The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the British Government. It is the world's largest international broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week. In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz ; above the medium frequency band (MF), to the bottom of the VHF band.
International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was the country's sole means of long-distance communication.
NHK World-Japan is the international arm of the Japanese state-controlled public broadcaster NHK. Its services are aimed at the overseas market, similar to those offered by other national public-service broadcasters such as the British BBC, France 24 or the German DW, among many others. Contents are broadcast through shortwave radio, satellite and cable operators throughout the world, as well as online and through its mobile apps. It is headquartered in Tokyo.
Deutsche Welle or DW is a German public state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 30 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in English, German, Spanish, and Arabic. The work of DW is regulated by the Deutsche Welle Act, meaning that content is intended to be independent of government influence. DW is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Radio Canada International (RCI) is the international broadcasting service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Prior to 1970, RCI was known as the CBC International Service. The broadcasting service was also previously referred to as the Voice of Canada, broadcasting on shortwave from powerful transmitters in Sackville, New Brunswick. "In its heyday", said Radio World magazine, "Radio Canada International was one of the world's most listened-to international shortwave broadcasters". However, as the result of an 80 percent budget cut, shortwave services were terminated in June 2012, and RCI became accessible exclusively via the Internet. It also reduced its services to five languages and ended production of its own news service.
Radio Netherlands was a public radio and television network based in Hilversum, producing and transmitting programmes for international audiences outside the Netherlands.
Radio Havana Cuba is the official government-run international broadcasting station of Cuba. It can be heard in many parts of the world including the United States on shortwave frequencies. Radio Havana, along with Radio Rebelde, Cubavision Television and other Cuban radio and television broadcasts to North, Central and South America via free-to-air programming from the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite over the Atlantic Ocean and via Internet streaming.
Radio Moscow, also known as Radio Moscow World Service, was the official international broadcasting station of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1993. It was reorganized with a new name: Voice of Russia, which has also since been reorganized and renamed Radio Sputnik. At its peak, Radio Moscow broadcast in over 70 languages using transmitters in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba.
Shortwave listening, or SWLing, is the hobby of listening to shortwave radio broadcasts located on frequencies between 1700 kHz and 30 MHz. Listeners range from casual users seeking international news and entertainment programming, to hobbyists immersed in the technical aspects of radio reception and collecting official confirmations that document their reception of distant broadcasts (DXing). In some developing countries, shortwave listening enables remote communities to obtain regional programming traditionally provided by local medium wave AM broadcasters. In 2002, the number of households that were capable of shortwave listening was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.
Glenn Hauser is an internationally known American DXer and radio host from Enid, Oklahoma. He produces and presents a weekly 30-minute program, World Of Radio, heard on a number of non-commercial AM and FM stations throughout the U.S. and worldwide on shortwave.
HCJB, "The Voice of the Andes", was the first radio station with daily programming in Ecuador and the first Christian missionary radio station in the world. The station was founded in 1931 by Clarence W. Jones, Reuben Larson, and D. Stuart Clark. HCJB now focuses on Ecuador with unified programming on FM at 89.3 MHz in Pichincha, at 92.5 MHz in Manabí, at 96.1 MHz in Tungurahua and Cotopaxi, at 98.3 MHz in Esmeraldas and with separate programming on AM at 690 kHz. Broadcasts in Spanish and indigenous languages on 6.05 MHz (1 kW), continue on an intermittent basis with a new solid state transmitter which in 2017 replaced an older (5 kW) transmitter. These broadcasts were not listed on the HCJB English website as of February 2016.
DXing is the hobby of receiving and identifying distant radio or television signals, or making two-way radio contact with distant stations in amateur radio, citizens' band radio or other two-way radio communications. Many DXers also attempt to obtain written verifications of reception or contact, sometimes referred to as "QSLs" or "veries". The name of the hobby comes from DX, telegraphic shorthand for "distance" or "distant".
MW DX, short for mediumwave DXing, is the hobby of receiving distant mediumwave radio stations. MW DX is similar to TV and FM DX in that broadcast band (BCB) stations are the reception targets. However, the nature of the lower frequencies used by mediumwave radio stations is very much different from that of the VHF and UHF bands used by FM and TV broadcast stations, and therefore involves different receiving equipment, signal propagation, and reception techniques.
Radio Sweden is Sweden's official international broadcasting station. It is a non-commercial and politically independent public service broadcasting company.
United Nations Radio was created on 13 February 1946. In 2017, United Nations Radio and the UN News Centre merged to form UN News, producing daily news and multimedia content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Swahili, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Hindi. In its new iteration, UN News Audio continues to produce daily news and feature stories about the work of the UN and its member countries in eight languages for more than 2,000 partner radio stations around the world.
CMT Europe was a European television channel. It was a European version of Country Music Television.
World War II Radio Heroes: Letters of Compassion is a book by psychologist Lisa Spahr, co-authored with Austin Camacho, that recounts her personal investigation of the activities of shortwave radio listeners who notified families of captured U.S. military personnel of their status as prisoners of war during World War II. It documents Spahr's search to locate and thank the listeners who wrote letters to her great-grandmother reporting details of her grandfather's capture and internment in a German prison camp in 1943.
Arne Skoog was born in 1913 in the northern Swedish province of Jämtland. He died on 7 June 1999 aged 86.
George MacClaren Wood III is an American journalist who has worked at Radio Sweden since 1975, He was born in Berkeley, California on August 10, 1949, and grew up in Piedmont, California. He has degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of California, Berkeley, and participated in the university's Education Abroad Program to Lund University in Sweden, 1969-1970.
