Messages

1

General Radio Discussion / Re: Supreme Court sides with FCC in loosened Media Ownership rules

« on: April 06, 2021, 0154 UTC »

Radio has lost maybe 50-60% of their revenue (when accounted for inflation) since 2005. The corona economic impacts have only cut in to what revenue is left.

Expect a lot of changes all over. It isn't just IHeart that has had cuts. Some Hubbard, Sinclair, Salem and Entercom radio stations have also seen some cuts. Now that Entercom has changed names, I would expect that somewhere down the line other changes are in order as well.

Consolidation has its negatives, but it can keep marginal stations on the air. After Dereg 1996, when a company owned 'clusters' of stations, marginal stations usually were programmed with formats that weren't super popular (classic country, oldies, classic hits, sports talk networks, alternative talk, standards, etc.) just to keep the stick on the air, and they'd market the station as an add-on for commercial sales, as usually another station in the cluster was making the big money.

2

General Radio Discussion / Re: Season's Greetings - 50,000 watt Class A MLB AM Radio Broadcasters

« on: April 06, 2021, 0148 UTC »

Cool. Something to DX for during the summer season. I already can receive at least three of those stations regularly (KIRO, KNBR & KOA). Will have to try for some of the others.

Thanks for posting the list.

3

General Radio Discussion / Re: Brother Stair Dies

« on: April 06, 2021, 0146 UTC »

He used to cover the SW at night, and gave the domestic (and some foreign) SW broadcasters a lot of business.

His death, along with covid, and the teetering state of the economy, and the bad propagation we've had since 2016 or so, and the slow disappearance of SW broadcasting in general, all are portents that we are entering the days of 'log 'em before they go off the air'.

4

Amateur Radio / Re: 2M SSB - Is it worth the cost?

« on: April 06, 2021, 0143 UTC »

Not a ham, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt....

I'd bag the 2M SSB idea, as even the ham forums don't talk much about DXing SSB on 2M.

Maybe put the time, effort, and money into 6 meters instead? Besides, when 6 meters is in, it seems that guys sometimes get worldwide contacts. Not so on 2M. Even 2M FM is mostly MIA in my metro. Tune across the band with a good multibander and it's hiss. In 1990 it would have been 2-3 QSOs heard at least, even well into the evening.

5

General Radio Discussion / Re: Rush Limbaugh has passed, Michael Harrison on his impact on radio

« on: March 12, 2021, 0747 UTC »

The most poignant thing in the article was the mentioning that radio is declining in cultural significance, with less radio stars.

It makes me want to embrace whatever radio we still have left. Overall, the industry seems to be going more and more automaton. The pandemic seems to have accelerated that trend.

6

General Radio Discussion / Re: Time Is Running Out for FrankenFMs – Just 4 Months Left

« on: March 12, 2021, 0729 UTC »

A couple of these "franken FM's" apparently get ratings, especially the one in Chicago. I guess they'll have to look elsewhere for a means to transmit.... maybe an HD2 FM channel.

7

General Radio Discussion / Re: China bans BBC

« on: February 24, 2021, 0103 UTC »

The BBC still broadcasts out of Kranji, Singapore, apparently. 9580 khz. seems to be the key frequency during Asian mornings.

8

General Radio Discussion / Re: Golden Earring - dutch band - Quits

« on: February 11, 2021, 0536 UTC »

I first heard them on Radio Nederland.... It's when Radar Love was a hit over there.

Always enjoyed their first few albums. Sad to hear Kooymans (the guitarist) has ALS. Man.

9

General Radio Discussion / Re: HF Underground and Facebook?

« on: February 10, 2021, 0941 UTC »

I would agree with you if APPLE, GOOGLE, FACEBOOK and TWITTER had any viable competition.
They don't.

Then you also have this aspect of information dissemination:
https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6
https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/

Granted, these particular articles are from 2012 and 2017, but I don't think much has changed since then. A different side to the coin, maybe.

10

General Radio Discussion / Re: HF Underground and Facebook?

« on: February 09, 2021, 2021 UTC »

What's the difference between the 1933 book burnings in Germany and the 2021  Big Tech censorship going on today?

(Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but there's nothing funny about it).

Tech companies are just that, companies.
A private company or a forum can pretty much do what it wants.

If administration here (or any other social media site) says we can't talk about a particular subject, that's their right.

While what you say is true, those tech companies number just a handful, and control the political and other speech of hundreds of millions of Americans and probably a few billion people worldwide. The power they wield over the nation's (and the world's) dialogue and communication of ideas is considerable.

And while there are some concerns over the power and control these large social media companies have, there still is quite a large breadth of opinion and speech freely available on them. On just one of them, I can see anything from left wing rants to right wing religious conspiracy theories, and everything in between. I don't think we've reached the point yet of everything being controlled. Far from it.

11

Propagation / Re: Solar cycle 25 . Very interesting? I have my doubts.

« on: January 19, 2021, 0413 UTC »

Yeah, MW is sucking this season, and HF has a few mornings where you can hear about half of what could be heard 8 years ago, the rest of the mornings are mostly static.

And I don't think that's due to stations going off the air, as I haven't read of Chinese CNR1 jammers going off the air lately.

They are just not heard as well due to the propagation.

12

General Radio Discussion / Re: Empty HF frequency band for emergency coms

« on: January 19, 2021, 0410 UTC »

If society collapses, just choose a usable frequency and a time to communicate with others beforehand, and probably it would be best to keep such transmissions short, should the TEOTWAWKI events take place. Not to protect yourself from authorities, who will undoubtedly be preoccupied with trying to hold together, but from potential marauders.

I doubt the military will be taking any measures against individuals using HF spectrum, they will have enough other problems to deal with aside from a few survivalists. CB would be handy in short range comms, as the equipment is portable, easy to use, and still plentiful.

And yeah, the spectrum is all 'spoken for', but in reality much of it is empty. The frequencies surrounding the CB band have been assigned to various governmental agencies for as long as I can remember and yet I have never in my life heard anything on those frequencies that remotely resembles a government agency transmission. Just outbanders.

13

Equipment / Re: Sangean ATS-909X2 Launch + Pre-Order

« on: January 14, 2021, 0252 UTC »

I'm glad to see that Sangean has continued the ATS-909 line. Not so glad to see so many issues.

It seems that in moving to DSP they've had more problems with their top of the line SW radio than when it was all analog. Sad to see. Their other DSP radios (the PR-D5 and others in that series) seem to have good overall performance without the big glitches.

14

General Radio Discussion / Re: Proposed Shortwave Station in Illinois Prompts an Objection

« on: January 12, 2021, 0458 UTC »

Where would be the other end of the data link ? Wall Street ? or in Europe? or elsewhere ?

The PDF of the application (linked on the Radio World page) says the station is to 'specifically serve the areas of Europe that may be authorized by the Commission". The PDF also has info on the type of log-periodic that the station plans to use. It looks like it's beam / azimuth is 47 degrees from true north -- aiming the signal NE towards EU.

15

General Radio Discussion / Re: Pirate radio station shown on Google Maps

« on: December 30, 2020, 1146 UTC »

Maybe the name of a legit station?