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David wrote:
On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:06:25 +0200, "John Plimmer" wrote: That's absolute nonsense - there are thousands of Tropical Band stations going strong, and the WRTH is still the most authoritative source of information for Mediumwave and Tropical Band that has ALL the info a serious DXer needs. The blue pages are really for casual listeners to major broadcasters. WRTH is kept uptodate by a comprehensive worldwide network of contributors and there is no other publication to match it. WRTH is published every year early December see http://www.wrth.com/ There are 14 pages of Tropical Band stations listed in the Blue Pages. That being said, this is from a review of WRTH 2005: ''RECEIVERS We read that there continues to be a marked and continuing decline for analogue broadcast systems worldwide, with digital radio becoming widely accepted in many regions. We learn that the rate of introduction of new SW receivers is in a downward spiral, with only a very small number of new models appearing, except very cheap, limited performance HF radios emerging from Asian sources. WRTH strongly suggests that HF monitoring is now becoming mainly an interest for technical hobbyists.'' If that is indeed true, it's sad. The internet has technical limitations that become obvious as soon as Country X has a major natural disaster or terrorist attack and the Real Audio servers belonging to their national broadcaster crash from all the people piling on at once. Satellites often require the reciever to be line of sight to the bird, something that may not be a problem for a fixed dish like a DirecTV dish on a house but can be a big issue with XM or Sirius in a car. Satellite services are usually controlled by one big corporate entity who decides what gets broadcast and what doesn't, and that corporation is subject to pressure from governments or major power blocs. Look at the controversy with New Tang TV or whatever it's called that was on Eutelsat until Eutelsat signed a deal with the CCP that required that New Tang be yanked off the bird. Also, rumors persist that the US govt forbade satellite services to carry an Iranian TV channel broadcasting in English, calling it "intellectual terror" (an oxymoron?). Digital services may have better fidelity, but you sacrifice the flexibility inherent in analog broadcasting, and especially in HF. It's like the current trend of young people not buying CDs because they can always download music for free off the net with CD quality-it looks like a good deal now, but if it keeps accelerating there won't be much of a music industry left after a while. Musicians won't want to perform if they can't get paid, and music companies won't want to put out CDs if they're not going to get paid for them. Soon there won't be any music to download. If analog broadcasting-MW, SW, FM, TV-is killed off, it will make big corporations happy and it will make governments happy, but the big losers will be us, since we'll have to rely on tightly controlled sources for news, and that news will be mostly entertainment. The Daily Show-a fake comedy newscast shown on The Comedy Channel-has a higher percentage of news viewers than any of the traditional nightly news broadcasts, especially among youth. People expect to be entertained by the news, not informed by it, and the news will deliver, leading to a proliferation of Daily Shows and the death of real news. And without SW radio, we'll have to accept infotainment as fact, since we'll have no alternative. ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
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