Jeff: In our historical feature on April 7th
about shortwave broadcasting in the U.S. state of Texas, we mentioned at the
end that KCBI broadcast a delayed relay of the early DX program from Adventist
World Radio in Poona, India. The program
title at the time was “Radio Monitors International”, the AWR studios were
located in suburban Poona, and the broadcast from station KCBI was on the air
under the auspices of Radio Earth
for a few weeks in October 1985.
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| Radio Earth QSL |
It occurred to us that we have never done a
feature on Radio Earth, and that it's a very interesting story that really deserves to
be told because in part, it’s the story of how I first became involved in
shortwave radio as anything more than a listener. In a way, it also charts the path of how I
got to where I am today with WRMI. Ray
Robinson in Los Angeles has the background.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff.
The idea for Radio Earth began in 1978
with a conversation between Jeff White and John Beebe, who at the time were
both college students in DeKalb, Illinois.
They also both worked part-time as radio news reporters for WNIU-FM in
DeKalb. One day when they were sitting
around the newsroom chatting, they discovered they were both shortwave listeners,
and John was intrigued by Jeff’s idea of creating a commercial shortwave station.
They began seriously researching what
it would take to start such a station, and enlisted the help of two friends:
·
Michael
Poulos, who was a lawyer in Evanston, Illinois, and
·
John
Freberg, who was chief engineer at WNIU-FM.
Over the course of the next five years,
they spent thousands of hours researching in public libraries, writing and
re-writing reports and proposals, and meeting with many people about
advertising, engineering, legal and programming matters that would need to be worked
out.
Their goal was to put a commercial SW
station in the Caribbean to broadcast worldwide. They got verbal
permission from Montserrat to put in seven 100 kW transmitters and seven TCI
log periodic antennas beamed in different directions. Then of course they
needed to find investors, which proved very difficult.
Rudy Espinal, director of the shortwave
service of Radio Clarin in the Dominican Republic, joined the Radio Earth team,
and he was very helpful in securing an agreement to carry the Radio Earth
programming via Radio Clarin’s 50 kW shortwave
transmitter in Santo Domingo,
to avoid them having to build out their own station in Montserrat before they
could even start broadcasting.
Then in May 1983, Radio Earth was
successful in securing advertising contracts from the Curaçao Tourist Bureau
and also Holding Company Curaçao, which owns several hotels. So, they decided to set up a studio on that
Dutch-owned island in the southern Caribbean, where they could record their flagship
program entitled “The World”, and then ship tapes up to Santo Domingo for
broadcast each day (Monday-Saturday) over Radio Clarin’s shortwave transmitter
on 11700 kHz.
Jeff White agreed to go to Curaçao to
present the program, but since it would take more than one person to produce a
top-quality one-hour show every day, they also persuaded Matt Bell, another
former WNIU newsman turned radio producer, to go along. They sent studio equipment from Chicago to
Curaçao, and set it up in the Curaçao Hilton hotel.
Matt and Jeff ended up co-presenting
the show, which consisted of:
·
a
variety of feature reports and interviews,
·
segments
contributed by David Monson in Europe,
·
a
mailbag show on Fridays, and
·
a
Saturday communications-oriented segment called “Dialogue”.
Once the tapes arrived in Santo
Domingo, Rudy Espinal inserted up-to-the-minute newscasts and also added a locally-produced
regional music program called “This is the Caribbean.”
At the beginning of each edition of
“The World”, they mentioned that Radio Earth was not affiliated with any
political or religious organization, and that their funding came entirely from the
sale of commercial advertising.
It was a jam-packed hour, and very
eclectic, with Jeff and Matt talking informally with the listeners and with
each other. They didn’t read
scripts. They described their philosophy
as being simple “people-to-people communication”, to promote understanding,
friendship and goodwill. They tried each
day to “present the world to the
world”, in a unique, interesting, entertaining and unbiased manner. The response from shortwave listeners was
incredible, but in spite of that, they still had trouble getting and keeping
sponsors.
At the end of 1983, Radio Earth moved
from Radio Clarin to WRNO, “The Rock of New Orleans”, where it was heard on
6185 kHz at 0400 UTC Winter/0300 UTC Summer.
The studios were moved back to the United States, and set up in Miami,
with an address of Box 69, Miami, Florida, 33243.
Unfortunately, during the summer of 1984
they had some disagreements with Joe Costello at WRNO, and ended up moving back
to Radio Clarin from Monday 24th September 1984. Here’s an off-air audio clip of a very
young-sounding Jeff White presenting the start of the mailbag program the
previous Friday night, 21st September 1984, via WRNO.
So Jeff White relocated for awhile to
Santo Domingo to present Radio Earth programs live from that location. Radio Earth was later carried by KCBI in
Texas, WHRI in Indiana, and by a couple of European shortwave stations.
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| KCBI QSL |
They still wanted to put their own
station on the air, and Curaçao was willing to give them both a license and a
place to put the station. But, they were never able to raise enough money
to do that.
To cut a long story short, Jeff left
Radio Earth in 1985 to focus on some other shortwave ventures, including Radio
Discovery in Santo Domingo. After that, he moved back to Miami and started
freelancing as a news reporter for several other shortwave stations. He also began brokering airtime on Radio
Clarin, KCBI, WHRI and WWCR, which is the back story to the comment referenced
in the introduction to this piece today, where it was stated that the AWR RMI program
(the forerunner to Wavescan) was heard over station KCBI under the auspices of Radio Earth for a few weeks in October
1985. Jeff had helped place that program
on KCBI.
Through his program brokering side-line,
Jeff was contacted by some Cuban exile organizations who wanted to broadcast on
shortwave to Cuba. Eventually, he connected with an engineer
affiliated with the Cuban American National Foundation, which wanted to start
its own shortwave station. But, they had problems getting a license, so
they asked the engineer and Jeff to try making a joint application to the FCC,
which was successful, and that became the original WRMI in Hialeah, about 5 miles northwest of downtown Miami. And we all know what that’s grown into. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, way to go, Jeff, on eventually achieving
your vision of owning and operating a very successful commercial shortwave
radio station!
(QSLs via Teak Publishing QSL Archives)
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