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 Previous: ARRL Petitions for New 60-Meter Amateur Band |  Next: The K7VVV Solar Update |
By David Sumner, K1ZZ
ARRL Executive Vice President
July 27, 2001
Editor's note: Typically, only ARRL members get to read the "It Seems to Us ..." editorials that run each month in QST. We're posting this editorial by ARRL Executive Vice President David Sumner, K1ZZ, that appears in the July 2001 issue of QST in the hope that both ARRL members and nonmembers might appreciate it and find it informative.
Radio broadcasting was a latecomer compared to Amateur Radio, but shortwave (SW) broadcasting is almost as old as broadcasting itself. Also called high-frequency (HF) broadcasting, it has two great strengths: it reaches people in isolated locations and it defies political boundaries.
HF broadcasting came into its own as a propaganda medium in the tense years leading up to World War II and flourished during the Cold War. Those of us who grew up learning in school to "duck and cover" during air raid drills could go home and hear the propaganda war played out by Radio Moscow and other stations from the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. Our counterparts on that side did much the same, tuning to Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, and the BBC when they could hear them through the jamming. It was the stuff of spy novels, brought to life in our bedrooms.
Shortwave listening (SWLing) was a common intermediate step between discovering the magic of radio and obtaining an amateur license. Many never saw the necessity for a transmitting license, finding plenty to keep them enthralled just by listening. Many who did get a license maintained a serious interest in SWLing, developing esoteric specialties (for example, collecting Indonesian tropical broadcasters) that require a knowledge of propagation surpassing that of an Honor Roll DXer.
That, as they say, was then -- and this is now. The Cold War is over. The major international broadcasters now reach a larger share of their audiences through local stations and the Internet than by shortwave. For example, in Prague you can now hear the BBC on an FM radio -- a far cry from 1968. Streaming brings perfect digital audio to your computer, 24 hours a day, from a multitude of sources and in dozens of languages. Many cable systems carry international radio broadcasting channels. Digital sound broadcasting by satellite is beginning to catch on. Nor are broadcasters and their audiences limited to audio. Want to see TV news from around the world? You can get it by satellite, complete with English interpretation. Want the news from a German perspective? Every night you can watch a highly polished newscast delivered in perfect English courtesy of Deutsche Welle.
The Gulf War may have been the last international crisis in which HF broadcasting played a major role in keeping people informed. By contrast, during the more recent crisis in Yugoslavia it was possible to find representatives of every conceivable point of view, official and otherwise, on the Web.
Big news in May was that the venerable BBC had decided to drop its shortwave broadcasts to North America, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands effective July 1. Service is being shut down on nine frequencies to North America and on four to the Pacific. "The Beeb" will still be heard here via transmitters intended for Central and South America and Asia, but we are no longer a target area. This made the headlines because the BBC is so highly respected, but in reality it is simply the latest in a string of shortwave service curtailments over the past decade. Cost is the dominant factor: Big HF transmitters are expensive to maintain and operate.
With this backdrop you may wonder: Why are broadcasters looking for more spectrum between 4 and 10 MHz? Why is 40 meters such a problem? If they are already losing HF listeners, why are they spending money to develop a digital system for HF that will require listeners to buy new receivers?
Taking the last question first, there is a huge question mark hanging over HF digital broadcasting. Broadcasters are hedging their bets. They want to rewrite rules that now require them to abandon double-sideband AM no later than 2015. They want to be free to use both AM and digital for the foreseeable future. In other words, they want to abandon the quest for spectrum efficiency that was mandated by the 1992 World Administrative Radio Conference. Whether they will be allowed to do so is one of the questions that will be answered at the 2003 World Radiocommunication Conference.
Whether they see their future as digital or AM, some broadcasters place a premium on the spectrum between 4 and 10 MHz. With fewer political barriers to worry about they are changing their transmitter placement strategy. In some cases, transmitters that are located in what used to be "enemy territory" are now available for lease! For reliability they want to use transmitters that are one ionospheric hop from their target audience, and for that the frequencies below 10 MHz are ideal. Even with the service cutbacks the stated requirements for broadcasting channels below 10 MHz still exceed their allocations.
Internet streaming is coming much more slowly to some parts of the world than to others. In most countries, Internet service is not available for a flat monthly fee and heavy use is prohibitively expensive. Some countries continue to limit their citizens' access to certain Internet content.
The Cold War is over but there remain regional tensions in many parts of the world. Even the BBC is adamant that it remains committed to shortwave to reach audiences in the Middle East, The Gulf, and Asia.
HF broadcasting has one unique feature that means it will never be entirely written off by those responsible for foreign policy. Unlike any other means of reaching a distant audience, there is no "gatekeeper." The friendly administration that allows your program to be aired on a local FM station today may be gone tomorrow. Internet and telephone connections can be cut. Even satellite feeds can be disrupted.
HF remains the medium of last resort. Of course, if you're a ham you knew that!
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