Hi Dave, John, et al If you talk to the receiver manufacturers, you will discover that shortwave radio sales are indeed on a permanent decline, which explains why there are just a handful of really good sets out there, not like the 60 or so models when I was testing them for the WRTH and Radio Netherlands.
I believe that good content drives technology and if something comes along which does a more efficient job of delivering content, then it makes a lot of sense to use it. The web is great at delivering good audio to many parts of the world with broadband. Does it replace delivery to a portable radio in rural areas? No...and the technologies to replace analogue shortwave have just a few years to get cracking if they don't want to go the way of SSB....I was copying off some old Media Networks from 1984 and had to laugh at the predictions that by 2015 we would have progressed to SSB instead of AM. Public service broadcasting does indeed have a duty to serve all its public - in areas where a licence fee is charged. So the BBC uses terrestrial transmitters and spends a fortune getting to the remote Scottish islands where other channels don't bother with. I don't think the BBC has an obligation to serve the entire world....it doesn't. With 6.2 billion people on the planet, their audience of 144 million of people who listen at least once a week means the majority of the world doesn't listen, or can't listen. I do think the BBC needs to re-think how it explains to its audience its shift to different technologies. The current BBC Web page is very poorly worded. I don't see newspapers telling their readers that the paper is going to have less pages in it, or that readers in rural areas should stop buying their publication. Wouldn't it be great if they involved the audience in finding solutions to their distribution challenges, rather than the method they are using now. I feel insulted, rather than consulted. Hi to all those who remember me, Jonathan Marks X-DX but still very much into radio Jonathan Marks Director Critical Distance BV Stam 69 1275CG Huizen The Netherlands Newsblog: http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com Atom Format XML Feed: http://criticaldistance.blogspot.com/atom.xml Broadcasters Gadgets: http://whatcaughtmyeye.blogspot.com/ NEW: Tsunami WIKI for Broadcasters: http://www.tsunamihelp.info/wiki/index.php/Broadcasters Company Website: http://www.criticaldistance.org ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- World Radio TV Handbook 2005 is coming out. Preorder yours and support open communications for DXers: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823077942/hardcoredxcom ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [email protected] http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt
