Dan wrote:

In article ,
tommyknocker wrote:

I was just thinking about this today. Has anybody noticed that shortwave
radio has really declined over the past five years or so? We've lost BBC
and Deutsche Welle transmissions to North America, we've lost several
smaller European broadcasters entirely, other stations have drastically
cut back. Are transmitting facilities really going on the blink so soon
after the end of the cold war? Or has everybody jumped on the BBC's
bandwagon and concluded that satellite and internet broadcasting has
replaced shortwave? Any thoughts?

Well, BBC is still available on 5975. I'm listening to it right now,
20 over 9 here.

But yes, satellite and internet are going to replace shortwave. It's
inevitable. BBC is available on many cable TV systems already.
Noisy, static filled, fading, garbled shortwave is about as interesting
to today's digital satellite TV watching, MP3 player toting, cable modem
equipped PC "digital consumer" as smoke signals were to us 40 years ago.
I myself sometimes stream BBC over my cable modem. It's the only way I
listen to Australia.

It may seem a sad state of affairs to us, but the day is surely coming
when all you will hear on a shortwave radio is static.

It seems that the "new media" is all about the "digital consumer"
getting exactly what he or she wants and nothing else. The downside to
this is that one can filter out (or have filtered out for them) all the
information one does not want to hear, so one's worldview is shaped
according to one's preconceived notions. This makes the digital consumer
think that everybody agrees with them, or that the only people who
matter are the people who agree with them. For people who are already
inclined to philosophical extremism this makes them more extreme, and it
makes the rest extreme. This means that reasoned, informed discourse in
society-fed by a diversity of sources-is probably a thing of the past,
something that is disturbing for the future of democracy and of
international relations. Fox News and Al Jazeera are two good
examples-one is watched by American policy makers to the exclusion of
anything else, and the other is watched by those who wish to overthrow
the West to the exclusion of anything else. Thus, they think that only
they are right and demand that everybody else agree with them-or else.


Dan

Drake R8, Radio Shack DX-440,
Grundig Satellit 650, Satellit 700, YB400
Tecsun PL-230 (YB550PE), Kaito KA1102
Hallicraters S-120 (1962)
Zenith black dial 5 tube Tombstone (1937)
E. H. Scott 23 tube Imperial Allwave in Tasman cabinet (1936)