I actually had the same idea, and I did try it for a while.

I didn't miss the junk on TV, but I did miss the history, documentary,
classic movies and other similar channels. I don't think there is enough on
shortwave that you can listen to regularly and consistently. In fact, these
days, much of shortwave seems to be the radio equivalent of junk TV. It's
only of interest as a hobby, trying to see what you can pick up and for how
long. For normal radio listening instead of TV, I would be lost without the
CBC (regular FM in Canada, not shortwave). I occasionally catch something on
world band that's interesting to listen to, but in practice, most of my
international listening happens during late night hours when the regular CBC
relays international SW broadcasters from Britain, France, Australia,
Poland, Radio Netherlands, Deutsche Welle, etc., or AM radio from the US
which is easily heard most nights.

If you want to listen to infomercials, religious broadcasting, right wing
crackpots, etc., there's plenty of that on SW that is easy to pick up and
can be listened to during the daytime for hours on end.

Now, if you have a public broadcaster where you live, and other serious
programming on AM or FM radio, and you listen to that with some shortwave
thrown in, it might be a viable thing to do instead of watching TV.

That's not to say that listening to shortwave isn't an interesting hobby. I
love it. But it's not exactly something you can just tune once, and then go
about doing things around the house.

Pierre


wrote in message
...
Im thinking of dumping my cable TV. That will leave me with only two
local TV stations to get via an antenna.

Im considering buying a shortwave receiver that I can listen to while
doing things around the house.

Is there interesting programming available via shortwave? Is my idea
sound? What good receivers are worth looking at?