Tuesday, May 13, 2025

On the Shortwave Podcast-Part 1

 


James Salmon from the BDXC news group has informed DXers of the following:

"Not sure if this has been posted before but have just read about a new(ish) programme about SW broadcasting - it's good! Thanks to Fred Moe for bringing this to our attention!"


Season Two of On the Media’s Peabody-winning series The Divided Dial is the untold story of shortwave radio: the way-less-listened to but way-farther-reaching cousin of AM and FM radio. The medium was once heralded as a utopian, international, and instantaneous mass communication tool — a sort of internet-before-the-internet. But like the internet, it also took a turn for the chaotic. And like AM and FM talk radio, it also went hard to the right, with extremists and cults still finding a home on the shortwaves 
 
EPISODE 1:
You know AM and FM radio. But did you know that there is a whole other world of radio surrounding us at all times? It’s called shortwave — and, thanks to a quirk of science that lets broadcasters bounce radio waves off of the ionosphere, it can reach thousands of miles, penetrating rough terrain and geopolitical boundaries. How did this instantaneous, global, mass communication tool — a sort of internet-before-the-internet — go from a utopian experiment in international connection to a hardened tool of information warfare and propaganda?
 
Starts with Katie Thornton visiting David Goren and tuning around shortwave, then a history of radio broadcasting from it's inception and the start of shortwave broadcasting right through to 1980's concentrating on US broadcasting. Lots of audio snippets of US shortwave broadcasters and shortwave stations targeting the US, the WW2 and Cold War sections I found particularly well covered.
 
Available for streaming or download at
 
 (Mike Barraclough, UK/BDXC)