Episodes
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COVID disrupted just about everything for me. And by New Years Day 2023, I started wondering if there is any value in continuing the Media Network archive I built about international sound broadcasting in the 20th century. What has always kept me going is unearthing the stories of the past and bumping into amazing people like Dr , who I knew in the 80's as Head of BBC International Audience Research. A year ago, I had the chance to have a zoom call with him. Only now have I found a moment to start montaging it. But you be the judge. Is this aural history still relevant in 2023?
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Hello, welcome back to Part 2 of the Maarten van delft tapes. This time with unique studio recordings from the Caribbean made around 1988. Here is the link to LIST. Just to recap it is January 2023 and I’m playing around in the Media Network archive vault which sits on my hard drive. In the 1970’s and 80’s several of us interested in international broadcasting collected the sign-on and sign-offs of radio stations from around the world. Whilst it was easy to make an off-air tape of a far-off station, there was no guarantee you could hear it just by tuning in the right frequency. In fact the hobby of Dxing, was a popular pastime in some countries where you’d scan the dial looking for a weak station, trying to identify which one it was from an announcement, often given at the top of the hour. In the early 1970’s I remember Maarten van Delft would sometimes play some very clear recordings on Radio Nederland’s DX Juke box programme. And as a fellow jingle and ID collector, I often wondered how he got those tapes. I tried sending small reels of tapes and cassettes to the stations in the hope they would share a recording. Some Eastern European stations did return the tape, most didn’t. Maarten’s secret is that he travelled extensively in South America and Asia and he took his blank reel of tape to the station’s studio and asked them politely to add a recording to his collection. Those tapes went into a box and I picked up and digitized these tapes during covid lockdown in 2019. Fast forward to 2023 and it's time to listen what was on those on those tapes. Today, we’ll select tape F, marked as the Caribbean, with recordings from Santo Domingo, Martinique, Montserrat, Grenada, Barbados, St Vincent, and others. Sit back and imagine listening to a shortwave or AM radio with remarkably clear reception. It would have sounded like this…… And that’s where the tape runs out. I wonder if you recognised any of those famous Caribbean radio stations and spotted a few odd ones out. Maybe you heard them on your own radio. My thanks to Maarten van Delft for sharing these recordings and for helping us radio enthusiasts. The problem we have with radio Receivers is that they have no memory. The radio may still work, but it won’t tune in to the station as it sounded 40 or 50 years ago. For that we need to thank those with a tape recorder. If you’d like to hear more, then remember media network does have an email address. Drop me a line with your ideas. It is . And Maarten did make a list of the stations you heard today, which I will post in the Media Network vintage vault (see top of this post). So look after yourself in these strange and often surreal times we live in. But for the moment, this is Jonathan Marks saying, back soon, bye for now.
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Missing episodes?
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Here is s in this episode: Hello, it is January 2023 and I’m playing around in the Media Network archive vault which sits on my hard drive and beckons me to explore forgotten files when I have a moment to spare. In November 2019, a faithful Dutch MN listener Max van Arnhem contacted me with a request. He had about 19 reel to reel tapes from fellow radio enthusiast Maarten van Delft which he could not digitize because he didn’t have a recorder anymore. As it happens, I just restored a Studer Revox B77 to full working order and so I have the right equipment to digitize many formats. A few weeks later I stopped by his house to pick up the tapes. Now in the 1970’s and 80’s several of us interested in international broadcasting collected the sign-on and sign-offs of radio stations from around the world. Whilst it was easy to make an off-air tape of a far-off station, there was no guarantee you could hear it just by tuning in the right frequency. In fact the hobby of Dxing, was a popular pastime in some countries where you’d scan the dial looking for a weak station, trying to identify which one it was from an announcement, often given at the top of the hour. The problem is that it would often fade out at just the moment when they gave the station ID. In the early 1970’s Maarten van Delft would sometimes play some very clear recordings on Radio Nederland’s DX Juke box programme. And as a fellow jingle and ID collector, I often wondered how he got those tapes. I used to send small reels of tapes and cassettes to the stations in the hope they would share a recording. Some Eastern European stations did, most didn’t. Maarten’s secret is that he travelled extensively in South America and Asia and he took his blank reel of tape to the station’s studio and asked them politely to add a recording to his collection. Those tapes went into a box and those were the tapes I picked up in 2019. Fast forward to 2023 and it's time to listen what was on those on those tapes. Today, we’ll select tape D, marked as Brazil, Argentina and uruguay . Sit back and imagine listening to a shortwave radio with remarkably clear reception. It would have sounded like this…… I wonder if you recognised any of those famous Brazilian radio stations and spotted a few odd ones out. Maybe you heard them on your own radio. My thanks to Maarten van Delft for sharing these recordings and for helping us radio enthusiasts. The problem we have with radio Receivers is that they have no memory. The radio may still work, but it won’t tune in to the station as it sounded 40 or 50 years ago. For that, we need to thank those with a tape recorder. If you’d like to hear more, then remember media network does have an email address. Drop me a line with your ideas. It is . And Maarten did make a list of the stations you heard today, which I will post in the Media Network vintage vault.
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I am gradually sorting out my off-air radio cassette collection. I realise that if I don't do it now, I will never get around to it. But I also realise that a lot of off-air recordings are disappearing, especially once the radio programme is made, and very few people keep the original interview or recordings. For some reason, I did. And 40 years later I am so glad I didn't throw things away. Today, I'm sharing an off-air recording of the Falklands Island Broadcasting Station during the Argentine invasion of April 2nd 1982. There are a few places where Patrick Watts, the station manager stops the tape. And in the end, it sounds to me as if the batteries are failing. But you tell me, you can't throw something like this away, can you? For more details check
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This is the second edition of DX Juke Box that I hosted, having joined Radio Netherlands a couple of weeks earlier. The programme in those days was a mixture of music and tuning tips contributed by others. My goal, together with Wim van Amstel, was to do more investigative reporting. There was no production budget, but there were plenty of enthusiastic reporters. Before leaving BBC Monitoring I had also recorded several items with people like Richard Measham. In this edition we discussed how the Russian's had taken over Afghan media. Richard revealed that it all started with a tip off from Andy Sennitt.
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Look what I found. When I was working for the ORF Shortwave Panorama, BBC Monitoring Service and later Radio Netherlands, I learned the importance of taping everything I was listening to. Radio has no memory. And back in the 70’s and 80’s there was no Wikipedia, no Youtube, no means to check a story on the wires. If you wanted access to Reuters or the wire services you had to monitor radio stations for news. I was collecting media news, so I used to tape colleague broadcasters. Many of the cassettes have gone, but then I discovered a box of mystery cassettes including an edition of warmongers monthly with the familiar voice of Vasily Strelnikov. This is an edition from December 1987 I think. And this is Radio Moscow poking fun at the Americans. It was completely out of sync with the rest of the station's output.
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Another early edition of DX Juke Box, with input from my good friend Victor Goonetilleke. I sent him a tape recorder and plenty of cassette. I would phone him and he would record his answers on cassette and send them in. Phone lines were useless in those days. In this edition, Victor was still sending contributions on reel-to-reel tape, recorded at the studios of TWR. Photo when Victor visited RNW about 15 years later.
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A little over a month after taking over the programme, I was starting to phase out the music in DX Juke Box and bring in more equipment tests to replace the construction lessons. I got a lot of help from Wim Van Amstel. Basically just fooling around. And learning that editing was supposed to be done electronically in studios. So I found an old machine on the 1st floor and pirated it.
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For some reason this trip up North to Friesland to visit Radio Fryslan was digitized but never uploaded to this Media Network collection. So time to put that right. The picture is the modern studio centre. Very much smaller back then.
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Going through some cassettes on the last day of February and I discovered several cassettes of BBC's programme for shortwave listeners. World Radio Club and Waveguide. The earliest recording turned out to be from July 1977 which I recorded while at a DX camp in Austria. Nice to hear the voices of Peter Barsby and Henry Hatch.
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This edition had another Longwave update. We talk to John Ross Barnard about the attempts to get longwave radio out of the Isle of Man. Delta 171 seems to be a non-starter though. Web TV has challenges too. A personal computer program has been launched for the Lowe HF-150. Phil Murphy has comments about the program we did from Shanghai. Harald Kuhl sent a post-script on his trip to Shanghai. Long-distance trains have their own radio station. Lots of announcements discouraging spitting. And Jonathan picked up a Chinese wind-up radio - no spring like the Baygen version though.
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In this edition, Lodewijk Bouwens launches DRM at a conference in China on behalf of other Western broadcasters. (This is the earliest announcement we know of concerning digital shortwave radio). We also look at USA Digital Radio. Some good signals came out of RCI in Montreal this week on their 53rd anniversary. Bryan Clark has news that Tahiti has suddenly returned on 15170 kHz. The second half of the programme features an extended interview with Professor Doug Boyd, who is a specialist on Middle East Broadcasting. Satellite Television is booming. But what happened to the BBC’s attempts? When the first attempt failed, it spawned the launch of Al Jazeera. Radio is becoming increasingly FM orientated.
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Ignore all the email address and phone numbers mentioned in this edition of the programme. They are all obsolete. However, we have revived a new email address for reactions on these vintage editions as well as new video editions of the programme for 2021 - please email We started the Feb 1998 edition by previewing the results to the Big Survey. We investigate the first Audible Player (yes they are still going strong). In this case, the 1998 Audible player had a built-in FM radio. Fred Osterman will be in our Lightning special at the end of February 98. Andy Sennitt has news from Paraguay, where a military uprising was reported as a joke. Community radio has the go-ahead in Brazil. Radio Astronomers are complaining about interference from broadcast satellites. Professor John Campbell has an update on increasing bandwidth but network operators have responded. Campbell had some interesting predictions on the future Microsoft. He thought it would go the way of IBM. (I think he is right – in 2021 look at the popularity of Zoom compared to Microsoft Skype and Teams). Jonathan tells the story of the big bang at Flevo. And we were amazed at how many pirates had a transmitter ready to transmit on 5955 Khz. John Campbell has news about the pirates in the Eastern part of the Netherlands and North America. 6955 kHz is a popular channel. There are 500 new satellite transponders. We talk to in New Zealand about the Euro bouquet and what it costs to get into satellite. He had some very disparaging comments about Australian satellite TV. I am delighted to note Bob’s website is still around.
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During the lifetime of Series One, we had a great relationship with Steve Whitt of the UK’s Mediumwave Circle. They were kind enough to host our receiver reviews when the radio show ended. And they are . (If you think we should archive those reviews and other DX Publications, please tell us at ) In this programme, at the end of a cold, dark January, it was an excellent time to return to the topic of long-distance AM (Mediumwave) reception. Steve reported some strange conditions in the UK, normally only possible for listeners much further North in Finland and Norway. Even in 1998, some stations were closing down. But things were starting to go full circle. And there was excitement around the expanded band with stations like WJDM on 1660 (later ), WCMQ on 1700 kHz. There is plenty more coming about mediumwave – check out the which we posted on YouTube 10 years ago. The programme also deals with the failure of Asiasat 3, with expert commentary from Bob Cooper.
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This edition of Media Network covered updates on the numbers stations. But we started with news of unusual FM reception in New Zealand from Bryan Clark. Moscow has made a historic cutback to its output. We talk to Elizabeth Fox about broadcasting in Latin America. It was also time to renew the phone line to UK Numbers Station specialist Simon Mason to find out the latest on mysteries like the Lincolnshire Poacher, the Buzzer, and The New Star Station. This is an extensive interview with many off-air examples. Simon tells me (January 2021) that some are still running right now! .
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Happy New Year 2021. This is THE place for vintage editions of Media Network, the weekly communications programme as aired on the English Service of Radio Netherlands. This edition broadcast on January 2nd 1998 was unusual in that it was just under 50 minutes long because it fell on a holiday when the current affairs programme “Newsline” was missing. Diana Janssen and Jonathan Marks used the time to share the results of a major survey we conducted into sales of shortwave radios. In the early days of DX programmes from Radio Netherlands, it was often cheaper to build your own set. DX Juke Box even sent out plans to make them. But by 1998, it was much better to buy one. Which is why we compiled the “Receiver Shopping List” with quite a comprehensive guide as to what was on the market. In this programme we spoke with dealers like Bob Grove, Martin Lynch, Fred Osterman, Jack Summers, and contributors Mike Bird and Lou Josephs. These days there are some excellent sites dealing with restoration of these old radios. We recommend , and in particular. Please remember to support them.
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Christmas and New Year were traditionally quiet times at Radio Netherlands, with a lot of pre-taped specials. We didn't really know whether anyone was listening. But apparently, they were because we had plenty of feedback to report on in this last Media Network of 1996. So join us for some time travel, back to the birth of the Internet.
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I was delighted to discover in December 2020 that Neil Carleton of Almonte, Ontario, Canada remembers us. We remember him. We originally got in touch with him because of his fascination for stamps connected with radio and his spot on HCJB, Quito. He must have owned the world's more comprehensive collection. But he also used shortwave radio for teaching. Here are some links to his more recent work. RADIO IN THE CLASSROOM Making connections across the curriculum with shortwave listening and amateur radio was a grand adventure each year during my teaching career. Early one morning nine students, one each from kindergarten to grade 8, had their questions about space answered by the Commander of the International Space Station as the crew passed high overhead in orbit. COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER During my retirement years I've enjoyed volunteering with a variety of community organizations. Creative pursuits and amateur radio have also been special interests. We also talked to Fred Vobbe of the US National Radio Club in more detail about AM DXing in the winter months. And Lou Josephs has been reviewing the new book from "shock jock" Howard Stern.
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So whatever happened to the world's first green radio station, Radio Safari? In late 1996, we followed up on a and met up with Andre Waters who had clearly identified a need for such a station in South Africa. But apart from that article and our report 12 months later, I can find no record of what happened to that project. Did it run out of money? Or is it around today under a different name. The same programme reports that Radio Canada International has been saved (again). Kiwi Radio in New Zealand is going to try another international test. We also discuss our methods in testing receivers. Especially figures for the dynamic range are a hot topic for debate amongst other reviewers.
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This programme includes a visit to the shortwave transmitter site at a small town lying 15 km north of in , . But the Wikipedia entry doesn't mention the radio towers that once broadcast the external service of Radio RSA during the apartheid era. Later it turned into Channel Africa, and spare airtime was rented out to other stations who wanted to reach Southern and Central Africa with a reliable signal. The trip to Meyerton was fascinating. So imagine my horror when the track with the interview I had done with Blackie Schwartz showed up as only 3 seconds long. Did I eject the disc too quickly? I sent the disc to Sony to see if the recording could be recovered. And 4 months later, they said they had recovered the file. Sure enough, it plays perfectly. These days the towers in Meyerton are silent, though recent time-lapse photos by would indicate that the towers are still there. So what will happen from 2021 onwards?
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