DX LISTENING DIGEST 5-218, December 20, 2005 Incorporating REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING edited by Glenn Hauser, http://www.worldofradio.com Items from DXLD may be reproduced and re-reproduced only if full credit be maintained at all stages and we be provided exchange copies. DXLD may not be reposted in its entirety without permission. Materials taken from Arctic or originating from Olle Alm and not having a commercial copyright are exempt from all restrictions of noncommercial, noncopyrighted reusage except for full credits For restrixions and searchable 2005 contents archive see http://www.worldofradio.com/dxldmid.html NOTE: If you are a regular reader of DXLD, and a source of DX news but have not been sending it directly to us, please consider yourself obligated to do so. Thanks, Glenn For latest updates see our Anomaly Alert page: http://www.worldofradio.com/anomaly.html Latest edition of this schedule version, with hotlinks to station sites and audio, is at: http://www.worldofradio.com/radioskd.html NEXT BROADCASTS OF WORLD OF RADIO 1297: Mon 1900 WOR RFPI [repeated 4-hourly thru Tue 1500] Wed 0030 WOR WBCQ 7415 Wed 0100 WOR CJOY INTERNET RADIO plug-in required Wed 1030 WOR WWCR 9985 WRN ON DEMAND: http://new.wrn.org/listeners/stations/station.php?StationID=24 OUR ONDEMAND AUDIO [also CONTINENT OF MEDIA, MUNDO RADIAL]: http://www.worldofradio.com/audiomid.html or http://wor.worldofradio.org WORLD OF RADIO 1297 (real high): (stream) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1297h.ram (download) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1297h.rm WORLD OF RADIO 1297 (real low): (stream) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1297.ram (download) http://www.w4uvh.net/wor1297.rm WORLD OF RADIO 1297 (mp3 high): (download) http://www.obriensweb.com/wor1297h.mp3 WORLD OF RADIO 1297 (mp3 low): (download) http://www.obriensweb.com/wor1297.mp3 (lower download) http://www.piratedxer.com/worldofradio_12-14-05.mp3 (lower stream) http://www.piratedxer.com/worldofradio_12-14-05.m3u (WOR 1297 summary) http://www.worldofradio.com/wor1297.html WORLD OF RADIO PODCASTS: www.obriensweb.com/wor.xml First broadcasts of WORLD OF RADIO 1298: Wed 2300 on WBCQ 7415 Thu 0000 on WBCQ 18910-CLSB Thu 2130 on WWCR 7465 ON DEMAND: From early UT Thursday change 1297 above to 1298 ** ALBANIA. Re: With the situation in Albania, we should check whether any or all of the CRI relays are still running on SW (Glenn) I have just heard 1400-1557 French 11920 / 240 deg to NoAf; 13670 / 240 deg to NoAf and 1500-1557 Turkish 7120 / non-dir to TURK; 9565 / non-dir to TURK have both just opened up and so all four transmitters are currently on air via CER today Dec. 20. I don't hear TWR Russian via SHI on new frequency 11615 or even old frequency 7325 at 1445 as reported by Observer (Nov. 21) but the service is on air via MOS (Moosbrunn) on 9495. Freq change for TWR in Russian from Nov. 20: 1445-1600 NF 11615 SHI 100 kW / 033 deg, ex 7325 // 9495 MOS 100 kW / 055 deg (Noel R. Green (NW England), Dec 20, dxldyg via DX LISTENING DIGEST) Sendepause bei Radio Tirana --- Below a message from Radio Tirana German service to Volker Willschrey: They were told that the transmission facilities are defective. Right now the ``defective`` Fllaka transmitter is booming in with TWR programming on 1395 ... FROM: Astrit Ibro TO: Volker Willschrey SENT: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 8:29 AM SUBJECT: Re: Herzliche Grüße aus Radio Tirana Lieber Volker, es stimmt seit dem 5. Dezember gibt es keine Sendemöglichkeit. Man hat uns gesagt, es gibt ein Defekt bei der Sendeanlage und wir kämpfen dafür, dass wir wieder zu unseren Hörerinnen und Hörern kommen. Zur Zeit senden wir auf keine Fremdsprache. Astrit Ibro (via Kai Ludwig, DXLD) ** ALBANIA. Dear Glenn, Pleased to say that Radio Tirana is back. Am listening to them on 7465 kHz, 1952 UT 12/20. 7530 is also present. Best Wishes (Christopher Lewis, England, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** AUSTRALIA. Winter [sic] B-05 for CVC International via DRW=Darwin: Chinese to China 2200-2300 on 9865 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg 2300-0200 on 15500 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg 0400-0600 on 15250 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg 0600-1200 on 17635 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg 1200-1500 on 13685 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg 1500-1800 on 13695 DRW 250 kW / 340 deg English to South East Asia 0900-1100 on 11955 DRW 250 kW / 316 deg English to Indonesia 0600-0900 on 15335 DRW 250 kW / 303 deg 1100-1800 on 13635 DRW 250 kW / 303 deg Indonesian to Indonesia 2300-0200 on 15250 DRW 250 kW / 290 deg 0400-1000 on 17820 DRW 250 kW / 290 deg 1000-1300 on 15365 DRW 250 kW / 290 deg 1300-1700 on 7245 DRW 250 kW / 290 deg (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** AUSTRIA. Winter B-05 for CVC International via MOS=Moosbrunn: English to West Europe 1000-1100 on 9760*MOS 050 kW / 295 deg *DRM mode (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** CANADA. 1260, KHJ, location unknown, 0245-0317 playing C&W gave weather, high of -3 tomorrow, slogan Today`s Country KHJ. 12/20/05. Station not in data base at radio locator (Norbert 26, ABDX via DXLD) CKHJ - 1260 - Fredericton NB, per many hits on Google. You aren't in my database, so since you didn't mention where you were, I am hoping this is a good catch for you (Mike Hawkins, ibid.) Pretty good catch from R.I., considering I would normally fight 1260 Radio Disney, Boston semi regional. Came right in stomping on them and knocked them out (Norbert, ibid.) Good old 1260 CKHJ, formerly CIHI Stereo 126 back when it was Hot AC, compressed to pieces, and would knock off the air with the bass line from Timmy T's "One More Try". They used to have a 3 tower array with a thin peanut shaped pattern at night and the most awful NIF [nighttime interference free] contour at night. It didn't quite cover all of Fredericton proper. Drive to the Regent Mall - THE BIG MALL - and you could hear them blasting and fading at night. Omni by day, radiating equally poorly in all directions. Very tidy looking transmitter site from the road. I saw something somewhere about CKHJ changing to a two tower array with a cardioid day and night. Maybe Brent knows if this ever came about. I know their nighttime signal is good here in PEI and it used to be the pits. Funny thing is that they are still on the air, owned by Astral Media, while 550 CFNB with its killer coverage flipped to FM and abandoned its historic calls. Also owned by Astral (Phil Rafuse, PEI, ABDX via DXLD) So are they trying to pass for an American station, lopping off the C, even an LA one? (gh, DXLD) ** CHILE. Winter [sic] B-05 for Voz Cristiana via SGO=Santiago: Portuguese to Mexico and Central America [sic! I still think this is for Brasil --- gh] 0000-0400 on 11745 SGO 100 kW / 060 deg 0400-1100 on 11890 SGO 100 kW / 060 deg 1100-2400 on 15485 SGO 100 kW / 060 deg Spanish to Central America 0100-0400 on 15585 SGO 100 kW / 340 deg Spanish to Northern South America 0100-0600 on 11655 SGO 100 kW / non-dir 0600-1200 on 9780 SGO 100 kW / non-dir 1200-0100 on 17680 SGO 100 kW / non-dir Spanish to Southern South America 0000-1200 on 6070 SGO 100 kW / 030 deg 1200-2400 on 9635 SGO 100 kW / 030 deg (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) Interesting that 17680 is non-dir; used to be on the 340 degree beam right at us; that would explain why it is not as powerful as before (Glenn Hauser, OK, DX LISTENIING DIGEST) ** CUBA [non]. Besides an hour on Miami 670 and 1550 stations, there is still nothing but 9955 mentioned at the R. República website http://www.radiorepublica.org/ Now we have a third new SW frequency reported, 6135, presumably starting at 2200? Along with 5965 at 0000 and 7110 at 0300, an hour each? So far, site(s) unknown. No clues in HFCC (Glenn Hauser, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) Viz.: USA [sic], 6135, R. República, December 19th, 2255, Spanish, anti Castro program, announcement of new frequency 6135 followed by words of Pope John Paul II, ID: "Ésta es Radio República, voz del Directorio Democrático Cubano, transmitiendo para Cuba en 9955 kHz en la banda de 31 metros. Radio República con fé en la victoria"; O=4 vy 73 (Michael Schnitzer, Germany, HCDX via DXLD) Yes, heard here Dec 20 at 2200 s/on on 6135 (Steve Lare, Holland, MI, dxldyg via DXLD) Hola Glenn, Saludos desde Catia La Mar, VENEZUELA. Radio República, estación anticastrista y desinformadora, captada el 19/12 a las 2352 UT, en los 6135 kHz. Fortísima señal. Con promociones y horarios de transmisión. Según ellos mismos: "Voz del Directorio Democrático Cubano". Total ausencia de jamming. Interfería de manera fatal a Radio Líder, en 6140v. Cesó emisiones a las 00 UT y después se mudó a 5965 kHz. ¿Desde cuándo esta emisora usa esas frecuencias? (Adán González, Catia La Mar, Estado Vargas, VENEZUELA, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** DENMARK. Time running out to hear Radio Denmark --- Just a reminder that time is running out to hear news in English from R. Denmark. The station is easy to receive (almost all day long here in north west England) on 1062 kHz and 5 minute English news programmes can be heard at 0930, 1605 and 2100. However, the medium wave transmitter is due to close on 31 December. Regards (Paul Bann, BDXC-UK via DXLD) As in Copenhagen Calling? ** ECUADOR. Glenn, Received this mail from Christer Brunstrom and Henrik Klemetz during the day. It is a great loss for all of us. I have the sad duty to report that Björn Malm passed away in his home in Quito, Ecuador, on November 29 following a major heart attack. Thus the DX community has lost a member who contributed immensely to our knowledge of contemporary radio in Latin America. I have known Björn for more than 40 years. I still remember our first meeting in the town of Lysekil, Sweden. Björn and a few other local DXers had come together to form a DX Club. Björn was undoubtedly one of Sweden's foremost DXers with a strong interest in medium wave DXing. For the past several years he has been living in Quito, Ecuador, with his wife Susana. Christer Brunström, Sweden El colega Christer Brunström me avisa que nuestro amigo Björn Malm falleció el 29 de noviembre de un paro cardíaco. Para los aficionados al diexismo la desaparición de Björn es un rudo golpe. Su sitio web http://www.malm-ecuador.com deja un claro testimonio de su desinteresada y abnegada labor en pro de la radioafición. Para su esposa Susana y demás deudos y familiares presento mi más sentido pésame. Henrik Klemetz (via Thomas Nilsson, Sweden, Dec 20, DXLD) O, what another sad loss, confirming our fears (Glenn) ** ETHIOPIA. In DXLD 5-211, referring to the Voice of Ethiopian People website, you mentioned "Amharic text mentions 1998 --- when it was founded?". In fact, Ethiopia still uses the Julian calendar, and is therefore some seven years and eight months "behind" the Gregorian calendar. However, to make matters a little more confusing, I found in Ethiopia that printed texts tended to use the Julian calendar when written in Amharic, and the Gregorian calendar when written in English! (Alan Roe, Teddington, UK, DX LISTENING DIGEST) O my; and their clox are funny too (gh, DXLD) ** FINLAND. Frequency change for YLE Radio Finland in Finnish & Swedish from Dec. 7: 1500-1600 NF 9660 POR 500 kW / 130 deg, ex 9705 (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** GERMANY. Winter B-05 for CVC International via WER=Wertachtal: English to West Africa and Nigeria 0500-0700 on 9430 WER 125 kW / 180 deg 0700-0900 on 15640 WER 125 kW / 180 deg 1500-1800 on 15680 WER 125 kW / 180 deg 1800-2000 on 9765 WER 125 kW / 180 deg 2000-2100 on 7285 WER 125 kW / 180 deg (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** GREECE. Re: Katerina also said this would be the last show for 2005. So the next two Saturdays will be repeats, or default to Greek language something? (gh) Dearest Babis, greetings. Thank you. I think they will have the connection with all the ERT programs of the radio. They adjust the programming to the holidays and this is what they do every year. Se filo, Katerina (via John Babbis, DXLD) Glenn: I sent Katerina that bit from your web site of December 17, and this is her reply. It looks as though Voice of Greece will go to regular holiday programming instead of repeats of "Greeks Everywhere (John Babbis, MD, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** GUAM. It is intended that the new "Wavescan" will be an Asian ed. only (though the info will be worldwide), and it will therefore be on the air only from KSDA-Guam. As far as Jan 6 is concerned, I think that what AWR-Singapore is doing is identifying the weekend, that is, the first weekend in January, rather than the specific date, though they may intend to air on Fridays anyway. Sked for new "Wavescan" is Sunday at 1600 on 9585 & 12065, 1730 on 9980, both 100 kw (Adrian Peterson, IN, DX-plorer via DXLD) Only times? Lotsa other daily English broadcasts from KSDA. We had been filing this under SINGAPORE [non]. Bob Padula has changed his mind, per mentions on HCJB DXPL, and despite Singapore executing an Australian, he will participate (gh) ** HONDURAS. Inactiva: La Voz Evangélica de Honduras en 4820v (al menos no audible en Venezuela). (Adán González, Catia La Mar, Estado Vargas, VENEZUELA, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** INDONESIA. Some daytime logs: Nabire (``nuh-BUYER``, says Jeff Ingram) 7290 0830-0855*; Makassar 9552 *0000-0400; Jakarta 250 kW 9680 *2200-0400+; Sorong 9743 0230-0400+ (Bob Padula, Melbourne, EDXP Report, HCJB DX Partyline Dec 17, notes by gh for DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** INTERNATIONAL VACUUM. AMATEUR STATION HEARS MRO AT 45 MILLION MILES Paul Marsh M0EYT has successfully received signals from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at a distance of 45 million miles, see http://www.southgatearc.org/news/december2005/mro_45million_miles.htm and http://www.science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/19/041205.shtml?tid=160&tid=14 73 (Trevor M5AKA, monitoringmonthly yg via DXLD) WTFK? (gh) The MRO transmits on Deep Space Network channel 32 which is 8439.444444 MHz. By the time that reaches Earth, due to doppler the frequency has dropped to around 8439.031 MHz (from southgate story above, via DXLD) ** IRAN. Iranian state radio and TV have not stopped playing Western music, as some foreign agencies reported earlier. Source: Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, in Persian 1545 gmt 20 Dec 05 (via BBCM via DXLD) ** IRELAND. RTÉ (the Irish radio / TV broadcaster) will start a three- month DAB trial in the greater Dublin area - their first since 1999! Full article is at: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/story/1073221.html (Francis Byrne, Yahoo DAB group, via Mike Barraclough, DXLD) WTFK?? ** ITALY. I am interested to know how the Vatican and Italy can licence religious stations that operate outside of Europe's (and most of the world's) MW band. I know many receivers do work on these frequencies and are presumably designed for the USA's extended AM band. Here in the UK what we call the medium wave band extends from 531 to 1602 kHz and anyone broadcasting outside of an official broadcast band is accused of causing interference to emergency radio channels. Vatican Radio are known to operate on the out-of-band frequencies of 526 and 1611 kHz, so there appears to be a third out- of-band MW transmitter now on 1620. Back in 1970 a North Sea pirate radio ship attempted to use 1611, but was not only heavily jammed by the government but was also accused of interfering with marine radio communications. Perhaps these problems don't exist in Italian waters and 35 years later these transmissions are allowed to not only continue but expand? Who is the real pirate? (Andy Cadier, BDXC UK via DXLD) Vatican's 527 kHz transmitter moved to 585 a good few years back. All the best (Tim Bucknall, UK, ibid.) You are making an assumption that the station is licenced to use that particular frequency by some government body. How effective is radio regulation and its enforcement in Italy? (Mike Barraclough, ibid.) Fair reception of this new Italian station here last night around 2300 UT with talk in Italian and full ID at 2355 "Radio Papa Giovanni Paulo Secondo". (Dave Kenny, Caversham, Berks, Lowe HF225 Europa / Wellbrook K9AY, ibid.) 1620, R. Giovanni Paolo II, December 20th, 0700, Italian, inauguration of Pope John Paul II, "Habemus Papam", ID: "Ascolta anche tu la radio dei giovani, ascolta Radio Giovanni Paolo Secondo" (hear also you the radio of the youth, hear Radio Giovanni Paolo II); O=2 (Michael Schnitzer, Germany, HCDX via DXLD) Ah yes, play on words (gh, DXLD) I heard it too here on the island of Gotland. Good reception here too. I tried to email them, but their mailbox is full! 73 and a Merry Christmas to you all from (Björn Fransson, HCDX via DXLD) ** MEXICO. Saludos cordiales, ya se puede escuchar en la página web de R. Insurgente la última transmisión realizada el 19 de diciembre del 2005. http://www.radioinsurgente.org/index.php?name=archivo 19.12.2005 Nuevo, preparatoria de la otra campaña y entrevista con radio sabotaje 14MB/28MB Escuchar a 32 kb | 73 Felíz Navidad y próspero año 2006 (José Miguel Romero, Burjasot (Valencia), España, dxldyg via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** NEW ZEALAND. Frequency changes for Radio New Zealand International: DRM service from Dec. 8 to All Pacific 0800-1059 NF 9765 RAN 050 kW / 000 deg, ex 9460 1300-1650 NF 7230 RAN 050 kW / 000 deg, ex 7220 DRM service from Dec. 9 to NE Pacific, Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands 1651-1750 NF 11745 RAN 050 kW / 035 deg, ex 11610 (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** PARAGUAY. Inactiva: Radio Nacional del Paraguay en 9737v, desde hace varios meses (Adán González, Catia La Mar, Estado Vargas, VENEZUELA, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** PORTUGAL. Deleted frequencies for RDP Internacional, Radio Portugal in Portuguese from Dec. 1: Mon-Fri 0600-0855 Eu 9755 0900-1055 Eu 11875 1100-1300 Eu 15140 1700-2000 Eu 11630 Tue-Sat 0000-0300 NoAm 9410 13770 Sat/Sun 0800-1455 Eu 15575 1500-1755 Eu 11635 1300-1800 NoAm 17745 Updated schedule for RDP Int. R. Portugal in Portuguese from Dec. 1: Mon-Fri 0600-1300 Eu 9815 0745-0900 Eu 11660 1100-1300 SoAm/Af 21655 21830 1400-1600 ME 15690 1700-2000 Af/SoAm 17680 21655 Tue-Sat 0000-0300 NoAm/SoAm 9715 11980 13700 Sat-Sun 0800-1055 SoAm 17710 0800-1455 Eu 11875 0800-1655 Af 21830 0930-1100 Eu 9815 1100-2100 SoAm 21655 1300-1700 NoAm 15575 1500-1755 Eu 11960 1700-1900 NoAm 17825 1700-2100 Af 17680 1800-2100 Eu/SoAm 11630 11740 1900-2100 NoAm 15540 Special 1300-1700 NoAm 15575 txions 1700-1900 NoAm 17825 (extra) 1900-2400 NoAm 15540 2100-2400 Eu/Af/SoAm 9460 11825 15555 (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** ROMANIA. PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR 2005 ON RRI Dear friends, after a one-year break, RRI resumes a traditional and quite successful opinion poll conducted among its listeners. We challenge you to give us your opinions on which of the personalities of the moment have mostly contributed in 2005 to the world's progress. RRI is getting ready to designate the "PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR 2005 ON RRI" based on your suggestions. Who will be the personality of the year and especially why? Will it be a politician, an important opinion leader, a business person, a Church representative, a famous athlete, artist or scientist? We are looking forward to learning your suggestion as well as the reasons behind them. Please sent us as soon as possible your answers by fax at 00 4021 319 05 62, by filling in the form posted on our website under "Forum", by e-mail at engl @ rri.ro or eng @ rri.ro or by snail mail at the following address: Bucharest 1, PO Box 111, G-ral Berthelot, 60-64 Romania. As usual we will announce who the "PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR 2005 ON RRI" is in our programmes of January 1st 2006 (via Swopan Chakroborty, India, DXLD) ** RUSSIA. Re: JOE ADAMOV PASSED AWAY --- This is SO sad --- I met Joe on a number of occasions and he was here in Atlanta for a Monitoring Times convention many years ago. PS: He's the only one that can tell the KGB plumber joke!! RIP (Maryanne Kehoe, GA, ODXA via DXLD) I had occasion to speak with Joe Adamov once whilst on duty at the CBC. Shortly after the Chernobyl disaster in the spring of 1986, but before the full extent of the disaster had been acknowledged by the Soviet government, Mr. Adamov was to be interviewed on CBC radio. The audio circuits were routed through TV Master Control from where I onpassed the feed to Radio MCR next door. While setting up the circuit, I asked the person on the other end to identify his location to confirm that the correct source was online. He said "this is Moscow" and I was sure I recognized the voice. On a whim, I asked "is this Joe Adamov?" to which the reply came, "yes, it is." I just about fell over. I told him that I was a long-time listener to Moscow Mailbox which started us on a very brief but pleasant chat. He was charming and witty - his command of the English language was astonishing. I would later become somewhat disillusioned when, on radio (As It Happens??), he denied vehemently that anything "disastrous" had occurred and that reports of a nuclear accident were untrue. As it turned out only days later when the Finns reported elevated radioactivity in their atmosphere downwind from Chernobyl, the Soviets would finally admit that there had been a fire and meltdown at this ill-fated plant. It was the beginning of "glasnost" and my conversation with Mr. Adamov preceded it by mere days. I have often wondered what his interview would have been like had the Soviets already admitted to the scope of the accident. I would ask myself, too, how could such a man of obvious integrity and humanity lie through his teeth like that? It occurred to me that he perhaps did not know the full extent of the disaster and was as in the dark about it as virtually everyone else; a victim of his own government's secretiveness. His speech at the Monitoring Times Convention in Atlanta confirmed the depth of his humanity and concern for the truth and he did not duck the responsibility for the disinformation he was required to report. He received a long and loud standing ovation at that event (Ori va3ori - va3xw Siegel, ODXA via DXLD) ** RUSSIA. 5960, Radiostantsiya Tikhiy Okean, full-data multi-colored card in 29 days (!) for a taped rpt, no V/S on card but enclosed personal ltr had Alexey Giryuk as the author. This for $2 and SAE and label -- only the label was used (John Sgrulletta, NY, DX-plorer via DXLD) ** SOUTH AFRICA. Winter [sic] B-05 for CVC International via MEY=Meyerton: English to Central and South Africa 0515-1545 on 9555 MEY 100 kW / 005 deg (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** SUDAN. 4750, R. Peace, poor at 0350 Dec 16 with a male chorus singing what seemed religious songs; almost chant-like; male ancr at 0400 with ID and the clear word "Peace" in what seemed African- accented EG; then back to choral singing with voiceover talk by male ancr; the mx audio was almost fair; the voice audio was poor to very poor; fragmentary audio by 0415; this parallels what Ralph Brandi reported on Oct 17. A very strange propagation evening here with almost no So.Am stns audible on either 60 or 90 m., even the powerhouse R. Rebelde having a hard time making it here! (Jim Ronda, OK, DX-plorer via DXLD) ** TANZANIA. 5050, RT, very pleased to have Dar es Salaam back on the air, 1810 Dec 16 Swahili music and talks (G. Victor A. Goonetilleke, Sri Lanka, DX-plorer via DXLD) Yes, audible also here in Finland on 5050.05 at 1920 (Mauno Ritola, Finland, ibid.) ** UKRAINE. Hello, Glenn! Thank you for the letter. Sunday, December 18, 2005, 9:48:54 PM, you wrote: GH> Alex, I know this is a very radical idea, but would it not cost less and be much more efficient to buy one hour of time for RUI in English on some Caribbean or even North American relay site, I have thought this way too, but first of all we must get access to satellite feeder - this is a problem for our radio company bearing in mind severe lack of finance. But the first step on this way NRCU has done already - RUI is now on "Express AM22" 53E. GH> and turn off your big transmitter for the winter? But this transmitter can be heard sometimes also at other parts of the world anyway, so let him work with satellites and Internet in parallel, by possibility. Also we are planning to replace Mykolaiv's transmitting site with more effective Lviv's one. On 49m today around 0400 UT there was good propagation from NAm. So I heard slight QRM to RUI on 5910 kHz from "Marfil Estereo". They have corrected the frequency to normal, so the buzzing was absent today. At the same time, WWCR heard better than usually on 5070 with SINPO 2/3-4-4-3-2/3. Dear Glenn, could you please examine for me some frequencies in 49m, for example 5895 and 6240 at 0000-0500 UT? I don't hear any essential QRM here in Kyiv except VOR on 5900. -- Best regards, (Alexander Yegorov, NRCU, Kyiv, Ukraine, via DXLD) ** U K. BBC BULGARIA GOES SILENT DEC 23 http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=56783 Politics: 19 December 2005, Monday. BBC Bulgaria will air its last one-hour program December 23 at 6 pm local time, the Bulgarian section of the British broadcaster announced. BBC Bulgaria listeners will have the opportunity to hear interviews with journalists from the times of the Cold War and learn more about the highlights in the radio's 65-year history. At the end of October BBC World Service announced 10 foreign language services, including the broadcast in Bulgarian, will be closed next year. The move is part of a 30 million pounds restructuring of the World Service and will fund the launch of an Arabic-language television service. The channel will initially broadcast 12 hours a day and will be the BBC's first publicly funded global TV service. Broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai will cease by March 2006. The World Service now provides news in English and 42 other languages and is funded by a Foreign Office grant (via Zacharias Liangas, Greece, DXLD) ** U S A. Radio Shack and the VOA are similar in one major respect: they both lost their sense of focus in recent years, tried being everything to everybody and could not possibly end up pleasing nearly anyone with such a diverse clientele, and likely will go out of business within the next 5 to 10 years, or just gradually fade away to insignificance over a longer period of time (Roger Chambers, Utica, New York, ODXA via DXLD) ** U S A [non]. Frequency change for Voice of America in Korean: 1300-1500 NF 9385 TIN 500 kW / 325 deg, co-channel R. Pakistan Urdu from 1330, ex 15250 (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) Tinian ** U S A [non]. Radio Netherlands RFE/RL documentary This week's Radio Netherlands documentary by my colleague Hélène Michaud takes a look at the current role of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty played a crucial role in the struggle against communism. But with the collapse of the Iron Curtain, they needed a new purpose. After the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, they were mobilised to support the United States’ war on terrorism, in an unprecedented effort to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Now, more than half the 28 language services managed by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty broadcast to parts of the world that are predominantly Muslim. Hélène examines this change in focus, and asks whether the ambition to provide impartial information can be reconciled with the demands of US foreign policy. The documentary can be heard tomorrow (Thursday [you mean Wednesday? + UT Thursday]) on shortwave as follows: Australia/Asia/Far East: 1027 UTC on 7315, 9795, 12065 kHz New Zealand: 0527 UTC on 11710 kHz Eastern North America: 1227 UTC on 9890 kHz, 0027 UTC on 6165 kHz Central North America: 0127 UTC on 6165 kHz Western North America: 0157 UTC on 6165 kHz South Asia: 1429 UTC on 9345, 12080, 15595 kHz Africa: 1827 UTC on 6020, 9895, 11655 kHz, 2000 UTC on 7120, 9895, 11655, 17810 kHz Repeated on Friday: Australia/Asia/Far East: 1500 UTC on 9345, 12080 and 15595 kHz Africa: 1900 UTC on 7120, 9895, 11655 and 17810 kHz Repeated on Sunday: Australia/Asia/Far East: 1430 UTC on 9345, 12080 and 15595 kHz North America: 1930 UTC on 15325, 15525 and 17725 kHz Africa: 1930 UTC on 7120, 9895, 11655 and 17810 kHz Also available online via the Weekly Archive http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/listeningguide/weeklyarchive The permanent archive link will be published later (Media Network, 20/12 via Mike Barraclough, swprograms via DXLD) ** U S A [and non]. PSYOP: Missed Perceptions By Jason Vest, GovExec.com December 1, 2005 http://www.govexec.com/features/1205-01/1205-01s1.htm No one is sure how well psychological operations have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's not stopping efforts to step them up, using contractors to do it. From the State Department to the Pentagon, winning hearts and minds is an increasingly important element of U.S. national security strategy. But while Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes has been the highest-profile example of U.S. public relations in action, the Defense Department quietly has been tinkering with its own systems of overseas influence. Among these are psychological operations, or PSYOPS. But after-action reports on the invasion of Iraq are skeptical about PSYOPS' success, and a psychological operations unit in Afghanistan recently tried to "demoralize" the enemy by desecrating Islamic corpses. Questions about these matters have led some policymakers to wonder how enhancing PSYOPS will complement other elements of military information operations, such as public diplomacy and public affairs. In addition, increasing reliance on contractors to conduct these operations is raising eyebrows, especially because the contract prices aren't small and some firms hired have murky pasts. Psychological operations, defined by the military as the "systematic process of conveying messages to selected foreign groups to promote particular themes that result in desired foreign attitudes and behaviors," traditionally have been the nearly exclusive purview of the 4th PSYOPS Group (Airborne) of the Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the military services have shown renewed interest in mass persuasion. For example, two-and-a-half years ago at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army unveiled its Special Operations Forces Media Operations Complex, a 51,756-square-foot facility replete with all the tools 4th PSYOPS requires - printing presses, studios and digital audiovisual production facilities - in the service of producing materials to win hearts and minds wherever the U.S. military finds itself in the world. Col. James A. Treadwell, the 4th's commander, said at the time that the facility's opening "marks PSYOPS as a growth field." But PSYOPS had entered a boom phase well before the new complex's ribbon was cut. From the post-9/11 involvement in Afghanistan to the end of what have been termed "major combat operations" in Iraq, Army PSYOPS units produced a deluge of media, including but not limited to 150 million flyers and leaflets and more than 20,000 radio broadcasts in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in the wake of Baghdad's collapse, there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction that a virtually uninterrupted flow of PSYOPS material had played a critical role in hastening the almost anticlimactic end of Iraq's military. But when the Army's mammoth Operation Iraqi Freedom lessons-learned report was published in 2004, it revealed that PSYOPS weren't all they were cracked up to be. Part of this had nothing to do with quality; some PSYOPS units had been incredibly useful, but failed in their duty as "force multipliers" simply because there weren't enough of them. This was hardly surprising, as PSYOPS accounts for only 4,800 soldiers, 76 percent of whom are reservists. But the report also concluded that, for reasons that had nothing to do with numbers, PSYOPS simply hadn't had as profound an effect as some had thought. Not long after the lessons-learned report, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board - echoing an earlier Defense Planning Guidance report and a somewhat neglected 2003 Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap" - concluded that when it came to conception and coordination of strategic communications, including PSYOPS, the military's efforts had languished. The board strongly endorsed a number of nascent structural and philosophical efforts at Defense and elsewhere to win a global battle of ideas. So about two years ago, Treadwell was ordered from piney Fort Bragg to subtropical Tampa, Fla., where, from MacDill Air Force Base, he now commands one of the newest and perhaps least known elements of Special Operations Command: the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element (JPSE, or more colloquially, "gypsy"). Described in official literature as a unit comprising "more than 50 senior military and civilians with a deep knowledge of psychological operations," JPSE's raison d'être isn't to horn in on the Army's PSYOPS turf, but rather to spare commanders across services and commands the agony of going through multiple layers of bureaucracy for support. And, according to a press release earlier this year, JPSE is devoting itself not to the darker aspects of psychological warfare but to propagating truthful messages. In addition to facilitating more agile PSYOPS support, JPSE also is beginning to do something psychological operations traditionally hasn't: consider the big picture, according to Professor Philip M. Taylor of England's University of Leeds. "PSYOPS has really only worked in tactical/operations contexts, but in today's global infosphere, there's no longer any such thing as tactical information - everything has a strategic capability. This is where PSYOPS has traditionally been weak," says Taylor, one of the world's leading experts on psychological operations, public diplomacy and propaganda, and a consultant to the American and British governments. "JPSE is a recognition that 4th PSYOPS has been quite effective at the tactical/operational levels but less so at the strategic, and is part of the roadmap by which all components of information operations are to become more closely coordinated than they have thus far." Policymakers have realized, he adds, that mechanisms of delivery and the messages themselves have to be integrated. Nancy Snow, senior research fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and adjunct assistant professor with USC's Annenberg School for Communication, adds that when it comes to trying to create a unified front in the practice of strategic communications, it's not uncommon for each tactical element to see itself as holding the magic strategic bullet. Thus, it's devilishly difficult to bring order to communications chaos, leading Taylor to wonder whether such integration, including that of PSYOPS, can be accomplished. A Mixed Bag PSYOPS have been a part of American military and intelligence endeavors since World War II. They range from above-board and even earnest to devious and mendacious. One of the problems with persuasion and perception manipulation is that success is not always easy to gauge and can become the subject of fierce debates. Policymakers and practitioners alike are grappling with this reality as they seek to figure out the PSYOPS part of a larger strategic communications equation. Pre-invasion airdropped leaflets, for example, historically have been intended to affect a population by countering disinformation, promoting ideology and image, and appealing to the survival instincts of soldiers and civilians. Studying the leafleting efforts of the Army's 4th Psychological Warfare Group in 2002-2003, two University of Texas professors found that the majority of leaflets dropped on Iraq were of the survival motif, exhorting Iraqi soldiers to quickly surrender and imploring Iraqi civilians to shelter in place during the invasion, as well as to preserve their oil facilities. Given the quick collapse of the Iraqi military and the lack of refugee crisis that certain Pentagon planners were convinced was inevitable, some observers, including the Texas professors, posited that the 4th's leafleting efforts played a key role in the successful invasion. Yet as some in the military noted then and later, there was no metric for objectively determining this. "In retrospect, [the leaflets] did seem to have the effect intended," wrote Lt. Col. Steven Collins in "Mind Games," a paper published in the summer 2003 issue of NATO Review. But, he added, just as PSYOPS is geared to slant perceptions, so too, can perceptions slant the analysis of psychological operations. The problem with the leaflets was "the problem with all PSYOPS actions: the difficulty in determining the cause of behavior during a war. Did the Iraqi military melt away primarily as a result of PSYOPS, or of bombing by coalition aircraft, or of lack of logistical support, or a combination of all three?" At best, Collins concluded, PSYOPS' role "remains an important variable to determine." In early 2004, the Army Command General and Staff College's Combined Arms Research Library published a detailed study of major combat operations in Iraq. Its conclusion: PSYOPS were at best a mixed bag. "PSYOPS units can point with satisfaction to success in minimizing damage to the oil fields and keeping civilians off roads," it said. "However, they do so with risk since there is very little evidence available yet to support that contention. . . . Moreover, the PSYOPS effort enjoyed far less success in encouraging Iraqi units to surrender. . . . PSYOPS produced much less than expected and perhaps less than claimed." Such considerations have led some to wonder whether military efforts such as JPSE are neglecting ways to improve PSYOPS in its strongest areas, tactical and operational, by beginning to dabble in the strategic. In a 2004 briefing, Marine Col. G.I. Wilson and two retired military officers observed that the problem with PSYOPS has less to do with the operations themselves and more to do with how they are, or are not, integrated into existing combat forces. Holding that psychological and information operations should be incorporated into every basic military consideration, Wilson and his colleagues suggested that in places such as Iraq, "regional fusion centers" should be established where the tactical and strategic mission specialists could work together to help frame and guide ongoing operations. Similarly, a recent National Defense University study held that the priority for PSYOPS should be doctrinal and structural reforms focused on the tactical level, because it's impossible for military PSYOPS to adequately compensate for a weak national strategic communications program. And, says Taylor, even the most ambitious and effective PSYOPS reform can be easily undermined by soldiers' actions, for example, desecrating Afghan bodies or the Koran. "Democracies are their own worst enemies in this field," he says. "It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment," even over U.S. soldiers. 'Sorry, It Wasn't Us' Further, Taylor adds, groups contracted by the government to do PSYOPS or related work and analysis also can do damage. "There are plenty who have messed up and been fired; there are risks," he says. "But if the attitude is 'Something has to be done,' who is going to do it? There are so many PR firms willing to take bucks from the U.S. government. "Outsourcing is either a sign of recognition that the military is not terribly good at certain types of persuasion, or a way of distancing the U.S. government from the messages. If that company then does something which is controversial, the government can say, 'Sorry, it wasn't us, but we'll fire the company that did this supposedly in our name.' " Those concerned about the state of both PSYOPS and contracting paid close attention to JPSE's June announcement that it was giving indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contracts to three contractors for media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis. While JPSE commander Treadwell said the initial contracts were likely to be in the $250,000 range, the potential maximum value of each tender, $100 million, stirred great interest as did the choice of contractors. It wasn't necessarily surprising that Arlington, Va.-based defense contractor SYColeman got one of the JPSE tenders, based on its formidable number of existing contracts with the Pentagon; media work, however, is not something the company lists among its core competencies. Similarly, while San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. has dozens of offices worldwide devoted to administering its Pentagon contracts, most of SAIC's work has been in the areas of engineering, systems and quantitative analysis, not media. Indeed, the last time it won a contract for media work - specifically, setting up post-Saddam television operations in Iraq - it performed with such ineptitude that the company was excoriated not just by the Pentagon inspector general and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., but also by its former project manager. SAIC ultimately lost that contract. Also inviting curiosity has been Lincoln Group, which despite having virtually no public profile and no demonstrable history in strategic communications - and having gone through multiple changes in name and orientation in less than three years - has landed two major media contracts with the U.S. military in the past year. "A lot of these things go on if not in secret, [then] kind of out of view with very little tracking or public accountability, and as such, we don't really know when things go wrong," says USC's Snow. "But none of it really addresses whether any of this will have any impact if the people they're trying to reach just won't have any of it because we have unpopular policies." (GovExec.com Dec 1, 2005 via N. Grace, DC, USA for CRW via DXLD) PSYOP: WHAT'S LINCOLN GROUP? GovExec.com December 1, 2005 http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=32892 It's tough to follow the history of Lincoln Group, a contractor that won a $100 million contract with the Special Operations Command to assist with psychological operations. The common denominator to the firm's history is Christian Bailey, listed on its Web site as executive vice president, capital markets. After graduating from Oxford University in England in the 1990s, Bailey moved to the San Francisco area around 1998, and in 1999, founded Express Action, an e- commerce company he apparently later sold. In the Nov. 15, 2002, issue of HedgeWorld Daily News, Bailey was identified as the founder and chairman of a New York-based hedge fund called Lincoln Asset Management. On March 1, 2003, the Alternative Investment News reported that Lincoln Asset Management had an initial $100 million in commitments to underwrite a leveraged buyout fund to acquire defense and intelligence companies. In 2003, the Lincoln Alliance Corp. (a subsidiary of Lincoln Asset Management) made its debut, presenting itself primarily as a purveyor of what it called "tailored intelligence services" for "government clients faced with critical intelligence challenges," and as an Iraq business development catalyst. Its Web site listed no officers, principals or partners, but described operations as focused on an ambitious mix of political campaign intelligence and commercial real estate. With one office in Baghdad and more projected, Lincoln would act as a clearinghouse for U.S. and foreign companies doing business in Iraq, providing "the information, research and contacts necessary to develop and grow businesses" in the post-Saddam era. During this time, Lincoln appears to have maintained a business address at 1130 17th St. NW in Washington, and shared phone and fax numbers with Omnicept, a firm located at the time at 1432 T St. NW. Omnicept described itself as an "advanced information technology and systems design firm" and "analytic and intelligence firm" comprising "experts whose experience encompasses military intelligence, education and academia, big business, money managers, political activists, law enforcement, entrepreneurs, artists, and more." Paige Craig was listed at the same phone numbers as Omnicept's September 2003 point of contact for Internet solicitations for interns. He also represented Lincoln as vice president at the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority's Nov. 19, 2003, Industry Day in Crystal City, Va. According to phone records, the T Street address was a residence with listings for Bailey and Craig. In late 2003 or early 2004, however, the Lincoln Alliance Corp. became Iraqex, and in a Sept. 27, 2004, Agence France Press news story, was referred to as "a U.S. firm involved in a range of activities from manufacturing construction materials to providing logistics for U.S. forces." In October 2004, it apparently added communications to its repertoire, scoring a $6 million contract from the Multi-National Corps-Iraq (formerly known as Combined Joint Task Force-7, which had operational control of all troops in Iraq) to design and execute an "aggressive advertising and public relations campaign that will accurately inform the Iraqi people of the coalition's goals and gain their support," as the contract's August 2004 request for proposal put it. O'Dwyer's PR Services Report, an influential public relations trade publication, struck a somewhat skeptical tone in its coverage of the tender. MNC-I's contract officer refused to disclose the five other bidders. Bailey said "more information would be forthcoming" about Iraqex and its efforts. Little came, save a November 2004 brief in the trade publication, PR Week, that reported, "Iraqex has a policy of not speaking to the press regarding its work, but has hired 5W PR as its mouthpiece," and quoted 5W PR's chief as saying of Iraqex, "We have more experience working in Iraq than any other firm or organization anywhere in the world." Oddly, at the December 2004 Destination Baghdad Expo in Iraq, Iraqex listed itself as Iraq-based, but provided only its Washington telephone and address. Then, in March 2005, it changed its name yet again, to Lincoln Group, a communications and PR firm "providing insight and influence in challenging and hostile environments." And on June 11, along with SYColeman and Science Applications International Corp., Lincoln Group got its JPSE contract. While the group's current Web site does list noteworthy examples of successful endeavors apparently part of its MNC-I work, some find it curious that a firm set up by two thirty-something guys has come so far so fast. Also giving pause has been the company's apparent tendency to solicit staff by way of internships. And it is curious that records of Bailey's Republican affiliations have disappeared from certain Web sites since the JPSE contract was announced. Bailey was a founder and active participant in Lead21, a fund-raising and networking operation for affluent young Republicans, some of whom have gone on to serve in the Bush administration. Click on the links to Lead21's site today and no mention of Bailey is to be found. But on a subscriber business and social networking site, there's an archived e-mail of Bailey discussing setting up a New York branch of Lead21, and his "personal network," which lists a half-dozen members of the organization's current board, including the chairman of the California Republican Party and the senior policy adviser to the Justice Department's chief information officer. "These are going to be the big supporters, the big donors to the Republican Party in five years' time," Bailey told The New York Times in an Aug. 31, 2004, video interview during a Lead21 party at the Republican convention in New York. Neither JPSE nor Lincoln Group responded to verbal or written requests for interviews, but the Project on Government Oversight has reservations. "Any time we see leaders who cultivate political influence for a particular party suddenly receive major government contracts, it sends up red flags," says POGO spokeswoman Beth Daley (GovExec.com Dec 1, 2005 via N. Grace, DC, for CRW via DXLD) Public Diplomacy: IT'S PROPAGANDA TIME By Walter Jajko, The Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2005 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-jajko2dec02,0,7860067.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions CRITICS OF THE Iraq war are outraged over the revelation that the U.S. military has been paying millions of dollars to plant pro-American, Pentagon-written propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers and to buy off Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends. But in my opinion, it's about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long - to its own detriment - ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well- suited to the globalized Information Age. Even third-rate countries routinely use information and disinformation as an instrument of foreign policy, often against the United States. The U.S., in turn, cannot win the war of ideas by speaking softly or keeping its mouth shut. But we have been doing just that. The United States Information Agency, the only open, global information organization run by the U.S. government, was abolished in 1999, supposedly because it served no purpose in the post-Cold War world. It has not been replaced. U.S.-sponsored entities such as Radio and TV Marti (which broadcast to Cuba) and Al Hurra, the U.S. television station broadcasting to the Arabs, have proven ineffective. We need to be using all the means available in the war of ideas: public diplomacy, psychological operations, influence agents, disinformation and computer information warfare - from open and overt to clandestine and covert, from public explanation of policy to secret subversion of enemies. All of these must be well-orchestrated. Our current situation is quite a turnaround from the Cold War years. In 1953, the CIA's celebrated Cold War information and disinformation arm - centered in the "Mighty Wurlitzer" propaganda offices of OSS veteran Frank Wisner - was an enormous operation, with thousands of employees adept at planting press and radio stories, engaging with labor unions, applying economic pressure, offering direct monetary payments and waging political and cultural warfare in an all-out effort to prevent European countries from falling to the communists. According to a 1977 New York Times investigative series, the CIA owned or subsidized, at various times, more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. In some cases, these were used for propaganda efforts; in other cases, they served as covers for other operations. Paid CIA agents infiltrated a dozen more foreign news organizations, and at least 22 U.S. news organizations employed American journalists who were also working for the CIA. Nearly a dozen U.S. publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA. Today, this kind of effort has ended, and it is now unimaginable. Few American officials know how to play this game, and fewer would risk doing so. The left has argued that this shouldn't be done - that it's unethical, it's dishonest, it's a violation of journalistic standards. Our use of information today is insufficient, limited to disjointed efforts: the State Department's passive, reactive and defensive public diplomacy; the Defense Department's tactical, battlefield psychological operations; and the CIA's limited covert influence operations. Examples abound. The State Department only seldom (and belatedly) has provided Arabic-speaking interviewees to refute stories on Al Jazeera. The CIA never did establish a clandestine radio station to propagandize against the Iranian mullahs. Each of the few weak, unconnected information efforts has been undertaken episodically, coordinated haphazardly and funded poorly. Each ekes out its existence as transient tools accepted only in extremis, facing resistance from apathetic agencies, clueless congressmen and misinformed media. A permanent leadership is needed in the form of a new Cabinet department that can knock together heads to force integrated influence activities - a Ministry of Propaganda, if you will. Some influence operations are cheap, such as distribution of opinion pieces to newspapers; some are expensive, such as setting up a satellite television station; some are technically sophisticated, such as spreading disinformation into government computer networks; many are simple, such as immediate, vigorous, undiplomatic rebuttals by U.S. ambassadors to false accusations. But all require commitment by the national leadership. In the war against Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, aggressive, relentless and exhaustive attacks are needed, including arguing against the terrorists' theological heresies, rebutting their lies, undermining their popularity, blackening their reputations, falsifying their public and private communications, publicizing intelligence against their fellow-traveler friends and jamming their radio, television and computer networks. America's failure to use the indispensable instrument of information to protect its own national interests is inexcusable, especially as it wages a protracted war to the death against Islamic terrorists to preserve democratic governance, a free society and Western civilization. WALTER JAJKO, a retired Air Force brigadier general and former assistant to the secretary of Defense for intelligence oversight, is a professor of defense studies at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. His views are not those of the Department of Defense (The Los Angeles Times Dec 2, 2005 via N. Grace, DC for CRW via DXLD) ** U S A. Many of Clear Channel's stations are licensed under other operating names, for reasons only a lawyer could explain. (I'm not a lawyer.) Any time you see Capstar, Citicasters, Jacor, AMFM, Chancellor, or a few others as the licensee name, that's CC (Scott Fybush, NY, ABDX via DXLD) ** U S A. WCRB'S FATE BECOMES CLEARER --- The future of one of eastern MASSACHUSETTS' most powerful FM signal is a little clearer this week - but Greater Media's announcement that it's entered into exclusive negotiations to buy WCRB (102.5 Waltham) from Charles River Broadcasting raises just as many questions as it's likely to answer. The answers, first: Charles River's decision to sit down at the table with Greater Media closes the book (most likely) on several months of talks with potential buyers that included Clear Channel, Entercom, Infinity, Marlin and, reportedly, the Boston Red Sox. Neither Clear Channel nor Infinity has said anything publicly about what their intentions for 102.5 would have been. Marlin's Woody Tanger says he would have kept WCRB's classical format, but his bid, in the $60 million range, fell far short of Charles River's target. Entercom's Julie Kahn told Boston media outlets that she would have moved the rock format of WAAF (107.3 Worcester) to 102.5 and kept classical alive on 107.3. The Sox would no doubt have created a sports station on the frequency, in what would have been a major challenge to Entercom's market-dominating WEEI. So what will Greater Media do with the full-market 102.5 signal, if it's able to complete a deal with Charles River (likely for an amount somewhere north of $90 million)? The company's already at the FCC-imposed limit of five FM signals in the Boston market. Four of those are full-market signals, transmitting from the Prudential Tower (WBOS 92.9, WTKK 96.9, WROR 105.7 and WMJX 106.7). The fifth - and the one Greater Media would no doubt spin off if it acquires WCRB - is country WKLB (99.5 Lowell), which transmits from Andover, with an excellent signal over Boston's northern suburbs, the Merrimack Valley and southern New Hampshire, but without the reach into Boston or the western and southern suburbs that Greater Media would like to have. So it's likely that WKLB's country music would come to rest at 102.5 on the dial (with classical music continuing on the HD Radio subchannel there, if Charles River gets its wish), and that 99.5 would then hit the market - and what then? That 99.5 signal may not be full-market for Boston, but that hardly makes it undesirable - in fact, it's not hard to imagine it bringing a price even higher than the $60 million or so Tanger would have paid for 102.5, which in turn means that 99.5 is unlikely to end up as a classical station when the dust settles. (It doesn't help that the 99.5 signal is weakest in many of the areas where WCRB's listenership was strongest; can you run a Boston classical station that can't be heard at Symphony Hall?) Will the other potential WCRB buyers be in the market for 99.5? Who else might find that signal desirable - and in particular, will the concentration of Hispanic listeners in the Merrimack Valley, where the signal is strongest, interest growing Spanish broadcasting groups like Univision, SBS, Bustos or even the hometown Costa-Eagle in spending the kind of money it would take to put a Spanish FM on the air in the market? That's sure to be a major topic here as 2006 dawns --- stay tuned! (Scott Fybush, NY, NE Radio Watch Dec 19 via DXLD) ** U S A. WDET-FM (101.9) GOES NEWS TALK IN DETROIT --- WDET ISSUES STATEMENT ABOUT FORMAT CHANGES - December 19, 2005 BY FREE PRESS STAFF In the week since public radio station WDET-FM (101.9) overhauled its format, criticism from unhappy listeners seems to only have grown. On Sunday, a group of about 100 people met in Detroit to develop plans for a series of formal protests against the station, which replaced its weekday schedule of music programming with syndicated news shows from National Public Radio. They also launched a Web site, http://www.SaveDetroitRadio.com Late Monday afternoon, WDET general manager Michael Coleman issued a statement he titled "An Open Letter to WDET Listeners." The text of the statement follows: "In the past few days, I and other employees at WDET, have heard from many of you. The letters, phone calls and e-mails were thoughtful, heartfelt and passionate. I understand the role WDET plays in your life, and because of that, every time the station has made changes over the years listeners have been very vocal about how they felt. This time was no exception. I've heard from people who were disappointed in the new programming and from people who are very supportive of it. Regardless of how you feel, know that these decisions were painstakingly difficult, made with tremendous consideration and focused on the mission WDET has to serve our entire metropolitan Detroit community. The rationale for the changes were very straightforward * to save and strengthen this important public radio service. That being said, change of any kind is seldom easy. Many listeners have been critical of the new programming based on an idea that "WDET got rid of all the music programming and is all news and talk." While I appreciate such comments, they demean the many fine, dedicated music hosts of which WDET is quite proud. It's unfair to dismiss the great contributions to Detroit culture by ignoring people like Ed Love, Gene Elzy, Ralph Valdez, Chuck Horn, Liz Copeland, Michael Julien, W. Kim Heron, Jon Moshier, Matt Watroba, Larry McDaniel, and Robert Jones. These talented hosts continue to produce, what is without question, the most comprehensive radio music programming in Detroit. The focus on the loss of the mid-day music shows neglects the contributions of these other outstanding programs. WDET is not, nor ever has it ever been, about only a couple of individual shows. Rather it's a collection of programs taken in its entirety that make up a public radio service. We have 11 unique music programs that offer 77 hours of locally produced, Detroit focused, radio that feature all kinds of music. Other listeners have questioned the timing of the new programming. I'll share with you that following the close of the fiscal year on September 30, in which the station had a deficit of $300,000, the fall pledge drive that immediately followed fell more than $100,000 short of its goal. Those factors, in addition to the steady erosion of listeners (including listeners to mid-day music programs) demanded action to be taken quickly in order to save this valuable radio service. When Walter P. Reuther, then president of the UAW, handed WDET over to Wayne State University in 1952, he asked the University to continue to use the station "*to make a contribution to the advancement of the overall cultural and educational activities of our community." I believe our programming continues to address that mandate and it has the support of WSU President Irvin D. Reid and the WSU Board of Governors. Detroit is my hometown. I believe it deserves a premier public radio service that is sustainable financially and that's what we're planning to provide. You may have already noticed the increase in our local newsbreaks throughout the day. Stay tuned in the coming months for a new local public affairs program that will allow us to sincerely examine the many complex challenges facing our community in a way that only public radio allows. Also, look forward to a new local cultural affairs program that will feature performance, insight, news and conversations about our community's rich arts and cultural life. These programs will set new standards in public and cultural affairs programming. I want to thank you for taking the time to write, call or e-mail. If you have now come back to WDET or continue to support the station, I'm looking forward to your help in building a stronger, more inclusive and dynamic Detroit Public Radio. If you are disappointed with the new programming, I hope that you will reconsider and give us the opportunity to present to you all the fine music and news programs we now offer. Respectfully, Michael Coleman, WDET General Manager" http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051219/NEWS11/51219017 (via Kevin Redding, ABDX via DXLD) ** U S A. No promises, but I`ve been posting on the dxldyg this perishable info. For example: Quick check list of selected Holiday specials, Tuesday Dec 20 + UT Wed 21 on webcasting public radio stations, derived from http://www.worldofradio.com/calendar.html#holiday where audio links may also be reached. Strictly UT: 23-24 KUAC CHANTICLEER XMAS 23-24 WIAA SCHICKELE MIX: FARGO XMAS 23-01 VPRc XMAS REVELS 00-01 KANU GLORIA 00-01 WBNI GLAD TIDINGS 00-01 WUSF BOSTON HANDEL & HAYDN SOCY 00- VPR VERMONT XMAS W/COUNTERPOINT WFSQ VERMONT XMAS W/COUNTERPOINT 00-02 WCPN PAUL WINTER SILVER SOLSTICE 01-02 WCMU PIPEDREAMS XMAS 01-02 VPRc XMAS W/CANTUS 01-02 WBHM VERMONT XMAS KHKE VERMONT XMAS 01- KHCC FRIENDS UNIVERSITY CANDLELIGHT XMAS CONCERT 01-03 VPR XMAS REVELS WBNI XMAS REVELS 01-02 KDAQ TASTE OF HANUKKAH 02-03 WABE VERMONT XMAS 02-03 KWBU WACO CHOIR & BAND XMAS 02- KBYU MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE XMAS 02-04 WVXU PAUL WINTER SILVER SOLSTICE 0206-03 WPLN NASHVILLE MANDOLIN ENSEMBLE 03-0330 KCRW A CHRISTMAS CAROL read by LIONEL BARRYMORE 03- MPBN SOLSTICE DREAMS/ENSEMBLE GALILEI WABE SOLSTICE DREAMS/ENSEMBLE GALILEI 03- KWBU MUSIC AT BAYLOR XMAS 03-05 KPBS SONIC SEASONINGS 04- WMUB JOY TO THE WORLD, WV JAZZ 04- KTEP GLORIA 04- KPBX XMAS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MET 05-06 NWPR BOSTON HANDEL & HAYDN SOCY 06-08 KCRB PAUL WINTER SILVER SOLSTICE 73, (Glenn Hauser, dxldyg via DX LISTENING DIGEST) ** U S A. Het from possible Wyo [KRND] this evening. Hi all, driving over to ham radio club meeting this evening (in Tampa FL) around 2315z, 1815 EST, checking 1630 for the reported Wyo operation about 100 Hz low. There was indeed a noticeable low het for about 2 minutes, loud enough to create pronounced garble on the dominant WRDW Augusta, with 2 or maybe 3 other audios underneath. By 1820 it was completely faded out (I did not hear any sharp dropoff). Maybe a trace at 1825 but after that, nothing except the loud Augusta and one under. I am thinking this is quite close to LSS out there. If I had a good sharp receiver and a BOG this would have yielded audio, but on a Delco car radio, the tuning options are limited. And an off-frequency signal will make a het at maybe 20 dB less than needed for audio. Conditions seemed decent, fair WLS 890 under the Cuban, and WHO poking through local on 1040, and a question as to whether evening or morning is the optimum shot for this. Others around here have pulled some audio already, but in morning. Any word on their exact powerdown time in Dec? Fond memories of the Colo Dizzy on 1690 when there were just 2 signals there a couple of years ago, at winter sunset. Ran into Pete KZ1Z tonight and a nice chat (Bob k2euh Foxworth, Tampa FL, ABDX via DXLD) Hey Bob, Sunset time for Cheyenne is 4:30 pm [MST = 2330 UT] right now. Over at KEVA where I work, we don't power down, so I had to look it up. KRND has been doing some weird stuff lately. I can tell you this much --- lately they have been BOOMING in here. Yes I do usually get them at night but they seem unusually LOUD lately. LOUD and CLEAR and nothing else can make it through 1630. Didn't use to be like this. So I'm not gonna accuse cheating but I really think something is going on. That and their audio is crap right now. VERY loud with a good deal of distortion. I'd bet money they're over-modulating. Don't know if this helps but this is what I'm hearing. It wouldn't surprise me if they were indeed a little off frequency and could cause hets. They need some major help in the engineering department over there. I remember a day just a few years ago when they were KKWY and it was country and in beautiful AM Stereo and sounding great (Michael n Wyo Richard, ABDX via DXLD) ** U S A. 96.9 FREE RADIO IN SAN DIEGO IS BACK ON THE AIR http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/5580686/detail.html Pirate Radio Station Returns To Airwaves Operator: Renting To Station Is Not Illegal POSTED: 3:51 pm PST December 19, 2005 UPDATED: 6:49 pm PST December 19, 2005 SAN DIEGO -- Free Radio 96.9 -- a pirate station that was shut down by the Federal Communications Commission in July -- is back on the air with a signal that sounds stronger than the last one. IMAGES: Pirate Radio Reopens The station broadcasts from a small, rented shack in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego. The operators have returned to the same location -- despite the fact that federal marshals raided the building and tore down the antenna less than six months ago. The new antenna appears to be taller than the first, NBC 7/39 reported. "They can send as many goombas out as they want," a 96.9 deejay said. "But, free speech is what we are all about, so we'll set up again." Devoted Free Radio fans said the anti-corporate message is refreshing. "I don't know what the latest statistics are, what, that six companies own the media?" asked Free Radio listener Justin Bergmann. "I mean, it's ridiculous." "I don't think it's so much a violation of the law as it is making a statement about our values and the values of the media," said Free Radio listener Eneri Rodriguez. "It's a decision they've made and it's empowering." The risks for an unlicensed station include thousands of dollars in fines and prison time, NBC 7/39 reported. The owner of the property said he was not worried because, as far as he knows, the operators of the station have applied for a license. The operators of the station could not be reached to respond to this story. "To my knowledge, I'm not doing anything illegal by renting to them," said South Park resident Dan Salter. "Do I go check their license and make sure they have one? No, it's not my job." Free Radio plays eclectic music ranging from gospel on Sundays to heavy metal, classical, indie and local, NBC 7/39 reported. The station also features regular deejays who host their own shows. Critics complain that the station operators use profane language (via Kevin Redding, ABDX via DXLD) ** UZBEKISTAN. Winter B-05 for CVC International via TAC=Tashkent: English to India 0100-0300 on 7355 TAC 100 kW / 131 deg 0300-0600 on 13685 TAC 100 kW / 131 deg Hindi to India 0100-0400 on 9570 TAC 100 kW / 153 deg 0400-1100 on 13630 TAC 100 kW / 153 deg 1100-1400 on 9500 TAC 100 kW / 153 deg 1400-1700 on 9855 TAC 100 kW / 153 deg (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ** VENEZUELA. Inactiva: YVTO en 5000 kHz, a pesar de promesas de reactivación lleva siglos muda (Adán González, Catia La Mar, Estado Vargas, VENEZUELA, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) casi ** ZAMBIA. Winter [sic] B-05 for Christian Voice via LUS=Lusaka: English to South and Central Africa 0400-0800 on 6065 LUS 100 kW / non-dir 0800-1700 on 9865 LUS 100 kW / non-dir 1700-0400 on 4965 LUS 100 kW / non-dir (Observer, Bulgaria, Dec 20 via DXLD) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIALS ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hola Glenn, quiero desearte que pases una feliz Navidad y que tengas un muy próspero Año Nuevo. Y aprovecho para fecilitarte por lo mucho que aportas al mundo de la radio. Un abrazo (Manuel Méndez, España) Aprovecho para enviar a tí, estimado Glenn, y a todos los colegas de la lista, un afectuoso saludo de Feliz Navidad y que el 2006 sea un año abundante en salud, buenos DX y mejor propagación (Adán González, Catia La Mar, Estado Vargas, VENEZUELA, Dec 20, DX LISTENING DIGEST) DIGITAL BROADCASTING ++++++++++++++++++++ TOO LATE FOR HD The people at iBiquity have made a fatal error. They were unable to put out a product before satellite radio got a foothold and became entrenched. IBOC is behind the 8 ball. The public has no idea that HD radio exists. The manufacturers did not put out much in the way of a product for this Christmas which was a VERY BAD mistake. I personally can't see the public running to get an HD radio anytime soon. I also can't see radio stations running to go IBOC unless the FCC mandates it and especially stations on AM will not be quick to embrace it. I certainly can't see the stations abandoning the hundred million or more so cars with analog radios in them during drive time. The only way that IBOC has a remote chance of success is to flood the market with CHEAP receivers. The manufacturers have not stepped up to the plate yet. For people putting their eggs in the IBOC basket, its not looking good right now. There is a good chance that this could flop worse than AM stereo unless the FCC mandates digital modes very soon. Something I hope never happens. There really is no public outcry for it, satellite radio and iPods made sure that radio is on the outside looking in. Kids left radio because the programming stinks, and IBOC is not going to fix the programming (Kevin Redding, Gilbert, AZ, WTFDA via DXLD) But in going thru public radio websites looking for holiday program listings, I see more and more of them with the HD logo displayed. BTW, I also see a number of them reviving the give-us-your-old-car promotion, just in time for a tax break. You might try your local public radio station, whether they are advertising that or not. Could they turn you down? (Glenn Hauser, DX LISTTENING DIGEST) Here on Cape Cod, we only have two local AM stations: WBUR-AM-1240 and WFPB-1170. Well, WBUR-AM-1240, which is a satellite of WBUR-90.9 Boston and has no local programming of its own, is now running IBOC. Other than the fact that its primary signal and sideband carriers are covering the frequency range of 1224-1256 kHz, I won't make any comment (Marc DeLorenzo, South Dennis, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, WTFDA- AM via DXLD) I just sent them a nice note (ha) to tell them how much I appreciated their destroying 30 Kh of precious bandwidth when they are only supposed to be allocated 10. I will probably be on some Homeland Security watchlist and sent to an interrogation center in Poland, so if you don't hear from me for a while, it`s been fun (Chris Black, ibid.) Well, a graveyarder with iboc! This would be a perfect time for Craig Healy to go out there in his truck with the IBOC radio and find out their daytime iboc coverage and find out how much area the iboc covers, say, around 5 pm. At least you'll still get Virgin Radio-1214. Bah (Mike Bugaj, Enfield, CT USA, ibid.) WWCN w/IBOC; 18 2140Z DEC 05; PVZ --- WWCN 770 N. Fort Myers, FL running IBOC from 754 thru 786 KHz. Tampa 760 SS, formerly strong at home & in car obliterated without loop as partially is 790 Miami, another strong station with local - albeit 'out of contour' thus 'improper' following. Poetically speaking, 770 audio is also masked by IBOCgassing. Live by the IBOC....... =Z.= PVZ MNSVT KY FL BT (Paul Vincent Zecchino, Dec 18, IRCA via DXLD) I agree with Kevin to an extent. But, satellite will never replace terrestrial radio. As y'all know, I work PT [part time] for Sirius. In fact, after I get cleaned up, I am attending the Sirius "Holiday" Memphis get- together. I FINALLY got my Sirius radio this week, and installed it. And, I must say, it will change the way you use radio -- totally. Heck, when the music never stops, that's a big draw. I am hooked on Strobe, the retro-dance channel (and I'm not even gay!). :) But, satellite has a few serious (no pun intended) flaws that traditional "stick radio" doesn't: 1. Signal. The main drawback to satellite is, well, it's on satellite. The 2.3 GHz downlink works fine in the open, but it doesn't make it well into buildings, and is not conducive to use on walkmans, etc. There are some work-arounds, but, they don't completely fix the problem. The density of a local FM signal doesn't allow for drop outs. 2. Audio Quality. Audio on satellite is very, very compressed. And, you can tell. WSM is on Sirius. When I can hear the terrestrial signal (which is tough here with a local on 640), the AM signal sounds about the same. FM signals sound brighter. I don't know how IBOC will sound, so we'll see how it compares. 3. It ain't free. 4. No local content. The deal struck to get this medium up disallows local broadcasting. People will always want to hear weather, news and traffic for THEIR 'burg. So, the NAB can cool its heels for now. The sky's not falling. Satellite is cool, though (Peter Baskind, J.D., LL.M., N4LI, Germantown, TN/EM55, ibid.) There are local traffic and weather channels for an increasing number of major markets (gh, DXLD) Re 5-216: Tnx for the input, Fred. One question I have is that, of all the mention of secondary programming I have seen, it has always been on FM. Here in Tampa the WUSF 89.7 early-adopter of HD is a booster of the secondary program capability, as do many of the NPR stations. Is there any sign of secondary programming on your AM signals there? Down here so far, we have one AM HD signal, WFLA 970 and in their locally originated talk segment (5 to 9 AM) I have yet to hear any mention of HD, let alone of secondary programming. I'd bet that if there were a secondary feed, it would just be another syndicated talk feed. To me the real value is the availability of formats otherwise un-doable. Your mention of AM "strong local signals" is in agreement with other comments I have seen. Now that we are in mid-winter it might be fun for you to try and hear WBZ 1030 in HD. Right now, local sunset in Boston is at 1615 EST and I think they have IBOC on until 1800 EST. Are they a possible target for you? There are very few instances I am aware of of reliable skywave reception of a decodable HD signal, the ones I have heard of are all anecdotal. Can you hear them in analog mode at your sunset? As another item of some interest, in today's (Friday) NY Times there is a half page ad from Tivoli for six attractive new radio-based products, nowhere do they mention any HD. 73, - (Bob Foxworth, FL, amfmtvdx via DXLD) There is not going to be any "second HD" programming on AM since the allotted bandwidth for AM stations is too narrow (they have to roll off to almost a NULL signal within 10 kHz) and they have to share this narrow bandwidth with an analogue signal. Another digital standard called DRM which is used in Europe and on shortwave (Radio Canada International broadcasts DRM transmissions to North America every afternoon on 9800 kHz) does NOT simultaneously transmit on top of an analogue signal and so has better fidelity than IBOC AM and also can have multiple digital "channels" on one carrier. Deutsche Welle broadcasts on DRM, one channel is a "high fidelity" transmission of music and news, the other is a web-site-like news service. Like IBOC, DRM on shortwave and AM produces LOTS of QRN to adjacent stations, and thus has MANY detractors among hard core DX'ers and hams (a DRM signal from Deutsche Welle on 3995 kHz in angering many 80 metre hams due to the tremendous interference that it causes – great fidelity on a DRM-capable radio, but LOTS of trouble to hams!). Here in Detroit, there are now 9 FM stations broadcasting multiple programming streams on their IBOC HD channels. The alternate streams are quite often more interesting program-wise than the main channels. One station has brought classical music back to the Detroit FM band on its secondary IBOC channel (Fred Einstein, N8UC – Detroit, ibid.) AM IBOC WILL FAIL DUE TO WASTED FIDELITY AND BAD PROGRAMMING The top FM stations in the LA market are so overprocessed that they sound awful. Distorted, hashy sound, that becomes so grating that you can't take it anymore. If the broadcasters had half a brain, they'd realize that they could make their stations sound so much better. But no, we have to be "LOUD". Sheesh (Brian Leyton, ABDX via DXLD) Are you sure it's the stations and not the source material? You hear the same kind of "loud is better" mentality in a lot of CDs. They've got 98dB of dynamic range and every single track has to use all 98. I have several recent CDs that I ripped to MP3s and initially thought had been poorly processed by the ripping or encoding software. But I go back to the source CD and every time it ends up the distortion (which is clear to my untrained ears and should be blatantly obvious to any decent sound engineer) is in the original. They've turned it to 11 when it should have been no higher than 8. Anyway, I guess the point is it's not just the broadcasters. The whole idea of marketing IBAC as a quality improvement is clearly misguided. If the majority of people cared about signal quality and clarity HDTV would have caught on like wildfire years ago. The reality is it's about the content. Shakespeare reads the same in a $1.98 paperback version as it does a $150 custom leather bound edition with gold leaf edges. I gave up watching broadcast TV in HD after about 3 weeks because the better picture and sound weren't worth sitting through the commercials. I'd rather have the mediocre picture and cruddy sound from my PVR and be able to watch when I want and skip the commercials. Most of the shows I'm watching for the story, not the brilliant cinematography, and the story is the same in standard definition as in HD. People didn't switch to FM for music because the music sounded better. They switched because they initially played better music and eventually because that's where you had to go if you wanted music. Very few people give a hoot about the quality of the signal as long as it passes some very minimal threshold. And the quality of the signal on talk radio? Nobody cares about that. As long as you can hear what they're saying, that's all that matters. (Jay Heyl, Temporarily in Orlando (and logging lots of new stations) DX-398 (and wishing I'd brought my AR7030 and QX Pro) ABDX via DXLD) You have a good point - I guess I really don't know for sure whether it's the broadcasters or the source material, all I know is that it sounds awful, and it's noticeably worse than it was just a few years ago (either that, or my hearing is going bad - which is probably not out of the question). Maybe it's just the music I listen to, but the CDs that I listen to (and admittedly, I haven't bought many in the last few years) sound a whole lot better on an MP3 CD in my car than anything I hear on the radio these days (Brian Leyton, Valley Village, CA (GMT -0800) DX-398 / RS Loop, ibid.) HOUSE BACKS COMPROMISE DIGITAL TV PLAN News | Posted by Brandon Hill on Dec 20th, 2005 from Reuters Congress has just put its foot down on when the final switch from analog to digital will occur for TV broadcasts in the United States. The government will also step in and help pay for converter boxes if families can't afford them so that they may continue to use their antiquated TVs: The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday approved legislation to complete the U.S. transition to new, higher-quality digital television by February 17, 2009, and to help consumers pay for the equipment needed to ensure their old televisions do not go dark. Under a deal negotiated by Republicans in the House and Senate, up to $1.5 billion would be available to help some people buy converter boxes to keep their old, analog-signal televisions working when the transition is finished. DIGITAL TV DEADLINE COULD BE 2/17/09 By David Lieberman, USA TODAY Congress is poised to make Feb. 17, 2009, the hard-and-fast date for the national conversion to digital TV — ending the more than 60-year era of analog broadcasts and potentially making millions of analog TV sets obsolete. The digital transition was included in a $40 billion deficit-reduction bill that the House passed early Monday. The Senate is expected to finish work on the measure later in the week and send it to President Bush for his signature. The government is eager for the transition to occur. Federal officials hope to collect more than $10 billion by auctioning off the spectrum now used for analog TV and allocating some of it to emergency services. The slow initial sales of digital TV sets put pressure on Congress to delay the transition date, which had been set for the end of 2006, or when 85% of a TV market could watch digital broadcasts. Under the legislation, people who want to keep their analog sets will be able to apply to the government for subsidies. Each household can get up to two vouchers, worth $40 apiece, that can help pay for boxes that convert digital signals to analog. The bill sets $1.5 billion aside for that purpose. But under the bill, people will have to request the vouchers to get them. And there's no guarantee that the fund will be large enough to cover everyone. "How many people are going to know they have to send an application to the Department of Commerce?" says Consumers Union's Gene Kimmelman. "There's something fundamentally unfair about making perfectly good analog TV sets go black because the government wanted to change things." The fund is intended primarily for owners of about 73 million television sets that now receive programming from over-the-air analog transmissions — and particularly the 21 million homes that don't have cable or satellite service. But Kimmelman says 85 million cable and satellite customers might also have to buy digital TVs or decoders. That's because federal law bars providers from "degrading" a broadcast signal, and the bill doesn't provide an exemption to convert broadcasters' digital and high-definition programs to analog. Still, trade groups involved in the debate applauded the bill. "We'll continue to work hard to educate consumers about the transition and to help prepare all Americans for the 2009 transition date," National Cable & Telecommunications Association CEO Kyle McSlarrow said in a statement. National Association of Broadcasters CEO David Rehr said his group is "encouraged that the legislation thwarts the cable industry's desire to degrade delivery of HDTV pictures to consumers." (via Zacharias Liangas, Greece, DXLD) Wonder why I should have to pay for something for others that I don't even want myself? I don't even consider TV a necessity, period, so I'm not sure why we should pay for anybody's but our own. Oh, I forgot, we have to help finance the industry so that the government can auction spectrum off. Hmm. How does that add up ? Soapbox mode - off (Russ Edmunds, Blue Bell, PA, WTFDA via DXLD) Political necessity. There's a belief - and again, I'm not saying I agree with it, necessarily - that the demand for spectrum for new services (commercial services like WiMax, MediaFlo, etc., as well as the perceived need for additional public-safety spectrum) is significantly greater than the amount of spectrum available. Analog TV takes up a huge amount of spectrum, and it doesn't use it very efficiently. Moving to DTV and turning off analog frees up some of that spectrum (channels 53-69) immediately, and more of it (the channels being given back from analog operation) down the road. Most TV broadcasters would disagree with the assertion that the government, or public money in general, is being used to finance them. From their perspective, this is an enormous unfunded mandate. With the exception of CPB-funded public broadcasters, the cost of new transmitters, new antennas, new towers in some cases, and so on is all coming right out of broadcasters' pockets. There's no immediate return on any of that investment, which can easily run into the millions of dollars if tower construction is involved. I don't know of a single TV station yet that's charging advertisers a premium to appear on HD programming, and very few broadcasters are even seeing any significant revenue from multicast channels. The broadcasters also won't see a penny in revenue from eventual spectrum auctions, for the most part. (There are a few exceptions - a handful of UHF stations on out-of-core channels are taking payments from Qualcomm and other would-be users of that spectrum to shut down their analog signals earlier than scheduled.) Left to their own devices, most broadcasters would opt for keeping their analog transmitters on the air as long as possible. That would make it impossible to move forward with auctioning the spectrum - and, like it or not - under the current regulatory environment in the U.S., the spectrum exists to be auctioned off. But rush into an auction and force the analog signals off the air before receivers are out there in large numbers for DTV, and you'll have every TV station in the country running editorials explaining how YOUR member of congress wants to "take your TV away." Perhaps Rick can tell us what ads like THAT would do to your average congresscritter's poll numbers. :-) Taking 20% (or possibly somewhat less; I've seen numbers as high as $10 billion for the value of the reclaimed analog TV spectrum) of the projected revenue from that auction to make low-cost converter boxes available may not be a perfect solution, but it provides the grease that gets the ball rolling to make the rest of the conversion happen. (And it is, in a way, a method to let the viewers who've enjoyed 60 years of free TV over their public airwaves benefit, slightly, from the auctioning off of those channels.) If there's a better solution out there (and just sticking with analog isn't it - there's been too much money spent along the DTV conversion path already to go back), there are a lot of broadcasters AND lawmakers who are dying to hear it (Scott Fybush, ibid.) Really? (gh) But how will the government address the inevitable issues of DTV reception? You give them DTV boxes, will you give them antennas too? What happens when you need a rotor to get the stations? Who will cover that? And what happens to those far enough away to not be able to receive the DTV signals, even with the gov't issued electronics? Rural America stands to lose over the air television thanks to the selfishness of the government. There will be plenty of locations in Nebraska that will have zero coverage (unless the translators can somehow be rigged up) from DTV. So what do these people do? I guess they give up on TV altogether if they can't afford the satellite service (which won't guarantee them local coverage anyway). Thanks to our farmers! Let's cut them off! And pass the corn please (Matt Sittel, NE, ibid.) One could argue that they're already the recipients of massive amounts of government subsidies --- but I won't go there. There is a provision in at least one of the versions of the DTV bill that would set aside a small portion of the auction revenues to fund translator conversions to DTV. I'm not sure if it survived into the version that passed today. I'd think that anyone in a rural area who depends on OTA TV would probably already have an antenna rigged up. (Remember, one of the unfunded mandates being imposed on broadcasters is a deadline to fully replicate their analog signal coverage on their DTV signal.) Or, more likely, they're getting local-into-local or distant network service via satellite, and won't even be aware when KOTA or KDUH or KSNB turn off the analog transmitter (Scott Fybush, NY, ibid.) The "bill" is actually a rider to the Budget Reconciliation act passed on Sunday. This bill, intended to cut government spending, is considered by some in government to be a cut. How is a $990 million handout for STBs and $1 billion for public safety communications upgrades a "Cut?" Because, in earlier versions, the numbers were in the $4 billion range. See, in government, deciding to spend less than you were thinking about spending before is a "cut," even though not a single penny ever went out the door. Washington math. BTW: in the current version, each household may get as many as two boxes, valued at ~$40 each. And, yes, I have seen numbers as high as $10 billion that may flow in from auctioning. But is that relevant? Well, really it isn't. The federal government continues to spend $1 billion +/- every day it hasn't got. Whose money is that? Mine, yours, ours; NOT theirs. Saying it flows through from some designated revenue source is smoke and mirrors accounting, and it's not even very sophisticated. Now, I also understand Scott's argument that forcing analogs to convert to DTV is an unfunded mandate. Scott is correct, I guess. But, broadcasters aren't unique here. As we speak, for example, your doctor is being forced to convert to electronic medical records. Who pays for it? Your doctor, my doctor, my wife the oncologist. And the cost? It's well into 6 figures; in larger practices, it may run $1 million+. And, it benefits the docs none at all. It will force a few solo practitioners out of the business. But, it saves Medicare a few bucks. And, that's just one example. Converting to DTV is simply a cost of doing business. Sorry. If you want to continue watching Will and Grace for free (and, yes, despite the tired scripts on that show that was once funny, NBC will probably still have it on -- what else have they got?) run to Wal-Mart in 2009 and buy a $40 STB. You can pick it up while you're there to get those free prescription drugs that the government can't afford. "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money"? OK, I feel better now. In all seriousness, as soon as I find a cite to the section in the current bill (which is doubtless a whopper), I'll make a proper reading of the act (Peter Baskind, J.D., LL.M., N4LI, Germantown, TN/EM55, ibid.) DTV TRANSITION 17 FEB 2009 If you haven't seen it on the WTFDA list, the House and Senate have agreed on a drop-dead date for analog TV. (17 Feb. 2009) The provision (it's part of a much larger budget package) passed the House Monday morning and was expected to pass the Senate later in the day. (news services have the annoying habit of not providing links to the House and Senate sites, nor even providing the reference S- or HR- numbers of legislation, making it awfully difficult to find the official Congressional reports of action...) Of course, consumers with analog TVs connected to antennas will lose service on this date. The legislation provides $990,000,000 to subsidize digital-to-analog converters for these consumers. Consumers could request up to two $40 vouchers for converters Now, while we're talking about financing an analog-to-digital conversion... *Another* such conversion is in process in broadcast spectrum. The 1990-2110 MHz band is the most popular frequency band for television live remotes. Most of the vans you see with their 40' pneumatic masts transmit in this band. Seven channels are available, using FM modulation. Approximately 1/3 of this band is being reassigned to mobile-phone use. Specifically, to Nextel. Simply chopping off the bottom two channels would be the easy way to accomplish the spectrum reduction. But seven channels already prove too few during major events, and that's in a city where only four TV stations are using the band. In places like Chicago where as many as seven stations or more are doing local news, a five-channel 2000 MHz band simply won't fly. So, we're digitizing. Each channel is being narrowed from 25 to 17 MHz, and digital modulation is to be used. (ironically with the COFDM modulation that was rejected for DTV broadcasts) In this transition, broadcasters aren't on the hook for *any* of the transition expenses. The government isn't either. *Nextel* is paying the bill. ALL of it. == (Doug Smith W9WI, Pleasant View, TN EM66, http://www.w9wi.com Dec 20, WTFDA Soundoff via DXLD) POWERLINE COMMUNICATIONS ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Re 5-217: Hi Glenn, TXU covers roughly the NE quadrant of the state. They're starting the BPL in the DFW area first (Jerry Lenamon, Waco TX, DX LISTENING DIGEST) PROPAGATION +++++++++++ The geomagnetic field ranged from quiet to unsettled with isolated active periods at high latitudes. Solar wind speed ranged from a high of about 580 km/s early on 12 December to a low of near 300 km/s late on 16 December. The period began with wind speed at about 580 km/s and the IMF Bz fluctuating between +/- 5 nT. These elevated conditions were due to a small coronal hole that became geoeffective during the last reporting period. By early on 13 December, wind speed had decayed to about 400 km/s. The IMF Bz did not vary much beyond +/- 5 nT for the remainder of the reporting period. The geomagnetic field during this time was mostly quiet with isolated active periods at high latitudes late on 12 December and again around midday on 17 December. FORECAST OF SOLAR AND GEOMAGNETIC ACTIVITY 21 DEC 2005 - 16 JAN 2006 Solar activity is expected to be at very low to low levels. No greater than 10 MeV proton events are expected. The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit is expected to be at high levels on 22 – 24 December, and 29 December – 04 January. The geomagnetic field is expected to range from quiet to minor storm levels. Isolated active periods are possible on 28 – 29 December, while minor storm periods are possible on 07 January due to effects from recurrent coronal hole wind streams. Otherwise, quiet to unsettled conditions are expected for the majority of the forecast period. :Product: 27-day Space Weather Outlook Table 27DO.txt :Issued: 2005 Dec 20 1823 UTC # Prepared by the US Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Environment Center # Product description and SEC contact on the Web # http://www.sec.noaa.gov/wwire.html # # 27-day Space Weather Outlook Table # Issued 2005 Dec 20 # # UTC Radio Flux Planetary Largest # Date 10.7 cm A Index Kp Index 2005 Dec 21 90 10 3 2005 Dec 22 85 8 3 2005 Dec 23 85 8 3 2005 Dec 24 85 5 2 2005 Dec 25 85 5 2 2005 Dec 26 85 5 2 2005 Dec 27 80 10 3 2005 Dec 28 80 15 3 2005 Dec 29 80 15 3 2005 Dec 30 85 10 3 2005 Dec 31 85 5 2 2006 Jan 01 85 3 1 2006 Jan 02 85 3 1 2006 Jan 03 85 3 1 2006 Jan 04 90 3 1 2006 Jan 05 90 5 2 2006 Jan 06 90 10 3 2006 Jan 07 90 20 4 2006 Jan 08 95 8 3 2006 Jan 09 95 5 2 2006 Jan 10 95 3 1 2006 Jan 11 95 3 1 2006 Jan 12 90 5 2 2006 Jan 13 90 5 2 2006 Jan 14 90 5 2 2006 Jan 15 90 8 3 2006 Jan 16 90 8 3 (from http://www.sec.noaa.gov/radio via WORLD OF RADIO 1298, DXLD)###