Boycott Mainstream Media and Tune in the
World: How To Listen to
Shortwave Broadcasts via Radio and the Internet
by Gloria R. Lalumia
Update
11/14/03 The Bell & Howell radio is still available through the Carol Wright/Dr. Leonard catalogs!
My comments on the B & H radio: I received my radio a couple of weeks ago (April 2003) and have been very pleased with its capabilities. I'm located deep in the Southwest, near El Paso, yet am bringing in English broadcasts from Radio Australia, Radio New Zealand, Radio Japan, Radio Tapei and Radio China as well as Radio Canada, the BBC, Radio Netherlands, Radio Belgium, and Radio Havana. Here's an interesting note: On the rec.radio.shortwave newsgroup, a user just completed a "battery test"of this radio using the supplied earbuds only (no speaker, and at a reasonable listening volume) and it ran for 225 hours.
I was very pleased with the Carol Wright service as they notified me twice by postcard of the status of my own backorder. They also answered my original email. The radio has been available in recent Carol Wright/Dr. Leonard catalogs (as of this writing, November 2003)
As a result of getting my feet wet with the B & H radio, I purchased a Grundig YB 400PE in April 2003. This radio not only receives all SW bands, but also AM/FM and Single Sideband (SSB) which means I can listen to ham and mobile operators, as well as aeronautical and marine bands. It's really fun to hear hams chatting from all around the country. I have put up 2 15 ft poles and a 25 ft pole, and have strung wires approx. 50 feet long in N-S and E-W directions, as well as a 20 ft wire N-S, and another approximately 20 ft. long into the kitchen. I've used coax cable as a lead in, with a mono plug for easy hookup.
A very useful purchase is a local/UTC clock I found by MFJ (MFJ-108B). I purchased mine from Universal Radio(www.universal-radio.com) but you might want to check out MFJ's website also.
The clock features a 5/8" LED dual display of both 24 hour UTC and 12 hour local time so there's no need to fiddle with trying to convert times. It costs about $20 and I've found it to be very useful!
SURGING SHORTWAVE
The recent firing of Phil Donahue by MSNBC
because of the political views aired on his show rather than his
ratings (the highest on the network) underscores the growing
restrictions on political analysis and unbiased reporting of
current news events available from the corporate American media.
So, to get their news Americans are being forced to look
elsewhere.
A recent article posted at www.Journalism.co.uk, a
site with “online news for online journalists,”
reports that 50 per cent of BBC News Online web site visitors log
on from outside the UK. According to Mike Smartt, BBC News
Online editor-in-chief, "Page views on the site have risen
between 10 and 20 per cent and feedback tells us that visitors
come to us for more impartial, even-handed news coverage as
American reportage can be rather US-centric." The
Guardian has also received an upsurge in traffic from the U.S.,
while World News Network reports a 60 per cent rise in traffic
since January. (http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story576.html,
US public turns to Europe for news, Posted: 21 February 2003 By:
Elizabeth Croad. Full sources of data provided.)
Meanwhile, an older way of tapping into
world news is seeing its own resurgence. Since 911 shortwave
radio sales have increased. (See “Short wave radios gaining
popularity in U.S. again,” Detroit Free Press, November
6, 2001 for a brief rundown on short wave radio trends here and
in Europe http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20011106.htm
.) To illustrate, during the first week of March 2003, my
local Radio Shack had none in stock and when I placed an order
for a radio, it was on a 3-week backorder!
What’s so special about shortwave?
There’s the ability to hear news, current affairs, and
topical programming on a variety of subjects broadcast from many
different international broadcasters which often broadcast in
English as well as native languages. For the traveler, it
means being able to tune into an English-language broadcast even
if there are none on the AM-FM dials. Although shortwave
broadcasts are now on the Internet, if the net goes down that
option is gone. And during emergencies, when timely news is
important, telephone lines often become jammed and the
possibility of unreliable Internet service exists. With shortwave
radios now pocket-sized and reasonably priced, now may be the
time to start listening!
So, in this article I will offer some basic
information on how to start listening to shortwave radio,
followed by a discussion of how to listen on the Internet if
you’re not quite ready to dive in and purchase a shortwave
receiver.
SHORTWAVE
RADIO FOR BEGINNERS
For a short and clear overview of shortwave
radio check out the following link: http://www.astrosmo.unam.mx/~alan/swl/starting.html
. This concise page compiled by Alan Watson will give you a good
idea as to whether you want to delve deeper into the subject.
WHICH
RADIO??
Radios in the $50-$150 price range can generally offer enough features for the beginner in shortwave. There are numerous sites with information about buying a radio. RadioIntel.com, A Global Radio Portal (http://www.radiointel.com/press.htm) has reviews of radios, club and newsletter listings, as well as the latest developments in the shortwave world. Radio Netherlands has one of the better compilations of radio reviews; their staff actually tests the sets for performance under a variety of conditions (http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/rx_index.html).
Recently, a shortwave enthusiast posting at
the Democratic Underground offered a VERY inexpensive suggestion
for buying a shortwave radio via a mail order house. He thought
this set offered good reception at a bargain price. I
tracked down more information on this radio and where to buy it
at the RadioIntel site in the following commentary:
Within the last week, I’ve seen the
PublishersChoice ad for this radio in the USA Weekend Magazine
with a different 800 number (1-800-727-4402, presumably for
tracking purposes), and American Profile magazine
(1-800-627-3598). The Carol Wright offer is still
available, although the radio is on backorder (www.carolwright.com). (See
update above for more recent information.)
(NOTE: Neither the author or Buzzflash
endorses this radio.)
LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE
BROADCASTS--RADIO
Short wave reception depends on many factors
including your location. Generally, signals are best heard
during the evening hours. What comes in off the airwaves
depends in large part on what stations are targeting your area.
Some of the strongest signals come from the BBC World Service,
Radio Canada International, Radio Netherlands, and Deutsche Welle
(Germany). You can also check our own Voice of America. The
BBC has stopped broadcasting directly to Canada, the U.S. and
Australia, preferring to air their broadcasts on FM stations.
However, if you are on the East Coast you should try to pick up
the Caribbean signal; if on the West Coast, you can also try to
tune in the broadcast emanating from Asia.
Schedules are often provided at the
broadcasters’ websites. A listener may therefore
choose to listen randomly until he or she stumbles upon something
interesting or use the schedules to locate favorite programming.
A well-organized site compiled in Sweden
called Listen to the World lists shortwave broadcasts with
frequencies and times by country http://www.swl.nu/listen/index.htm
. Links to the station websites are also provided (many
sites also provide internet listening--see below). The
listings include many countries not found on many sites such as
the “Stans” of Central Asia and radio from Albania. And
if you’re up at about 7:30 AM EST, you might be able to
catch the irregular broadcast of Radio Iraq, which broadcasts to
North America.
Prime Time Shortwave at http://www.primetimeshortwave.com/time.html is an extremely useful site. It lists English broadcasts in UTC on an hour by hour basis! Print it out (it's about 20 pages) and you'll have an easy to use schedule of broadcasts!
Here's a great site to bookmark. If you know a frequency, but don't know what station it is, you can Search for International Broadcasters by Frequency here!! http://home.cfl.rr.com/happysurfer/swllynx.htm
Also, another excellent compilation of all broadcasts can be found at E!B! http://www.eibi.de.vu/ which features listings sorted by time or by frequency, transmitter locations, with all parallel frequencies at a glance.
LISTENING
TO SHORTWAVE BROADCASTS—VIA THE INTERNET
Many broadcasts are now streaming
continuously via the Internet, offering their programming in
English 24 hours a day. Other stations stream in English on
the net only when they are beaming their radio signals in English
via shortwave (parallel broadcasting). Many broadcasters
also provide current news sections right on their sites. Here are
several websites that can get you started listening with or
without a radio!
Perhaps the easiest site to use is one
entitled Shortwave Broadcasts LIVE On The Internet http://www.dxworld.com/sw_live.html
. This site is basically an alphabetical listing of countries,
with links to streaming broadcasts via Real Audio or Windows
Media. Most countries stream continuously in the native
language; others stream and also offer “in demand”
archived broadcasts in English. Some stations provide only
limited schedules and some parallel the shortwave broadcasts
which are aired at certain times of the day. At the bottom of
each listing there are links to the website of the broadcaster.
As previously mentioned, these home pages often provide complete
daily and weekly schedules of programming, including when
broadcasts are aired specifically for North American audiences.
Check out the TV feed from Cuba!
Another good site is the World Radio
Network http://www.wrn.org/index.html
. Based in London, this site offers a variety of ways to tune in.
WRN culls some of the most popular news and cultural broadcasts
from across the globe and bundles them into a variety of
schedules geared for different regions http://www.wrn.org/listeners/schedules/
. For example, English broadcasts are available in formats
for WRN English for Africa/Middle East, Europe, Asia Pacific,
North America, and South America. As an example, on the WRN
English for North America channel, weekday evenings feature
programming from Russia, Slovakia, China, Israel, Poland,
Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and UN Radio. NPR
Radio programs from the US also show up on the schedules. There
are also multilingual broadcasts for North America. By selecting
any of these formats you will see a daily schedule in Universal
Time (UTC) along with the applicable time zones for that part of
the world. Or, you can click on “Listen Now” and
pick up whatever is broadcasting at the moment.
There is also a listing of all the
broadcasters that are available on WRN http://www.wrn.org/listeners/stations/index.php?CurrentLetter=1
. Clicking on a station brings you to a page which describes the
broadcast availability (language and time) as well as a direct
link to the station’s website. These informational pages are
also available by clicking the program names on the master
schedule for that region.
TIME
ZONES
Whether you listen via a radio or the
Internet, you’ll have to deal with time zones. Broadcast
times are presented in UTC (Coordinated Universal Times), also
referred to as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The USNO Time Service
site provides a table for converting UTC times to US time zones http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/zones.html.
Another handy site is Time and Date.com http://www.timeanddate.com/time/
.You can set up your own “personal world clock” and
keep track of time at cities that you select. And a list of
time zone abbreviations is very useful for places outside the US
when making a conversion between local times and UTC or vice
versa—you can get one here http://www.timeanddate.com/time/abbreviations.html
.
-------------------------
Now you’re pretty well set up to listen
to world broadcasts, which will can help you gain a broader view
of the news than we can get via the media here in the US! But
if you get tired of hearing reports and analyses, there’s
more to be had on world radio. There’s plenty of
cultural and music programming available. Why not check out the
Pulse, the latest music from Australia and the Pacific on
Fridays….or is that Thursdays??? …Time to get out
that time zone conversion chart…
Copyright 2003, Gloria R. Lalumia