Matthew’s Workbench

I was saddened to learn that Radio Netherlands is ending shortwave transmissions to North America, effective October 26, 2008. Radio Netherlands was one of the first shortwave stations I ever heard and I have spent many enjoyable hours over the years listening to their programs.

I’m sure this makes sense as a business decision for Radio Netherlands, just as I’m sure it made sense for the BBC to drop shortwave broadcasts to North America. Obviously there is no station with a large enough budget to broadcast everywhere and it only makes sense to allocate limited resources to areas considered to be most important.

But it always bothers me when such a decision is presented as being best for the listeners. For instance, the Radio Netherlands site states:

Courtesy Media Network, I saw this article about a proposed experiment with DRM broadcasting in Alaska. If approved by the FCC, this will test whether government surplus transmitters could be used to transmit a DRM signal to cover the entire state of Alaska and what transmitter power would be necessary. If it worked, this could [...]

A few days ago, Kim Andrew Elliot mentioned the 30th anniversary of the journey of Vladimír Remek into space. Remek made history in 1978 as the first person to travel into space who wasn’t from the United States or the Soviet Union (he was born in Czechoslovakia). According to the story, he listened to shortwave [...]