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I've heard in the news lately that the BBC has canned the World Service over all of the Shortwave and Medium Wave bands, because of the lack of (get this )viewer participation and of course, cost cutting.
Coming from the other side of the earth here, I look forward to these transmissions and I also know of a great number of people that also do too, mainly elderly folk.
What on earth is going on at the BBC?, have they lost thier minds?.

I am guessing that because they now have most of the world covered by Satellite broadcasts of BBC WorldService TV & Radio that they're not going to duplicate resources with aging MW and SW transmission sites?

However, I don't think the BBC's Worldservice radio's shutting down completely by any means.

Is the Republic of Ireland the only place where the BBC commercially broadcasts BBC 1 and 2 Television?
(3 + 4 are also available by satellite)
but we actually pay a fee to Sky or our cable operator to cover BBC 1 and 2.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-06-2003).]

I don’t know that there has been a decline in listenership per se but advancing technology in this case the internet is making radio broadcast less economic. ‘Auntie’ did the same to us here in the USA.

Here’s the good news though: the BBC World Service can be heard 24 hours a day online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml . It helps to have broadband, but I regularly used to listen in my dial-up days without too many problems. The drop-outs were certainly less than listening to short-wave! BTW all of the domestic BBC radio channels are available through the BBC website.

The World Service is still running on shortwave at the moment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/schedules/frequencies/index.shtml

For transmissions aimed at poor African countries, it's likely to be the only option available for a while for the average person.

It does seem as though the bands are likely to change substantially in the coming decades however, as new technology takes over.

Some years ago, for example, the U.S. Coastguard discontinued their watch on the CW (Morse) distress frequency of 500kHz, and H.M. Coastguard in the U.K. is following suit.

Yeah the Irish coast guard discontinued answering morse a number of years ago. Distress calls must be made by VHF / MF radio, immarsat etc etc or by dialling 999 or 112 on one of the mobile networks if you're on shore / near shore.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-07-2003).]

Trumpy, if you look at the BBC SE Asia SW frequencies, I'm sure one of them will come booming into New Zealand.

I live in San Francisco, and the 5975 kHz signal for Central America comes in fine.

The BBC officially stopped SW service to North America citing local FM stations that run some of the Beeb's programming and of course everyone is on the Internet, right?

SW listening is an old hobby of mine, and even in this day and age...it's great to pick out a signal on the portable.

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 12-09-2003).]

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 12-09-2003).]

djk:
I still remember this .

Trumpy:
If they do stop the broadcasts, look at the bright side. There should be some good deals on some radio equipment

A fitting closing comment for the last CW broadcast.

Here's the story of the end of Irish Morse Code .

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-09-2003).]

There's even a full Real Video report on it on that page from RTE news back in 1999. The recording continues on right to the end of the bulletin. Sports news and then If you click to 7:15 into it you'll actually get a full weather forecast for the day complete with old Telecom Eireann sponsorship introduction Back when they had the most irritating identity music EVER.. a series of DTMF tones and phones ringing over soft music


[This message has been edited by djk (edited 12-09-2003).]

Interesting. I see that RTE has the same twisted priorities as the BBC though : 5 minutes of sports news and only 90 seconds devoted to the Morse story.