Happy birthday to us! I was looking through the past posts of this blog and found much of it still relevant today. There were some older video posts where the videos are no longer available on youtube, those were deleted.
I continue to look for subjects to blog about while keeping the subject matter pertinent to broadcast engineering or some aspect of radio in general. With so many things going on, this can be hard to do.
Here are a few stats:
Average daily page views: 400
Average unique visitors, daily: 240
Average returning visitors, daily: 37
RSS subscribers: 73
Total posts: 323
Total comments: 911
Total $pam comments: 52,403
The average number of comments per post: 2.8
The average number of $pam comments per post: 162
This brings me to this; I use an aggressive $pam filter. There is no way that I would be able to keep up with the number of junk comments received otherwise. If you have posted a legitimate comment and it doesn’t show up after a period of time, e-mail me and I’ll look into it. Chances are very good that some legitimate comments have been deleted by the $pam filter, for which I apologize.
Many of my unique visitors come from Google searches which is strange considering its page rank is 0/10.
I continue to enjoy blogging about the everyday life of a broadcast engineer and thank all of my readers and subscribers for their interest. It is entertaining and enlightening to read all of your comments and e-mails. For as long as there is interest, the writing project will proceed.
We don’t have anylong-wave stations in this country, other than the government’s failed attempt at using long-wave (WGU-20) for emergency communications in the 1970s and 80s. In Europe, Longwave continues to be used, mainly because of its excellent ground wave propagation can cover large distances without fading or interference. Several have closed in recent years due to the expense of maintaining tall radio towers and higher-quality programming sources.
This is a video of the transmitter site for Atlantic 252 in Ireland. Atlantic 252 went defunct in 2001, however, the frequency is still in use by RTE radio 1.
500KW is quite a bit of power. The antenna mast is 248 meters, or 813 feet tall. Interestingly, RTE discontinued service on MW (AKA AM broadcast or standard broadcast) but left this signal on the air. Reportedly, this station has less power but better coverage.
Several places have reported that The Voice of America will sunset its shortwave broadcasts in the not-too-distant future. Boing Boing reported yesterday, based on a paper titled “Broadcast Board of Governors 2010-2012 BBG Technology Strategic Plan and BBG Technology Update – 2009” received via FOIA last January.
The 2009 study notes that the weekly audience for radio is 101.9 million listeners, TV is 81.5 million, and the Internet is 2.4 million weekly listeners. I don’t know how much that has changed in the last two years, but I’d imagine some shift towards the internet has taken place in light of recent shortwave transmitter site closings.
There are several interesting aspects of this report, notably the disparity between what is termed “Classic Engineering” and “Classic IT” fields. This is the concept that radio engineers toil on RF and transmitters, while the IT guys work with computers.
As the dependence on shortwave continues to wane and the distribution focus shifts to third party operations, satellite and other direct-to-consumer methodologies, the skill sets of some engineering personnel become less and less relevant to the agency.
This issue is further compounded by the relatively difficult transition from a traditional RF, antenna, transmitter design, and maintenance knowledge base to the technologies involved in digital satellite and IP-based networking systems.
Perhaps that is how it is done in government circles, but I have found in the private sector, most radio engineers know at least the computer automation systems that run the stations. Of course, everyone has preferences and we tend to gravitate toward things we like to do, especially in a field as diverse as broadcast engineering. When I was in the military, somebody posted the “Eleven Rules of Success.” The only one that I can remember now is this: “Pick the thing that you hate and become proficient at it.”
In order to stay relevant, broadcast engineers have to keep up with the technology while remaining proficient with RF and audio skills. Computers and automation programs are not terribly hard to understand, but each one is different and operates differently. Most, if not all automation companies offer some type of training, which is fine. Nothing can beat hands-on installation and troubleshooting for learning the important details, however.
The report also mentions that morale is an issue for several reasons. First, it is noted that:
Despite several recent high profile station closings, the organization continues to employ shortwave as the most important transmission mechanism to many of the target areas around the globe. Often surge activities are enabled byvadditional shortwave transmissions that end up as an integral part of the ongoing schedule. Effectively, this diminution of transmission resources accompanied by no reduction or even an increase of reliance on this transmission methodology creates overburdened schedules and often the deployment of less than optimal assets for transmission into target areas.
This additional operational burden likely extends to other disciplines within the agency where programming staff must expend substantial additional effort to produce or adapt content for a multiplicity of transmission methods.
In essence, the decision process for station closing does not appear to follow an overt decision and stated plan to reduce shortwave usage.
That is known as the “more with less” paradox. In the private sector, more with less has been going great guns since the first loosening of the FCC’s ownership rules in 1994. For those that are used to working in optimum conditions, anything less is a shock to the system.
The issue of low morale is palpable and often present in conversations that address historical perspectives on a particular station closing, transfer of technologies around the network and any other such topics. Precipitated by the long periods of employment that are relatively standard in the Engineering area and perfectly understandable, this grieving process is a natural consequence of the pride involved in creating a state-of-the-art technical facility only to see it being dissected piece by piece as technology continues its relentless creative destruction.
An interesting statement and it shines a light on several things heretofore unsaid in broadcast engineering. We love our transmitters, as strange as that may seem. We love our towers and antennas. Parting with something that has become an integral part of our working environment is difficult, to say the least. Watching something be signed off for the last time and then hauled to the scrap heap is very disheartening, especially if there is no replacement.
On the IT side, things are not so good either. The main concern is the infrastructure of the IT backbone. Several deficiencies are noted in the cabling and router; the cabling is in serious disarray and there is only one router for the facility. There is also other problems noted with personnel and lack of project management experience and/or IT department goals.
Overall, moving into new media fields makes sense. There are, however, many places where new media is unknown or at best, mostly unavailable. Moving content delivery from over-the-air broadcast to IP-based distribution may be far less expensive to operate, that is true. It is also far more susceptible to being disrupted by accident or design. In those areas where the internet is spotty, shortwave radios are abundant and relied upon. If the VOA is not on the air, then some other station will be.
It dawned on me, earlier today, that the current decline in radio and all traditional media in general, is no coincidence. When the radio consolidations took place ten or so years ago, the first thing that was almost always cut or eliminated was the newsroom. Along with that, local programming in general was reduced or replaced with automation.
This, in turn, leads to a bland, uninformative product that the general public doesn’t really care about.
Local newspapers have all but disappeared too. The remaining ones are owned by one of several large newspaper-holding companies like Gannett, Newscorp, Hearst, and Tribune. In a similar radio scenario, local papers were bought up by these companies, newsroom staff was cut, the quality of content declined, and readership declined accordingly. Rinse, and repeat until the paper is nothing but a shell of its former self, filled with mostly used car ads.
But isn’t the internet the cause of all this? No, the internet and the so-called “new media” are filling a void left by the hollowed-out old media. New media, which often relies on people who may be well-intended, but do not have the training in investigative journalism, often lacks credibility when it really counts. Unfortunately, it is easy to search the internet and find articles that lack any type of referenced source material or have other technical problems that call into question the authenticity of the material. Much of this could be corrected with the right links or posting of original documents to back up the story. This is an often pointed to weakness with internet sources of information. There are, however, some outstanding new media outlets, from some surprising locations.
Media outlets (as well as most other businesses) in this country are mostly controlled by big Wall Street banks. Here is how that works:
Media company A wants to buy some or all of media company B.
They go to a bank to get a loan.
After much negotiating and back and forth, the bank agrees to give A the loan, under certain conditions.
Those conditions include continued performance, annual revenue growth, and periodic audits.
In a buy-or-be-bought world, there is no other alternative for A, but to agree with those conditions.
Media company A now needs continued credit to continue to operate their business, this is what happened during the great consolidation, not only of radio but TV and Newspapers as well.
If and when the conditions of the loan look like they are not being met, the bank sends out its representatives to talk to the owners of media company A.
They “suggest” moves to improve the bottom line, often offering to make concessions if certain conditions are met, such as installing voice tracking and laying off workers or selling properties
Newsrooms are cut first as news is labor intensive and does not make any money.
Slowly, the rest of the staff is reduced or has their pay and hours reduced.
It is thus that the large banksters have gained control of much of the “traditional” media in this country. They have sought to steer the free press into oblivion, substituting, instead, the corporatist media outlets we see today in NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, FoxNews, as well as the above-mentioned newspaper holding companies. While skimming over general news items, much of the important news of the day goes unreported. Things like the Fed’s latest round of quantitative easing (QE3), the ever-expanding role of TSA, the unauthorized nature of the Libyan adventure and the possible ties to Goldman Sachs, the continuing nuclear release at Fukushima, FDA approval of GMO seeds, the FCC’s revolving door employees, ever-increasing amounts of police brutality, etc are under-reported or not reported at all.
Why are those particular stories important? Because the implications impact every one of us, only most people don’t know or understand that. Citizens of this country have no idea why things are getting so expensive, why their jobs have disappeared, why their houses are worth less than they paid for them, why the current crop of politicians looks worse than the last crop, why police are dressing like storm troopers and gunning people down in their own homes, etc. It all reminds me of the Pink Floyd song, Sheep:
Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air
We are being fed with little bits of oversimplified, unconnected, and or incomplete information which only fits the narrative the so-called news organization is putting forward. Deviation from the narrative rarely occurs and only under the most unusual circumstances or by accident.
The answer is, of course, to support those independent media outlets that are still around. The independent radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers as well as those online news sources and aggregators that do a good job getting the story out need to stick around. It would also help to increase the number of independent, non-conflicted (interest-wise) sources of information. I would suggest that everyone do a little bit of digging around and find out who, in their own neck of the woods, is an honest source of local news.
If there is not a local independent media outlet, consider starting one. The new LPFM rules are still being worked on, the FCC has promised to speed this along, which means we should see something in the next five years or so. While we wait, consider blogging or teaming up with a group of people to launch an online news site. While I have been blogging for several years, I have learned one very important fact: People love the truth. That is the surest formula for success, tell the truth and back it up with valid sources and documentation. I know many people in the radio news business that, if asked, would be happy to give some pointers on local news gatherings.
One thing is for sure, we can no longer sit around and wait for someone to do something. If we are to change the course of this country, each and every one of us needs to contribute.
