Canadian Towers Quietly Fall in Sackville

The shortwave transmission towers at Sackville have gone off the air and now are off the face of the earth. Later this month, shortwave transmissions will stop from the Seychelles and across Russia. Thanks for hours of interesting programmes. It was worth it in an era when information was scarce. I respect those who made it possible.



Thanks too to filmmaker, Amanda Dawn Christie, who has been gathering footage to create Spectres of Shortwave: a 90 minute documentary film focusing on the Radio Canada International Sackville transmitting site. I hope she will look at a day in the life of the transmitting station and capture the stories of the high-frequency business rather than just the technology.

And now it is time to move on.

Shortwave Radio - What went wrong?

Knocking down the transmission towers in Samara, Russia in November 2013. 

I've had an unusually large number of visitors to this blog whenever I discuss broadcasting or storytelling. Perhaps it's because I'm passionate about both. And I am fascinated by what works and what fails.

Recently I've posted more about the rapid closure of shortwave radio transmitters sites around the world. Which triggers the question - if people thought it was a good idea in the second half of the 20th century to construct hundreds of powerful transmitters and run them at a cost of billions, what went wrong?  Part of the answer is that the world changed. Some closed societies opened up. And that meant that audiences were looking for much more creative programming. That message never got through to the broadcasters. (Video below was taken when they knocked down the towers of Radio Norway and Radio Denmark)



For the most part, shortwave radio programming was mindlessly boring. It didn't engage because it was often national programming translated into a foreign language and shouted across some border in the hope that it would change something "over there". I used to call them "death and disaster" networks. It was difficult for anyone inside such a network to be creative when the main task was to fill a transmission schedule, often at some ungodly hour of the night. And shortwave radio propagation was usually such that you could only get a signal into a target area at the wrong time of day for the audience. That was usually the evening - and once television came, the younger audience evaporated.

Wasteland of Creativity

When I helped to re-organise the vision of Radio Netherlands in 1994, I wish I had on-line access to disruptive thinkers like John Cleese. It would have helped me formulate our thinking in a much clearer language. For the video below about creativity is from 1991 I believe. It's actually a talk about how NOT to be creative. And what he describes is the way most international broadcasters operated for most of their existence. They were content factories, slave to an artificial transmission schedule. Because they didn't take time to be creative, then ended up sounding like a tape machine. They were run by a computer algorithm. Not a human soul. There was never room for a creative pause. Routine was the solution. And that's creativity's biggest enemy. They were also incredibly naive in thinking that a message shouted is the same as a message received and understood.

So, eventually, it all ended in tears for many stations. So where are the next group like this to get in trouble and is it for the same reasons? I'd really welcome your input.

My Lessons Learned.

• Creative companies have to understand the difference between open and closed thinking.
• Content factories quickly become very boring. 
• I believe many computer driven music services are the shortwave radio stations of the 21st century. They spring up, then wither at the vine. But are there others?
• Any station that doesn't put the audience at the heart of everything they do is doomed. It may take time, but decline is inevitable.

BBC World Service Transmissions 23 years ago

Jonathan Marks at BBC Relay station in Singapore in 1999

The BBC has been rightly criticised for their massive overspend in digital production networks this week. But how did they manage giant multi-million pound networks in the analogue days? On today's safari into the Interwebs, I discovered a 20 minute film commissioned in 1989 from two engineers working at the BBC's transmission base at Lerwick, on the Shetland Islands in Scotland. Remember these were the guys who made sure programmes on radio and TV were broadcast from the transmission masts around the country, indeed around the world. This was before the BBC privatised its transmission facilities in 1997, splitting it off into different companies. Merlin Communications (run by former BBC Engineers and Frequency Managers) took over the responsibility for BBC World Service distribution on MW and HF.

John Waters and Andy Long had a field day (literally) capturing this unique footage of life as a transmission engineer at the BBC. Note the emphasis on BBC's external service. What struck me was that being an HF (high-frequency) engineer was regarded as one of the better sought-after jobs in the network. It's been lurking on YouTube for a while, but I don't think the radio enthusiasts have found it.

I wonder why the Beeb always called them Senders instead of transmitters? Corruption from the German "Zender"?

Shortwave transmitters operating at 500 kWs were continually required to retune to different parts of the dial to cover transmissions in various languages from BBC World Service. For that reason, the external services operating out of Skelton, Wooferton, Rampisham and Orfordness were run 24 hours a day and were clearly the most labour intensive. TV and VHF radio transmitters look boring by comparison. Very little to go wrong and certainly none of the spectacular power incidents you get when you're messing around with 25,000 volts.



I believe these films were made for internal training purposes.



John Fergusson narrates it all, seemingly in one breath. Note that they didn't waste any money on trying to capture natural sound, which means the atmosphere of these places is missing. And clearly the budget didn't stretch to get footage outside the UK. Note the busy managers always shown to be managing and having what look like vital conversations. But overall they are nicely done.

I remember a film was made about BBC Monitoring Service in Caversham Park in the 1980's but I haven't managed to trace that one. A more modern promotional film went up at the end of last year, I guess to explain what they do to stakeholders.




And there other snippets of documentaries about the BBC World Service, like the one which foresaw the closure of the BBC Russian radio service.

BBC Shuts Shortwave from Cyprus

Banks are not the only institutions closing in Cyprus at the moment. My clip above doesn't do justice to the excellent photo that Richard Schultze took of the antenna masts of the British East Mediterranean Relay Station (BEMRS) which have radiated the programmes of the  BBC World Service from a site near Zygi in Cyprus. This particular installation has been operating since 1957 for the audience on the Arabic peninsular and Africa. As well as HF, the site also transmits in English on 1323 kHz mediumwave at 100kW. The site was a challenge for engineers since it is located next door to a cement factory - now there is something you don't want to get into the filters. 

This site is the latest to close as part of the BBC's winding down of its shortwave broadcast services. The mediumwave site at Ladies Mile further down the coast of Cyprus will continue, although on a reduced schedule. That was only ever used for Arabic language broadcasting.

BBC are making programme changes again, implementing planned cuts announced in October 2012.

It looks to me as if the BBC Press Office is a bit confused. They talk about Arabic broadcasts on short-wave ceasing. While that may be true for the Middle East, Arabic will still be there for SW listeners in Sudan and South Sudan. This will come from BBC's relay station in Oman.

The World Service English global schedule will be simplified with fewer regional variations from Sunday 31 March 2013 and shortwave Arabic broadcasts will cease.

The reductions to shortwave services were announced in October 2012 as part of the UK government’s 2010 spending review. BBC World Service on FM and online and on television will not be affected and no language services are closing.

Shortwave and medium wave transmissions in English will be reduced to a minimum of 6 hours in total each day. This will generally be two periods of between 2 and 4 hours each, usually at peak listening times in the morning and evening to help minimise disruption. The changes will have less impact in regions where World Service is increasingly accessed via partner stations or online and in countries where FM is widely available.

Steve Titherington, Senior Commissioning Editor for BBC World Service, said: “We know that increasing numbers of people are accessing World Service on FM, online, and television. For those who can’t access these platforms, we’ve tried to ensure that they will continue to hear to the best the World Service has to offer at times of the day when they are most likely to tune in.”

"As part of the new schedule we will endeavour to have a mixture of news, current affairs and a mix of programmes covering the arts, science and human interest stories." says Titherington.

A new programme, The Newsroom, will replace World Briefing. Outlook will be extended to an hour-long format and offer a new approach to covering arts, music and humanities following the closure of the programme : The Strand.

Every Friday, The 5th Floor will run in the prominent Outlook time slot offering a review of the pick of the BBC’s 27 language services programming - in English.

The estimated loss of listeners to Global English on shortwave will be around 1.5m listeners, equivalent to 1.3% of the total Global News English audience on any platform.

BBC Arabic audiences are estimated to reduce by 800,000 as a result of the closure of shortwave broadcasts.

In the Arabic speaking world, the World Service broadcasts on a network of FM relays, a 24-hour television channel and the bbcarabic.com website. 

Shortwave services to Sudan are not affected as the shortwave service is currently the most viable method of broadcasting to this large region.

In Search of Radio's Future

This video documentary is still on my list of things to do. I may have to retitle it - In Search of Radio's Glorious Past... but still. It's the story of how radio went digital - often in unexpected ways.