[A-DX] Economist: Hört die Kurzwelle leben

[Nils Schiffhauer <nils.schiffhauer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Moin, moin - der ECONOMIST (so eine Art globaler Über-SPIEGEL, der diesem
noch ne Menge Raum nach oben zu wachsen gibt) sieht in seiner aktuellen
Ausgabe "life in the old wireless yet". DRM spielt keine Rolle, sondern die
Tendenz, durch Kooperationen via UKW die Propaganda in guter Qualität ("snap
and crackle goes pop") in den letzten Winkel zu funken. Gegenüber einem
Online-Artikel vom 8.1.2008, der DRM groß aufmacht ("It remains only to see
if the planet wants to listen.") liest sich der dieswöchige Printbeitrag
etwas zurückhaltender. 73 Nils, DK8OK

Short-wave radio
Snap and crackle goes pop
Jun 19th 2008
>>From The Economist print edition

Life in the old wireless yet

PROPAGANDA, news, curiosity and even espionage were the fuel of short-wave
radio broadcasts. Readers of a certain age may recall the thrill of hearing
a crackly, venomously worded broadcast from far away, such as the Voice of
Free China denouncing the communist bandits on the mainland, or Radio Peace
and Progress in Moscow deriding the imperialist hullabaloo about human
rights.

The huge advantage of short-wave was that such material was simple to send
and hard to stop. Thanks to their high frequency and short wavelength, even
low-powered signals can bounce off the ionosphere halfway round the world;
anyone can listen. Jamming them?a favourite Soviet tactic, still practised
by China today?is an expensive and patchy business.


The end of the cold war, deregulation and new technology made short-wave
look out of date. The propaganda war between east and west abated. Poor
countries liberalised their broadcasting regimes, turning information famine
into abundance. New stations, transmitting on crackle-free FM, soaked up
listeners. Many started partnerships with international broadcasters who had
previously used short-wave. Satellite-television news from stations such as
CNN provided powerful competition in meeting the needs of the news-hungry.
Broadband internet connections and even mobile phones can be used to listen
to a plethora of radio stations.

But short-wave's retreat has slowed. Though the BBC's World Service uses
around 15 different technologies to reach its listeners, short-wave is still
king: latest figures, published last week, show 105m of its 182m-strong
global audience still listen that way, the majority of them in Africa. In
Nigeria the short-wave audience even grew slightly last year. That's not
going to change soon: the BBC is upgrading its transmitters on Ascension
Island (to be powered, greenly, by a new wind farm). Mike Cronk, a BBC
bigwig, says the business case was ³compelling².

As competition for slots on the spectrum has eased, private broadcasters are
moving in, notably American-based religious ones such as Assemblies of
Yahweh, Adventist World Radio and the Fundamental Broadcasting Network.
Short-wave also stays useful after natural disasters or political crises.
Foreign broadcasters such as Voice of America have been stepping up their
short-wave offerings to Zimbabwe in recent weeks.

Perhaps the most loyal users of all are intelligence services. So-called
³Numbers stations² such as the Cyprus-based Lincolnshire Poacher (named
after the jaunty tune that precedes the broadcasts) allow Britain's MI6 and
others to send messages to anyone anywhere in the world, untraceably and in
unbreakable code. No other medium is as ubiquitous and as secure. The only
snag would be if owning a short-wave radio were to come to be seen as so
eccentric as to arouse suspicion. Indeed, fewer such sets are sold these
days. But as Simon Spanswick of the Association for International
Broadcasting, an industry umbrella group, notes, people rarely throw their
radios away.




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