The new broadcasting season that begun in 2009 in Myanmar (check here the story by “Myanmar Times & Business Reviews”), with government starting to grant licenses to private companies, resulted in a “broad array of private FM channels” becoming available to listeners in various areas of the Union (namely, Rakhine State and Ayeyarwady Division, Shan State, Kachin State and Read more →

Let’s be frank. Aside a few noticeable exceptions, the FM west-European scene is a general failure. Spectrum is crowded with lots of private stations, running the same playlists, and being different to each other only for sponsors and advertisers they carry. Be practical: tune your radio on the coolest station in Milan, in Berlin and in London, and what will make you realize the City you’re in Read more →

Friends are working hard to convince me Aosta Valley, despite my believings, is not Pluto, and HF signals can get here too. I can understand -and deeply enjoy- their efforts, but trust me they never tried attenuation given by Europe’s highest roofs. In the last five years, talking about MW DX, all I got are dominant stations (the ones that, received, say, on the Adriatic shore make you tell Read more →

Twenty-four hours after the massive outgoing of reception reports, first results are starting to come. Today, Guy Kalenda Mutelwa, “coordinateur d’antenne” in Paris for Radio Africa n° 1 (broadcasting from Gabon on 9580 kHz), verified my reception report with the e-mail shown above. In a first message, he also stated he forwarded my report to his colleagues in Libreville, in order to have them provide me some Read more →

Since 2006, when I restarted BCL activities, I obtained 147 confirmations of reception. It’s a good figure, considering – on one hand – the slow fading of stations on shortwaves, and – on the other – the totally different meaning that nowadays a reception report has. It’s no longer a technical thing. International broadcasters today can count on automated monitoring networks to check how their Read more →

It hasn’t been amazing to find a 1995 WRTH at a recent hamvention for two bucks, but reading one of the stories it featured in its last pages. Named “Shortwave broadcasting begins it slow long fade (but International broadcasting endures)”, it’s a visionary altough sharp picture of what would happen in the following fifteen years by Dr. Kim Andrew Elliott, a personality that in radio domain needs no introduction Read more →