers 8) Reviews Solo; Comparative; International (non-English) 9) Service Manuals 2 different Editions including high resolution colour images of circuit boards and circuitry 10) More Sony Stuff (Including User Guide) 11) Bibliography In total there are over 500MB of files on the Archive CD. Different files are in a variety of formats including .doc, .pdf, .bmp, .jpg, txt and .xls ORDERING --- There are two ways of ordering a copy of this CD 1) By post. Write to me enclosing payment, and your mailing address and I will send you the CD by return post. Write to me at: Landsvale, High Catton, York YO41 1EH, England. Cash payment can be $11US; 10 Euro or £5 Sterling notes well concealed inside an ordinary letter envelope. If you don't want the risk of sending cash in the post, I recommend registered post. Non-cash payments such as cheques, Postal Orders or International Money Orders must be £5.00 Sterling. 2) Over the Internet You can pay by PayPal by sending payment to: icf2010 @ uk2.net The PayPal prices are $11.75US; 10.75 Euro or £5.50 Sterling due to the charges levied by PayPal. Prices include post and packing. All orders will be despatched by post in a protective envelope and overseas orders will go airmail. I only use high quality CDs, such as TDK, to ensure you have a reliable and long lasting archive. A GREAT DEAL --- This unique CD contains a valuable archive of material, some of it rare, all of it interesting. I hope you feel that it may interest your readers. If so please could you mention it in a future issue of DXLD. Thank you. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to ask. Best wishes (Steve Whitt, General Editor Medium Wave News, May 6, DX LISTENING DIGEST) CAM-D, NOT IBOC!! And you, Leonard Kahn, should have been elected by the People of this Nation to head the FCC. Reading this [i.e. http://www.wrathofkahn.org ---- not to be confused with .com!!], every damn word makes sense --- because he mathematically PROVES it, instead of just assuming that it is right because others say so. I learn more and more every time I read his stuff. The most brilliant people with the best solutions are the ones tromped flat. Sad that most NAB engineers can't understand such logic (or principles). I can't add more to this. Kahn ISB stereo and Cam-D are the two most useful AM broadcast technologies (even better than C-QuAM), but our Foster Crappy Capitalism friends are more interested in kissing up to the highest bidder, auctioning spectrum space, and padding their wallets, rather than reviewing and legislating workable solutions that make scientific sense. When KBRT is still on here, and KCBS is coming in with IBOC just before dusk sign-off, you can hear, with each heterodyne fade, a very noticeable "roar-roar-roar" sound on any mono radio. That's the 180 out-of-phase digital code fed over KCBS's "pilotless C-QuAM" IBOC carrier being dephased by the het with KBRT. It's even louder when KBRT's pilot triggers the radio's stereo decoder. All IBOC stations are merely pilotless C-QuAM carriers with digital subcarrier fed 180 out-of-phase, but the narrowband mono audio is fed in-phase. You can make a "fake" IBOC station by feeding white noise into a C-QuAM transmitter 180 out-of-phase, but mix regular mono audio in-phase. You'll hear the programming with no white noise until you tune to the sidebands --- or you can make the white noise music or whatever --- you only hear whatever you make 180 out-of-phase on the sidebands and not dead-center. But that is why IBOC is so bad: it takes the difference of whatever else gets mixed in, like static, another station, or phase differentials as you move along a bridge or powerline, or among buildings. And then there's lightning static. I wonder how many complaints to stations our friends along the Gulf Coast will have when they drop a grand for a new tuner and get ticked because regular analog stereo was so much less fussy with T-storms around. Cam-D would solve most of that. But our false economy wins every time - just whatever the highest bidder wants to ram down our throats is what we have to choose from, so here comes IBOC, take it or leave it --- if you leave it, you eventually won't have radio to listen to (-Darwin, CA, ABDX via DXLD) IBOC will fail because it's 2005, not 1995. There is XM and Sirius, podcasting, and audio streaming to cellphones is coming on line rapidly. IBOC's parent, Ibiquity, needs revenues from license fees from broadcasters and receiver manufacturers to survive, and those revenues aren't materializing. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Ibiquity isn't even around in another three years. Their rapid, frantic efforts to push IBOC as a multicasting service instead of a high quality audio service reeks of desperation; it's clear Ibiquity grossly underestimated potential competition from new media and services. Their window to establish IBOC/HD as a viable alternative to satellite, etc., is rapidly closing and may have already closed (XM and Sirius have already captured almost 5 million listeners!) BPL will likewise fail because it's 2005, not 1995. WiFi "clouds" and new technologies like WiMax are already providing cheap (in some cases, free) wireless broadband at better rates than BPL can provide. Some cities --- like Philadelphia and Portland, OR --- are already building municipal WiFi networks that will provide free wireless broadband throughout the city. BPL is already obsolete and getting more so with each passing day. The rate of technological innovation these days in RF/wireless is nothing short of astonishing. AM/FM/SW radio is indeed going to be very different in the future, but the change will come about through new technologies and changing listener preferences. The future is not as bleak as you might think (Harry Helms W5HLH, Wimberley, TX EM00, http://futureofradio.typepad.com ibid.) I was informed that NPR gets a "free lunch" with IBOC. No fees to pay or anything if they go IBOC. That explains why the CE at the NPR station in Boise was so pro IBOC. He spoke to our club at the 2004 IRCA convention last year. Other CE's we spoke to were not pro IBOC! In fact he is one of the few I have run into that likes IBOC. Of course the money for the equipment is basically free, even if they have to pay for it as the money is donated. I would have a real problem donating to a station that was going to ruin my DXing hobby. 73s, (Patrick Martin, Seaside OR, IRCA mailing list via DXLD) ###