Shortwave? “The entire Western World is walking away”
Pastor and broadcaster Bob Bierman presented a rather gloomy view on the future of shortwave broadcasting, according to "World of Radio", quoted by Sweden’s "SWB Bulletin", page 7, today. In addition to aging (and waning) engineers familiar with shortwave radio operation, and costly production of (high-powered, anyway) shortwave transmitters, Bierman doubts that there is still a substantial audience in the western world for shortwave broadcasts. The only chance to keep U.S. broadcasters on shortwave, if any, would be that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized 10 kW for transmitters in the USA, rather than the current minimum 50 kW standard. Another World of Radio forum participant added that domestic shortwave broadcasting, i. e. within the U.S., would have to be allowed, too.
At least as far as rendered by the SWB Bulletin, the issue of public and/or commercial broadcasting wasn’t addressed in the WoR debate. But when discussing radio in western countries, this seems to be a central question. If Europe’s small shortwave radio stations with their transmitters of just a few Watts or kiloWatts are commercially viable (I have no idea if they are), it is because a lot of DJs spend money to buy airtime which may or not be funded by faithful listeners. But while this may work for comparatively small energy bills, it probably won’t work for commercial stations that try to get a global reach, in the league of publicly mandated international shortwave broadcasters like Radio Taiwan International, All India Radio, KBS World Radio, or Radio New Zealand.
There are at least two cases in point that speak against big commercial shortwave stations. One is Radio WRNO. Its founder, Joe Costello, believed in the early 1980s that commercial shortwave radio of the WRNO kind (no religion, but lots of music, culture and stories from the U.S.) could be sustainable. Some ten years later, he told "Media Network", a program run by the now defunct Radio Netherlands, that he hadn’t been able to convince a critical mass of potential advertisers that there was a WRNO audience big enough for their commercials, because shortwave broadcasting didn’t conform with the criteria of the American rating-point system – probably this kind of economics.
Costello noted that "at this point, [WRNO Worldwide on shortwave] is not as economically viable as I thought it might be on the end of its first decade".
It took nearly a quarter of a century, after Costello’s remarks in 1991, before another American broadcaster with a format similar to WRNO’s gave shortwave a try. Unlike Costello, they didn’t build a transmitter site of their own, but hired one of WRMI’s transmitters in Okeechobee, Florida. That, too, was probably a heavyweight transmitter of something like 50 kW – its signal in my place in Europe certainly suggested that it was. WRMI manager Jeff White was quoted at the time as saying that the new broadcaster, named "Global 24",
represents another step in the long overdue commercialization of shortwave radio. We are excited to be working with them on their ambitious program to engage and entertain a global audience.
I’m not sure how long "Global 24" lasted, but it was probably for less than a year.
As far as I can tell, sustainable shortwave broadcasting needs a mandate. That can be a public mandate like in Taiwan, India, South Korea or New Zealand (see above), a party or state mandate (like in China or Vietnam), or a mandate by a religious organization (like in the case of Reach Beyond or KNLS), or one by dedicated listeners who are prepared to throw money into a broadcaster’s or DJ’s hat, or by DJs who pay for their airtime themselves. Radiation power will depend on local legislation and on budgets. In cases like those of Channel 292, Shortwave Gold or Realmix Radio in Europe, the mandates seem to come mostly from the grassroots.
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