The transmitting tower for sunny Perth, Australia's ABC radio station 6WF, which is moving from the AM band to the FM band after decades of serving Perth and a large part of SW Western Australia.
If you look closely, you can see the Perth skyline in the far background. The tower is in the Perth suburb of Hamerslsy, in the northern part of the city.
photo from ABC.net.au
A radio station I used to listen to -- at least when they had a shortwave relay -- is leaving the AM band for FM in late February this year, after 94 years on the AM band.
6WF, Perth, Australia's main ABC Radio outlet, is being moved to FM as the ABC determines that with more and more cars being FM only, taking 6WF off the AM band is the best way to serve listeners. The switchover from AM to FM will occur on February 23rd.
6WF-AM has been on the air in the Perth region for 94 years, as the transmitter installation and tower date from 1934.
For those who don't know it, Perth is a large city of two million people on the Indian Ocean, and it's the capital of Western Australia, Australia's largest state by area. Perth is also known as the 'most isolated capital city in the world', being that it is farther from other metros than nearly every other national or state capital on the planet.
A CITY WITH AN EXTENSIVE MUSICAL HISTORY
Perth is the city where late AC/DC singer Bon Scott lived as a kid, after his family moved there from Kirriemuir in Scotland. He got his musical start there as a singer for the Valentines. The Australian rock band INXS also got their careers kickstarted in Perth (they were in Perth for 10 months, as the 'Vegetables'). The lead guitarist for the Divinyls, Mark McEntee, was from Perth, and the excellent Aussie glam rock band Supernaut were also from Perth.
I used to listen to 6WF back when I got my first good Shortwave radio, my Realistic DX-160, which was a Christmas gift. With that radio I listened to a lot of different stations, including Radio Australia, various Indonesian stations at night, 'tropical band' radio stations out of Venezuela and Columbia, and 6WF.
SHORTWAVE RELAY STATIONS FOR THE OUTBACK
How could I receive 6WF? Well, back in the day the ABC had several Shortwave outlets to serve the Outback and desert regions of the Australian interior, and being that more than half of Western Australia is desert, with a lot of isolated mining towns, other small towns and farming and other 'stations' in the interior, SW was the best way to reach those people.
Queensland also had a Shortwave relay station, VLW4, which I think I heard once. It was used to beam ABC radio to the Outback from Brisbane. The Western Australian shortwave relay came in better here, I think because they beamed their signal more in my direction.
The 6WF shortwave relay was officially called VLW6, and their frequency was in the 31 Meter Band. One night (early a.m., actually), I heard a DJ on 6WF play a bunch of music by the La De Da's (including their cool song 'The Place'), and another night he played almost half an album by the band called Flowers, which changed their name to Icehouse.
The transmitter cable for 50KW AM station 6WF in Perth.
photo from ABC.net.au
The shortwave relay station always identified as '6WF/6WN'. The relationship between the two ABC stations I never clearly understood, but 6WF was the main one.
During the early 2000's when I discovered online radio I 'tuned in' to 6WF a few times, as by then they'd switched off the Shortwave relay.
Of course, today Australia has no Shortwave presence at all, aside from the Reach Out Australia religious station in Kununurra, in the Kimberley district of NW Australia. They broadcast religious programs to ethnic minorities in Southern and SE Asia. I posted a short article on Reach Out Australia and my hearing them a couple years ago, which you can read here.:
The ABC, thanks to the Australian government, pulled the plug on Radio Australia about 6 or 7 years ago, in a move that not only saddened SWL's all over the world, but maddened rural people in the Australian Outback who depended on Radio Australia for news and information.
It's another case of governments not caring about serving people in rural areas. The US took a similar move with pulling the plug on VOA, which took America's message to rural people in Africa and Asia.
The weather here has taken a turn for the cold again, after a two week respite. The barometer has fallen below 30 inches of mercury, which usually means a low pressure system, which usually means more rain, which usually means higher temperatures in Winter. But that's clearly not the case.
I recently rediscovered my Dad's old barometer -- it's a Stellar brand barometer made in what was then called Western Germany. It seems to be reasonably accurate, despite its age. It's been through a bit over the years. An uncle who was staying with us in the 1980's put it in the trash in a drunken rage, and my former GF shoved it in a box of junk because she didn't know that a) it had been in my family for years, and b) I don't think she really knew what a barometer was.
I'm still not sure if you can forecast the weather by reading the changes in a barometer, but it's still cool to track it.
ON SHORTWAVE, THERE IS NOTHING ON BUT HF STOCK TRADERS
OK, I may be exaggerating here a bit, but not really. High Frequency Stock traders -- a.k.a. 'HFT' stations -- get a lot of criticism from hams and SWL's, but they really aren't taking over the SW spectrum. How can they, especially when the SW spectrum is increasingly nothing but static?
And if you look at the actual number of these HFT stations, there really aren't that many of them. Those stations do put out a pretty solid signal, though, and even when the ionosphere is DOWN, their signals still seem to be UP. At least one of them I've heard recently blasts out a massive signal.
HFT aside, radio here has been a bit dull lately. The Shortwave radio conditions have been absolutely abysmal. Last night I tuned around and there was nothing but static, a couple weak ham radio operators out of Oregon, Nevada and California that I couldn't read through the static, and a digital HFT transmission on 6838 kHz, which was around S3 out of 5, signal-wise. I have no idea where this HFT station is located. Most of the known HFT transmitters are in Illinois, but this signal is too strong for Illinois. I only know it as an HFT (High Frequency Trading) station because signals experts on HFU and elsewhere have said the 6838 Digital hash is HFT.
One of them said that the HFT Digital signal I'm hearing on 6838 kHz, which slams all my radios with S3-S5 signals (even my little XHDATA D-221 picks that signal up -- just off the whip!), may be located in Ritzville, WA -- a small town in Eastern Washington, about 250 miles east of me, in the middle of desert and wheat country.
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EDIT to ADD: About a week after posting this article, I did some research, and I do not think the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is in Ritzville, as I've looked at the maps online and the FCC address for the Ritzville experimental station shows nothing but sagebrush, and a few curious looking spots that look like boreholes. No towers, no shadows that would indicate towers -- no powerlines, no access roads, really.
So I don't know what it is I'm hearing on 6838 kHz. It is, so far, a mystery. It also might not even be HFT.
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This begs the question: if that station is indeed in Ritzville, why is a High Frequency Trading station located in WA state, and slamming the airwaves with a signal that is estimated to be 400 KW PEP? Are they sending trading data to Japan? South Korea? Taiwan?
Who knows.
When the station on 6838 is not transmitting Digital hash, it often just puts out a carrier. There is another carrier, on 6938, that I often hear. I've not yet heard a digital signal on that frequency.
Down below the 40 Meter ham band is a lot of interesting stuff -- pirates, Indonesian chanters, Latin American fishermen, mystery carriers and military signals, Chinese OTHR, and now, apparently, High Frequency Trading stations. Of course, you'll only hear most of this when the ionosphere is UP. When the ionosphere is DOWN, you don't hear anything except the strongest signals.
And most of Shortwave is basically dead right now. And we're supposedly still in a peak solar cycle period. I'm not buying it, of course. I've said before that this Solar cycle sucks, and I think the relatively dead SW conditions back that assertion up.
EUV is down, and eUV is what makes the ionosphere ionized, and according to NASA, the ionosphere is less ionized than it was in 1995 -- eUV ionization has been consequently dropping since then, and who knows when it will come back?
I've got no idea about that.... Solutions to that problem are far above my pay grade. :-)
BACK TO MEDIUM WAVE
Consequently, I'm getting back into my first radio 'love', MW DXing. Now, the ionosphere sucking also affects the AM band, but there still is plenty to hear on the AM band, especially if you have a good radio and a loop antenna. After a night of hearing nothing but static and unreadable signals (and HFT digital hash) on Shortwave, I grabbed my trusty Sangean PR-D4W and tuned the AM band. It was like night and day.
I didn't hear any super DX, but I listened to KOAC out of Corvallis, Oregon (550 kHz), with a BBC special on the Indian economy, and then heard some music on KSWB, Seaside OR (840 kHz) and some cool classic hits on CKOR Penticton BC (800 kHz). And it was all in high fidelity, as the PR-D4W has the best sound and performance of any MW radio I own.
You don't even really need an external loop with the PR-D4W, but a loop like the AN-200 will add a db or so, which helps with the weaker stations.
DSP SSB Radios -- they work really well
I'm working on an article about 3 DSP/SSB radios I bought last year -- the Tecsun PL-330, XHDATA D808 and Raddy RF760. My PL-330 has gotten heavy use over the past year, but I've noticed that it does overload, especially on the CB band, and when there is strong, pulse-type RFI.
A 150 ohm resister clipped between the wire antenna and the Tecsun's whip antenna seems to have cured most of that. I'm hoping the issue (bleedover, blocking, AGC over-reacting to changes in signals, unexpected whistles here and there) is just overloading. We'll see.
I'm also working on an article about a music scene that rose and sort of fell -- the Norway pop music scene, which seemed to really put out a lot of great music ni 2014. That article will come along in 3-4 weeks.
I'll close this article with a great track by the NZ/Oz band The La De Da's, who -- when they made this track -- were headed by guitarist Kevin Borich, who then went on to have a lengthy solo career in Australia.
This is the track I heard on 6WF one warm summer night. "The Place".:
And this track by FLOWERS, the band that became ICEHOUSE, was played a few years later on, some time before 6WF's Shortwave relay went off the air. The song is 'Skin".:
This track, one of my favorites by ICEHOUSE, was not played on 6WF, but it's one of Icehouse's better tracks, from 1984, 'Sidewalk". It's got a kickass bass line and guitar chords, and really cool use of the Fairlight Computer.:
Until next time, stay warm, friends (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere).
Peace.
C.C., Feb. 19th, 2026.
ADDENDUM, February 25th, 2026:
As I added -- in blue -- in this article, I am not sure the Digital hash station I'm hearing on 6838 kHz is High Frequency Trading, and I'm certain it's NOT in Ritzville, WA, because I looked at the online maps -- both Google and Bing maps -- and see nothing but a flat plot of land with sagebrush at the location where the FCC license address says the Ritzville experimental station is. So I do not know what I'm hearing. But it's digital, and it's noisy, and it runs at various hours during the day, for hours at a time. The typical transmission is around 20-30 seconds of digital hash, with the beginning of it having quick 'pulses', and the ending of it having even quicker 'pulses', and there are one second stops, roughly, between the transmissions.
There are no CW / Morse Code ID's whatsoever -- something that apparently is required by the FCC for HFT stations. So this station may not be HFT at all, because in over an hour of listening to this digital racket on my DX-440 this evening, I have not heard one Morse Code ID.
So where, and what, is this station? Who does it transmit to? Japan? Asia? The Pacific in general, if it happens to be military? Who knows?
The laughing, cackling call of the Kookaburra used to be an identifier for Radio Australia, which has been off the airwaves for several years. The Kookaburra can again be heard, however, on religious SW broadcaster Reach Beyond Australia.
Photo from Wiki, taken by Diliff.
One of the coolest things about long distance radio listening in general, and Shortwave radio listening in particular, is that it is like travelling all over the PNW, all over the US, and all over the World -- without ever leaving your chair. You hear the signals bouncing to your radio from hundreds, and even thousands of miles away, coming from stations that may very well be on other continents -- even on the opposite side of the world.
For example, I have often heard China Radio International broadcasting to Europe from Kashgar, Xinjiang, China -- a city and region that is in the far western part of that country, and is on the near opposite side of the world from me --11 time zones away. By the time the Kashgar signals have reached my radio -- whether the signals are coming off the front OR the back of their beam -- they've literally crossed half the world.
Early in the morning on May 26th, I was up early (I was still recuperating from my week long illness), so I switched on my Radio Shack 200629, and clipped the indoor wire antenna to the whip, plugged in my headphones, and tuned around. I tuned into the 20 Meter ham band, which was amazingly in working condition at that hour of the morning (3 a.m.+), and heard some stations calling CQ, as it was a CW (Morse Code) radio contest, where ham stations try to get as many contacts as possible.
I heard DA3DR (a German ham) trying to contact Statesiders on 14055 kHz, and his Morse Code signal had a "Polar warble" or slight "Polar flutter", caused by the Auroral Radio Zone. On 14049 I heard K3LR (located in the NE US) calling CQ, and on 14034 I heard Japanese station 7K1MAN, which was cool to hear, as Japan, like Germany, is pretty far away.
Then I tuned to the 25 Meter SW Broadcast band. I heard North Korea (the Voice of Korea) on 11710, with distortion in their signal (they've been having issues with their transmitters over the past few months... it comes and goes). North Korea is always interesting to hear because their music is well produced, but it's also fairly unique to North Korea -- they'll have lots of chick singers with operatic style vocals, and all sorts of backing, from full orchestras to rock bands with horns and strings. North Korean music -- at least that North Korean music on the Voice Of Korea -- sounds like Mitch Miller or the Ray Conniff singers with a Motown bassist, fronted by female opera singers trying to sound like ABBA.
You get the idea.
On 11780 at around 1050 UTC, it sounded like a religious service in Portuguese, including some folk hymns. The only station that fit was Radio Nacional da Amazonia, and being that it was Sunday morning, I suppose the programming would fit.
The banner / logo for The Voice Of China (known by US SWL's as CNR-1) from the top of their website.
I tuned up the band and heard China's national radio network station CNR-1 and VOA's Chinese program battling it out on 11785, and CNR-1 battling it out with Radio Taiwan International on 11730. China often uses CNR-1 to drown out the Voice Of America, Ratio Taiwan and Radio Free Asia, and during mornings it's usually audible here in the NW US, sometimes with snippets of the other station behind it. On 11795 I heard KBS World Radio's (South Korea) broadcast to South America in slightly accented Spanish (1148 UTC)... You get the idea, the bands were lively that morning.
A CHINESE RADIO PROGRAM FOR KIDS
On 11885 at around 1158 UTC (458 a.m. my time) I heard CNR-1 and PBS Xinjiang and a third station all occupying the channel at the same time, with one of them playing some decent music -- and at the top of the hour I heard three separate sets of time 'pips', and all three stations switched off instantaneously, and there was nothing but static. On 11785 there was a Chinese program (CNR-1, I think) with a woman talking in a kid's voice ("Mama! Mama!"), with happy sounding, light music behind her talking -- it was obviously a kid's story.
I've heard this a lot on CNR-1. I've often wondered what the kids' stories are about.
Here in the US, anything on radio for kids is consigned to a few religious programs that might run inspirational kids' shows and radio plays, very early Sunday morning. Otherwise, kids' radio programming left the air when Radio Disney yanked the plug on all of their stations in 2015. Children are just another demographic that Radio finds useless, because there is no money to be made from broadcasting to them.
A lot of SWL's seem to tune past CNR-1, viewing it as just a jamming station to note in the logbook and then ignore. However, I've found some of CNR-1's programming interesting, even if I don't know more than seven words of Chinese (Wuh = me, Ni = you, Wuh-men = us, Ni-men = you all, Zhongguo = China, Dien-tai = Broadcasting, and Ni-hao = "hello"). In the early 2010's, every early morning there was a low voiced dude who always spoke softly and closely to the mic, talking over a music bed of romantic piano. I think it was CNR-1's overnight program. I haven't heard that guy -- or that sort of program -- in eight or nine years. CNR-1 is at least two things: well-produced, and it's got a great signal.
Reach Beyond Australia's former, but colorful logo.
From SWLing Post
ANOTHER TONGUE FROM THE POLYGLOT
After I tired of the kid's show, I tuned my Radio Shack 200629 down a few kilohertz, to11875 kHz, around 5:10 a.m. my time (1210 UTC), and I heard a man talking in a very strange language that I'd never heard before.
Now, having listened to Shortwave for several decades, I've heard a LOT of languages, and learned to ID many of them, and at least ID the region if I can't ID the language. I've heard Spanish, Russian, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hausa, Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya, Swahili, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Viet, Burmese, Inuit (back when the CBC Northern Service was still on the air a long time ago), Hindi, Urdu, Pashto and Dari. I've heard Punjabi, especially on US AM radio stations that program in Punjabi, and I've probably heard that language on SW as well. I've heard Sindhi on SW. I've heard Tamil (on SBC Singapore, which no longer is on SW). I've heard Tagalog and Malay and Bahasa Indonesia. I've heard Pidgin English (on the Solomon Islands BC and the SW station that used to serve Papua New Guinea). I've heard Fulani and one of the languages spoken in Mali, Bambara. I've heard Arabic.
More than half of those languages I can ID. With the others, I generally can at least ID the continent or region where the language is spoken. Sometimes, though, I am clueless about the language. Burmese always throws me off, as does Mongolian. I never can seem to ID those two languages well. I always have problems ID'ing the Afghan languages Pashto and Dari. They're like a puzzle to my ears. It was the same with this language I heard on 11875. I looked up the frequency on my trusty EiBi SW schedule (a very handy tool to keep on your smartphone or tablet computer).
It turned out that the station I was hearing was Reach Beyond Australia, a religious broadcaster I've heard maybe twice before, beaming a program in a language I had never heard of before: Nga La.
A pic of Chin State, Burma (Myanmar), a mountainous region near the Indian border. People who speak the Nga La language -- or Nga La related dialects -- live in both Chin State and India's Mizoram State just across the border. Pic from Wikipedia, photographer: Corto Maltese 1999
EiBi has a "ReadMe.txt" file you can download alongside your Frequency Schedule text file. Both are handy to keep on a tablet or phone. The "ReadMe.txt" has a listing of languages, country codes, and transmitter locations for most of the SWBC stations in the world. You can get the EiBi text files at eibispace.de.
I looked up Nga La in the EiBi readme.txt and it said that Nga La -- also known as Matu-Chin, apparently -- is a language spoken by hill tribes in the Chin Hills region bordering western Burma and India's Mizoram State -- a small area maybe the size of the state of New Jersey, south of India's Assam tea region, and maybe a couple hundred miles east of the Bangladesh coastal city of Chittagong.
And -- get this. Nga La has maybe 40,000 speakers, total, in the World. Some estimates are more like 70,000, if related dialects are included. But you get the idea. Nga La is not a massively spoken language.
Think about it. The people running Reach Beyond Australia are programming half an hour of radio, every day, to a tribal language group that is less than half the size, population wise, than my suburb of 100K people!
I personally wouldn't have know about the Nga La language, Mizoram (although I've seen it on a map before), and Chin State in Myanmar / Burma if it weren't for Shortwave radio. With all the stuff on the internet, I don't think I would have found any info on the language or the region where its people live.
A lot of people, especially SW DX'ers, are really down on religious broadcasters. One SW DX journalist, who has a weekly radio show and web presence, habitually has referred to all religious broadcasters as "hucksters". On the Shortwave subreddit there are fairly frequent references to the religious broadcasters, and the comments usually weigh negative, although surprisingly there are a few guys on there who say they listen now and then out of curiosity -- and they realise that the religious programming on stations like WRMI, WWCR, and WBCQ helps keep the signals -- and the other, non-religious programs -- on the air.
A pic of Aizawl, the capital of India's Mizoram state, where a lot of Nga La speakers apparently live (or at least speakers of Nga La related, mutually intelligible languages live there). Although Mizoram and Chin states are tropical, because most of the terrain is fairly high up in altitude, temperatures range between 60F-80F, year 'round (15-20C). Pic from Wikipedia, Photographer: Nggcha
I personally have no issue with the religious preachers, even if there are some that I do not agree with. I don't always tune into the preaching shows, however. Sometimes they're a little toooooo out there for me. In my view, if one doesn't like the programming, every SW radio has a dial....
But still, these religious broadcasters are important, despite what many may think, because they keep the SW stations on the air, and -- face it: THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN THE SHORTWAVE RADIO MEDIUM. I've even heard some of the religious preachers -- radio veteran Bob Bierman among them -- state that they believe in the medium of Shortwave radio to reach people.
They may not be your cup of tea to listen to, and maybe you disagree with religion, but the religious broadcasters actually believe that the Shortwave Radio medium is valid and useful to reach people with their message. They believe in the SW band as much as we SWL's do. After all, they're paying money to actually use the medium.
And they're doing it even to reach listeners in just one small language group, whose total number of speakers are less than that of an average American city.
And this comes at a time that, right now in the US, there are many who no longer believe in the relevance of Radio, period -- be it FM, AM, or SW. In fact, depending on how one views the data, increasing numbers of listeners in the US also apparently think that Radio is no longer relevant as a medium. The US Radio audience has declined by 10% since 2012, and it may still be declining a certain percentage each year. The big Radio companies that are on the stock market have seen their stock prices plummet, because investors do not see Radio as a terrific investment anymore. Values of the radio stations themselves have dropped -- even many big city FM's are worth less money, when accounted for inflation, than they were worth 20 years ago. Furthermore, advertisers sometimes treat Radio like a redheaded stepchild.
Meanwhile, the religious broadcasters still think that Radio, including Shortwave Radio, is a valid means to reach people with your message.
Some of you may not like the message, but before you knock the religious firebreathers too much, remember -- they actually believe in the medium that you like to listen to.
Anyway, because of the fading on Reach Beyond Australia'ssignal (after all, it was coming from about 12,000 miles away), I switched my antenna from the Radio Shack 200629 to my Tecsun PL-398, and tuned in 11875 on the Tecsun to see if the Tecsun's DSP would make Reach Beyond Australia's program more readable. It did help. It was one of those cases when the DSP really works wonders in resolving the signal.
I listened closely to the language, which seemed to be a mix of SE Asian language sounds (think Viet or Thai), with a little bit of Hindustani language sounds mixed in. Most of what I heard was a guy talking -- probably preaching. The signal level was SIO 2-352 with fading. The guy stopped talking and there was a folk song -- presumably a hymn -- sung by some girls backed by a small pop band.
Then a guy gave what sounded like a web address.
The clock on my Tecsun hit 5:29 a.m., local time, and 1229 UTC. An older woman started speaking, and she mentioned "kilohertz", so she was probably giving the station's Nga La broadcast schedule.
Then I heard a full sign-off from Reach Beyond Australia: "...Thank you for tuning into Reach Beyond Australia.... on the 25 Meter Band." Right after that, there was the sound of a Kookaburra, and then the signal cut off promptly at 1230 UTC.
The Kookaburra's cackly call was used by Radio Australia before the Australian government pulled the plug on them. It's cool that this religious broadcaster is using the same sound as an identifier.
Reach Beyond Australia's current logo.
SO EXACTLY WHO ARE REACH BEYOND AUSTRALIA?
Reach Beyond Australia is apparently an offshoot, or continuation of the old HCJB radio station that was famous for running out of Ecuador in the 1960s-90s. The Australian operation broadcasts in 20 different languages, including some -- like Nga La / Matu-Chin (or just "Matu") -- that I never even heard of. Obviously, they are intent on reaching people in Asia for Jesus Christ.
On their website they say that they are especially interested in reaching out to people in Burma, like the Matu / Nga La speakers, the Rohinga people, and the Burmese people, with daily services in those languages and others like them.
They must think that the Shortwave medium is worth it, or they wouldn't be doing it. On their website are pictures of the antenna farm, near Kunanurra in the Kimberly region of far NW Australia. Looks like a sunny place, and there are more trees there than I had envisioned. Here is a link to their main website.:
The location of Reach Beyond Australia's SW transmitters is just 6 kilometers west of Kununurra, and it's easy to see on a satellite map. Just follow the main road (the Victoria Highway) west, over the Ord River (located right next to the city), and then aim your browser map a bit SW of the bridge that crosses the river. The transmitter site shows up fairly well on a computer mapping app -- a semi-circle of tall towers, which you can spot by their shadows on the ground.
And if you're interested in tuning in this station -- even if it's just to hear the languages, here is their current schedule.:
Although the religous programming coming out of US domestic broadcasters is of marginal interest to most DX'ers, the foreign language broadcasters are a different matter entirely. I've heard Trans World Radio and Adventist World Radio, and their foreign language broadcasts usually have interesting sounding music -- and the fact that a lot of the broadcasts are out of MADAGASCAR is pretty cool, as it's nearly on the opposite pole of the World from me. US religious broadcaster KNLS / New Life Station broadcasts out of Alaska in Russian to Siberia, and they play a lot of cool pop music from the 2010's and the 1980's. And they also broadcast to European Russia from Madagascar, too, and I've heard a few of those broadcasts -- basically coming to my radios from 12K miles away.
Reach Beyond Australia seems similar in scope. They broadcast in interesting sounding languages, and they play interesting music -- usually they seem to be simple church hymns sung by regular folks. Where the station got the girl group singing a hymn in the Nga La language I have no idea. If there are only 40K to 70K Nga La speakers in the world, that's a small population to put together a singing group. But somebody did. Perhaps it was a local congregation in the area.
SHORTWAVE LEADS TO AN INTEREST IN LANGUAGES AND GEOGRAPHY
To bring this back to the first subject breached in this article: Radio has always been a discovery medium for me. When I was a little kid, and when I first heard radio stations from Oregon (which, to a 4 or 5 year old, seemed like a foreign country), I instantly wanted a map to see where Grants Pass was; where was Albany and Lebanon, Oregon? Where was Corvallis? Where was Eureka, California?
MW DXing made me interested in geography, and other places. And then, a few years later, when I discovered the Shortwave band, I was digging through the National Geographic maps that my folks stored on the bookshelf, and then using my big World Atlas. I wanted to see where the Netherlands Antilles were, and where the Netherlands was (after all, Radio Nederland's shows were produced in Hilversum. So I looked it up on the map). I wanted to know the geography of South Africa -- Johannesburg, Germiston, Springs, Boksburg -- I saw them on the map when I heard Radio RSA. When I heard Radio Australia, I pulled up the map of Oz to find Melbourne and Shepparton.
Whenever commentators on Radio Moscow talked about the Soviet republics, I'd pull up a map and see where those places were.
I also developed an interest in languages from hearing them on the Shortwave bands. Like I said, on Shortwave you hear a LOT of different languages, even today.
Although there is a ton of information technically available on the internet, I wouldn't have learned about a language -- Nga La -- that's only spoken by 40,000 people if it weren't for Shortwave radio. And I use the internet daily, like many people do.
I'm not certain how much the truly worldwide reach of the internet really helps people get an understanding of other countries -- be it their geography or languages and culture. I say this in the light of the fact that search engines -- the most basic of research tools -- simply aren't what they were just 15 years ago. The WorldWideWeb has turned slowly into the WorldWide-AI-Boosted-Shopping Mall. Social media connects people, but how much connecting does it really do?
I realize that a lot of the old SW broadcasters have gone online. I wonder if their audience has grown since it's gone web-only. I've never seen the data for it, but I have my doubts that audiences for the online version of Radio Canada Int'l or Radio Nederland are any bigger than they were when they were using the Shortwaves.
Going online didn't help Radio Disney, and they hyped up their stream quite a bit before pulling the plug on Over-The-Air Radio. Their stream barely lasted 5 years. Apparently the listeners didn't follow them over to the streaming site.
The internet is a terrific place, and a great tool for learning and exposure to other peoples and cultures. However I sometimes wonder if it's as effective at world discovery today, as turning on a Shortwave radio can be.
IN OTHER LIFE.....
I'm feeling better than I did a week ago. I'm pretty much recuperated from whatever bug I had. I went out for a bike ride this morning -- the first one in three plus weeks -- and that's progress. My trusty car, however, is simply not so trusty anymore. It appears to be turning into a money suck. The fuel system is fine, but it looks like the temperature sensor is faulty, and the computer that runs the car won't run anything correctly if it doesn't see the right temperature.
This is what happens when you let a computer run your car.
Otherwise, there are a few positives. The weather is improving. As I finish the first draft of this article, it is a sunny morning and it's supposed to be 70F later today.
Weather is OK, and I'm still alive and kicking. Can't beat that, can you?
ONE OF OZ'S BEST EXPORTS, THE BAND DIED PRETTY
I'll close this with a track by an Oz band that I really got into in the 1990's. They're a lesser well-known band, but were one of the best rock bands to come out of Australia. In fact, I first heard of them on Radio Australia: Died Pretty.
Their singer, Ronald S. Peno, had a unique way with words. The words didn't need to be 100% coherent -- the sounds of the words mattered almost as much. I guess Mr. Peno was into poetry, which adopts much the same attitude towards the use of language.
This is their liveliest official video, with a song off Lost, their 1988 album, which was also released in the US. It's called Winterland.Mr. Peno's singing is sort of like Bob Dylan meets Iggy Pop meets Bon Scott meets Jim Morrison:
This is the first song I heard by them, on Radio Australia's Soundabout program, Towers Of Strength.:
This next vid is of the second track on Died Pretty's Lostalbum, which I played quite a bit in the early 1990's. It's sung by the guitar player and co-songwriter, Brett Myers. It's called Out Of My Hands.:
This track has no active video, but the song is probably one of their best. It's called As Must Have.The music actually was an influence on my own songwriting.... plaintive chords, with a lot of E Minor 7ths. Welcome to the Ronald S. Peno method of lyric writing. Mr. Peno unfortunately left us all in August of last year. Mr. Peno, you had a way with words.
This is the best track off Every Brilliant Eye, the Died Pretty album that came out in 1990. The album didn't get much, if any airplay on alternative radio in the US unfortunately, but it should have. One enterprising fan managed to decipher the lyrics to this one -- they're in the comments.
Here's to all this madness, this breeze is blowing cold
The Bible has its new brew, our world has lost its soul....
The old logo for Las Vegas's KDWN, 720 AM, a 50 Kilowatt station that put night-time talk host Art Bell on the American radio map. KDWN's owners have turned in the license, after pulling the plug on the station. Another one bites the dust.
Yet another AM radio station in the Western US has gone off the air permanently -- i.e., the signal is switched off, the plug is pulled, the land is sold, and FCC license has been turned in. This station is one of the biggest US AM'ers in recent history to be yanked off the air.
KDWN, 720 kHz, owned by US radio corporation Audacy (one of the bigger radio companies in the country), was a 50 Kilowatt radio station in Las Vegas, Nevada -- a growing metropolis in the high desert, a city of more than 2 million people, known for excitement, entertainment, and gambling. It also was one of the fastest growing cities in the US for many years.
KDWN was best known for being the radio station where famous night-time talk host Art Bell (who retired from radio before passing away a few years ago), got his career started. Although Art officially started his night-time talk show on another station, it was his KDWN stint that made him famous, as KDWN could be heard all over the Western US wherever there wasn't another station on 720 -- in other words, all of the West outside of parts of Western Oregon and Washington where other stations' signals clobbered the 720 kHz channel.
Here is a link to an article I wrote about Art Bell and his famous, night-time show, which was extremely popular during the 1990's.:
In recent years, with the increasing use of the Internet for entertainment and information among all demos, and the aging out of the prominent demographics that listen to AM radio (GenX and older), Radio has lost listeners, with AM stations taking the bigger economic hit. Some AM'ers still do well in major metros. Others are struggling, propped up by being part of a larger station "cluster". In my city, KIXI 880, which plays standards and light oldies, gets low ratings but is part of a greater cluster that includes several decently and highly rated FM's (pop station KQMV 92.5 being one of them). The other stations keep KIXI on the air, and sometimes a station like KIXI can be included as a demographic-rich 'package'for advertisers.
A radio expert on one of the radio forums I go to (RadioDiscussions) who has owned and operated stations all over the US, informed me that even a low rated station like local, Tacoma station KHHO 850, an affiliate of the Black Information Network (BIN), could help the rest of the cluster in demographic breadth and reach. This concept of "demographic breadth" is a part of the reason that in many cities underperforming stations ratings-wise can still be part of the revenue generation machine for a radio company or 'cluster'. Some stations, like Sports talkers, do not depend on ratings. The advertisers know that such stations -- regardless of their overall listenership -- are the best place to reach sports fans.
The economics of radio obviously is more complex than "Ratings high = You're a millionaire / Ratings low = You're sunk". As mentioned, Sports talk stations, and Sports Betting stations, are typical of stations that can survive without good ratings. But eventually, your stations need to be pulling their weight somehow, and in KDWN's case, the land where the transmitter was located was worth much, much more than the revenues the station was pulling in.
KDWN's new online logo, mentioning the FM translator, although the FM translator is also apparently going off the air.
So, it's bye, bye KDWN.
Oh -- I almost forgot to mention. KDWN had an FM translator.
The FM translator station DID NOT SAVE IT.
And, whaddaya know? KDWN had/has a stream!
The stream, obviously, did not save the Over-The-Air radio station.
Here is a link to KDWN's stream, which still is operating, as of time of writing. It includes commercials, including at least 3-4 commercials that are LOCAL to my own listening region (geolocation being used, obviously -- pretty smart move!):
The "KDWN" stream is part of Audacy's greater streaming platform. I'm not sure how locally oriented the online KDWN is -- so far it appears to be a satellite network affiliate -- but it's all that remains of the station that put Art Bell on the Radio map.
The puzzler to me, in the case of KDWN, is why the owners -- radio company Audacy -- didn't try harder to make a go of it with a 50KW AM signal, and what does it say about their view of OTA Radio as a viable medium? A 50KW signal could blast much of the metro with a Sports Betting format, even better than the one Sports Betting station Las Vegas already has (one Sports talker in Las Vegas, KRLV 920, has some sports-bet talk included with regular sports talk). Sports Betting networks pay bills. They could have dropped the power a bit and still covered the metro OK. KGO's owners (Cumulus) have kept San Francisco's once failing KGO on the air by switching to Sports Betting talk and Sports talk. KDWN could have been diplexed with another AM station Audacy already owns -- KXNT 840, and other formats could have been pursued.
Instead, Audacy -- which just went through bankruptcy, because of debt they allowed to be piled up during one of their shakeups a few years ago -- decided to cut their losses, and pull the plug. They've left the KDWN stream on -- I guess that is something. The bankruptcy may have been an issue, although they have stations that make a lot of money. It's more highly probable that KDWN just would be too expensive to operate for Audacy justify dumping more money into it. The AM audience is dwindling, and AM diplexing (the sharing of two stations using the same towers) is expensive.
A famous photo of Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, which -- along with Reno, maybe 350 miles to the north -- was THE center for legal gambling in the US for decades. The Golden Nugget was famous nationwide -- even if people never went there, they knew what the Golden Nugget Casino was. In the late 1960's the Las Vegas Strip began to take over, as large resort hotel/casinos began to predominate. Now, most of the tourist action and gambling takes place on The Strip.
Photo courtesy the family of Edward N Edstrom
Audacy, like other radio companies before them (IHeart, Radio Disney) are concentrating on their streaming platform. The radio companies see streaming as the future. They might be correct, as younger demographics don't listen to radio, they listen to streaming on their phone. However, the economics of streaming actual radio stations is a lot different from that of an already well-established Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music. So we won't really see the results of this move of Radio from OTA radio to online streaming for another 15-20 years.
On their KDWN stream, Audacy promote an afternoon talk show, that appears to be Las Vegas only -- Steve Sanchez -- and it's also broadcast on the Audacy streaming platform and app. Does Sanchez get enough clicks or streaming ratings without a 50KW OTA signal to push the visibility of his podcast? It's hard to tell.
But this all begs the question: If one of America's largest radio companies doesn't believe in the potential of a metro-covering, 50KW OTA radio station, what does that say for the health of OTA radio in America?
Online, on social media and radio forums, the reactions to the demise of KDWN are somewhat mixed, with what seem to be the usual opinions one sees when these AM stations go under. The fact is, Over-The-Air broadcasting -- AM or FM -- seems to have a lifetime, and the end of OTA radio is probably another decade-and-a-half away before the AM band is static and hiss, and the FM band is increasingly brokered, ethnic, and religious stations, with maybe some sports betting stations thrown in.
Either way, it's sad to see a once well-known radio station in a US major metro go under. I suppose that those of us in the radio listening and DXing hobby should prepare for more of these plug-pulling instances happening. AM radio is not a cheap medium to operate, and its loyal audiences are aging out of the advertising demographics because of the economics of advertising, demographic research, and what appears to be the ageism prevalent in the advertising industry. At the same time, AM audience shares are indeed dropping. Younger demos do not listen to AM radio.
It's the new reality.
Luckily, when I tune my Realistic DX-375 or Sangean PR-D4W across the AM band it's still full of signals, so all is not lost. Still, it's not a great feeling.
Here are the two Radio publications that posted news articles on KDWN.:
There is not much more to talk about. The weather is picking up a bit. My cat Squeakers is doing better. She is eating more. During the cold spell last month she wasn't eating as much. But she's improving. I always have to keep an eye on her, and I always make sure I watch her eat. :-)
I'll end this with a bit of upbeat music from Australia's Rose Tattoo, probably my favorite band to come out of that awesome country.
The first two vids are off of a Tatts album I played to death, Assault & Battery. It was a soundtrack of my college years. This next track is called Suicide City, and it's said to be about Canberra, the Australian national capital.
Guns N Roses, who were fans of the Tatts early on, are said to have been influenced by this song when they wrote Paradise City, a song off their first album, Appetite For Destruction.
Suicide City is one of the best tracks on Assault & Battery, with a riff written by Mick Cocks, probably the best rhythm guitarist out of Oz, right next to AC/DC's Malcolm Young.
Oz rockers know.
Here is another track off Assault & Battery -- the title track. The lyrics are like a page out of singer Angry Anderson's life, and maybe turned up a notch. I played this track a lot. The gritty nature of many of the words to Tatts' songs -- combined with a literate, almost Shakespearean twist of poetic imagery included -- I found fascinating. Angry Anderson looks like a biker, but he's actually a well read man.
Now here is a live show from Amsterdam, 1981, during one of the Tatts' first forays into Europe, right after they toured the UK and played a couple songs for the BBC. In this performance you can generally hear Tatts' rhythm guitarist Mick Cocks a bit better than usual. In some live Tatts' shows they buried his guitar too much, but on this one -- and the BBC recordings, which can be found on YT, but the Blogger searcher can't seem to find -- you hear his Super Distortion, souped up Les Paul Black Custom a lot better.
Here 'tis -- Enjoy. The Tatts at the Paradisio, Amsterdam, April, 1981.
This is the Seattle Times, Seattle's remaining print newspaper, which also has a decent news website that carries the same articles, and then some extra news content. The other major Seattle newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, went online-only in March, 2009. Newspapers were a vital medium providing news and information for Americans for at least two and a half centuries. Now they are dying, with it being unclear what exactly is going to replace them. At the same time, other traditional news media -- like Radio and TV -- find themselves facing the same problems.
Happy New Year's to all of you who check in to the blog from time to time. As I begin to write this, it is New Year's Day. It was around 28F last night, a bit cold, but not the frigid temps that we had about 3 weeks ago, so I'm not going to complain.
Last night I didn't go anywhere for New Year's, I just laid low. I did some writing, ate some pizza, fed my cat, played my guitar, and listened to the radio.
While I was writing on the computer during the hour after Midnight struck, and the New Year kicked in, I was listening to 1270 kHz AM on my Sangean PR-D5, which is my writing den radio. I was hoping to hear KVMI Tulare or KAJO Grants Pass -- stations that play Adult Contemporary music, and are based in cities that are in more southern latitudes with warmer climates.
Also on 1270 is KTFI, a Catholic radio station out of Idaho, which plays EWTN radio programming. Most Catholic radio stations in the US have varied programming, from teaching, to audio versions of the Mass (sometimes with nice singing of Psalms and the like), to call in shows.
This New Year's, just after Midnight, I was treated to a long piano piece, waving and fading in and out all the way from southern Idaho -- a beautiful version of Debussy's Clair De Lune, which is probably one of the most beautiful piano pieces ever written. In a way, it was a very poignant way to bring in the New Year.
I have no idea who the pianist was on the recording EWTN played, but here is an example of a prominent classical pianist playing the piece.:
Not being all that acquainted with the current state of Classical music, I've never heard of Pascal Roge before. But he definitely sounds good here. That piano is as big as a boat. Wow.
A beautiful piece of music.
And here is what you could call the original version of Clair De Lune -- recorded by the composer Debussy himself, in 1913! He recorded it on a piano roll.:
Debussy playing his own composition in 1913, one year before World War One started, and just over 110 years ago, on a piano roll.
Later I went downstairs to get some tea, and on my kitchen radio, which I had tuned to NPR (KUOW FM 94.9), there was a story about the decline of newspapers. That definitely caught my ear.
Now, I'm not a terrific NPR listener. I find a lot of their programming a little on the dull side. But they do have the BBC on all night, and some of their newscasts are OK. Anyway, one of the leading stories on New Year's Eve was that newspapers in the US are dying. After I heard the NPR story, I looked up some articles about this subject on the internet. I found an article in Fortune's online magazine that covered the same facts, and I also found a Pew Research article from late in 2022 that covered much of the same territory.
30 PERCENT LESS NEWSPAPERS IN THE US SINCE THE 2000's
The number of newspapers in the US has declined by 30% since 2005, and that decline sped up over the past year. Also, in just in the past decade or so (the Fortune article I read about this same subject is not specific on the timeline) 48,000 Journalists lost their jobs. The Fortune article says that amounts to two thirds of the Journalists that had jobs in the 2000's. In the 1980's, it's estimated there were around 350,000 Journalists in the US. So -- while our population increased from around 230 million people to 340 million, the number of Journalists in the US declined precipitously -- from 350K to 46K or so Journalists -- in just over 35 years.
The Fortune magazine article says that in 2023, approximately 2.5 newspapers in the US shut down for good every week. In 2022, the number of papers that shut down permanently each week was two papers -- so the rate of newspapers shutting down is increasing. My home suburb of 100K people has no local newspaper to speak of. When I was a kid there was a bi-weekly paper, the Renton Record-Chronicle. It was part of a chain of three newspapers, that covered three major suburbs south of Seattle.
I also worked for another suburban chain for about a year. That newspaper chain had five weekly newspapers that covered the entire region from West Seattle to Federal Way. All those papers are long gone. It's an indicator of the miserable state of newspapering in the US today. People don't read print newspapers anymore.
And -- news flash -- they don't really read online papers, either (see below).
Online newspapers aren't really filling the gap. According to famed polling company Pew Research, online newspapers' readership has dropped back to 2014 levels, and is still declining. And the average amount of time spent reading an online newspaper, according to Pew Research, is one minute and 39 seconds. That's down from around 2 minutes an online session just a few years ago. How much news can you really take in, in just one and a half minutes?
And what does this say about the appeal, or durability, of online newspapers?
This decline in US Journalism is happening more to the local newspapers than the big national ones (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, etc.) -- but even the big national newspapers are feeling the pinch.
For example, in 2023, the Washington Post made 240 positions redundant, and the Los Angeles Times laid off 71 of their staff (The LA Times additionaly cut 115 of their staff in late January, 2024 -- after I wrote this article. Please see Addendum below). The crunch is even hitting other news media -- NPR, whose listenership is dropping while revenues are still (amazingly) increasing, even laid off some people last year. Some news websites, like Jezebel, shut down in 2023.
The NPR story, and others similar to it that I found online (Fortune magazine, as well as several Pew Research articles), paint a picture of Journalism as a declining industry.
Here is a link to the Fortune magazine article I found on this news story.:
Here is the main Pew Research article I found on the state of News in the US today, and most of the statistics look a bit grim. Falling readership rates for Papers, declining audiences for Cable News and some OTA TV services, and declining interest in News -- in all demographics -- since 2016.:
Now, I was trained as a Journalist in college, and I did quite well at it. It was one of the reasons I was able to get a start in radio, as a three-year stint as news director at KCMU (the community-based Seattle FM station that pre-dated KEXP). I never worked more than a year in the newspaper industry itself (and that was in the back shop), however, and I only wrote one article for a local paper as a stringer.
But I've always had an interest in the newspaper industry, and I even wrote two separate articles here, in this blog, about Journalism and Newspapers. One article I wrote was about the decline in Journalistic quality that I'd noticed over the past couple decades, and I thought the rise of the internet was negatively affecting Journalism. The other article I wrote, about the Decline of Mass Media, and how it affects the News Media, covers the subject more extensively.
It looks like I was perhaps correct on both accounts.
Here are the links to those two blog articles.:
This article I wrote concerning what I perceived as the decline in newspaper, and news writing quality, much of which I attributed to the rise of online news media.:
This linked article I wrote some time last year, about the decline of mass media in general -- we are entering a world where there is no real "mass" media -- everything is just "content", and everything is just "media". Online is the great equalizer, and it has its pluses, and minuses. I also cover a lot of statistics that are pertinent to the closing of newspapers and the impending job losses in other traditional media like Radio and Television.:
As you can tell from the statistics that I've listed, both here in this article, and from what I mentioned in my previous, linked articles here, the malaise hitting Journalism in particular, and the News Industry in general, dates back at least a decade or more. And it's not getting any better. It's like the American people junked Newspapers and News altogether when they shifted their attention away from paper and Over-The-Air media, when they started getting all of their entertainment and information online.
Now, I love the internet. I'm using it right now. I have had just over 101,000 visits to this blog since I opened it up in 2015. The idea that my writings would be read by over 100K people would have been absolutely unthinkable when I was in high school or college. But I do have an audience, thanks to the internet.
I have some music online, available for people to hear -- something I never would have been able to do without the internet.
But the internet -- even though it is a Godsend in many ways -- is causing some problems, especially in how Americans -- and maybe people in other parts of the world -- get their news and information.
NEWSPAPERS: THE CANARY IN THE COALMINE
And newspapers, which are one of the oldest mass media, are dying. It may be a harbinger for nearly all other traditional media as well. AM radio, as most of us in the listening hobby already know, is on the verge. FM radio will be fading away perhaps in 15-20 years. Over the Air broadcasting, with all of its infrastructure costs, will not be with us forever. Magazines and print books are starting to decline in importance, as the big book publishers combine to attempt to stay relevant, and stay alive.
The big movie and TV companies are feeling the pinch. Box Office attendance is down, and streaming doesn't bring in the same amount of money that movie tickets and DVD and VHS sales once did. The big visual (Movie and TV) entertainment conglomerates are struggling, even after dumping so much money into streaming. The most recent reports show that as the big media companies -- like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Disney -- invest in streaming, they have to jack up their subscription rates, and/or add commercials to their streams to attempt to keep from losing money.
It ain't workin'.
STREAMING VIDEO IS THE FUTURE -- WHILE IT LOSES SUBSCRIBERS
People are cancelling subscriptions at increasing rates. The streaming world is slowly learning the concept of "price elasticity of demand", i.e., there are only so many price hikes on things like streaming that the average consumer will tolerate, especially in a saturated marketplace. Here is a current news article on the Streaming services' problems.:
Even Netflix, which is apparently gaining profits and has actually added subscribers since the Pandemic, has less average time-spent-viewing by its subscribers than it had a year ago (a decline in one year of 17%).
Here is an article about Netflix's particular successes and problems. 17% percent less watching of their content isn't a great thing. They've also dropped in percentage of viewers overall (7.4% of all viewing in 2023, vs. 7.9% of all viewers in 2022). But, you know? -- it could just be a glitch. There is an interesting chart about halfway down the article, that breaks down the percentage of TV and Video viewing by media -- Broadcast, Cable, Streaming, and 'other'. Streaming is the largest medium used for Visual entertainment, being used for 36% of all viewing.
The music streaming sites are struggling, economically. Pandora and Spotify only rarely show a profit. Apple's costs are nearly 50% of their revenues when it comes to music streaming. Some of the big radio companies' streaming platforms are sustainable, but that is only because a) they still make money off most of their radio stations, and b) they were able to cut deals with the record companies over royalty costs.
But once all of their stations get rid of their antennas and go online-only, that will undoubtedly change. Instantly, the online-only stations will have to pay more in streaming royalties than they presently pay in broadcast royalties. Also, the individual stations' streams on those large platforms will fade into the vast internet static once they become just another faceless channel on the platform. Right now, there are 15,445 radio stations in the US. What's going to happen when all of those 15,445 radio stations are nothing more than channels on a larger platform, with no more unique, local identity, and no primarily local audience?
Here is an article about Spotify and Apple, and it mentions that Apple pays out 52 cents in costs for every dollar earned from their music streaming services.:
The big radio companies' platforms now deliver online streams for the local radio stations, along with the big platform's own music streaming channels. And the local stations can send people to the big platform to hear the local stations', and big platforms' own, independent streams. IHeart is an example of this, and Audacy also has a large streaming platform for its stations.
But once those local stations go off the air, the big platforms running their streams will become just another Pandora and Spotify. There will be no local stations on the air to promote the stations. The stations themselves will be much like online newspapers are now -- just another faceless cog in a big, big wheel. Except -- once they are digital only, their royalty costs will be much higher, because digital music royalties are higher than over-the-air broadcast royalties are. And once the local stations go online only, the tendency for their listeners to drift to other, nationally based streaming services will only increase.
And the corporate radio streaming platforms will end up saturated with 15,000 channels with few listeners per channel, higher royalty costs, and undoubtedly much lower revenue.
It's thanks to all the digital and online competition.
Newspapers are, of course, the canary in the coalmine. Print costs of the paper versions are expensive, and not getting any cheaper. The online versions aren't bringing in enough revenues to keep smaller papers from folding and the bigger ones from laying off staff and using AI to fill in for some reporting and editing.
The newspapers' plight is an indicator of the troubles that all traditional media face when they're dealing with nearly infinite online competition.
A cup of hot coffee, and a print newspaper to read during lunch hour -- it's looking more and more antiquated as the years progress.
THE PROBLEM WITH PAYWALLS -- THEY CAN DRIVE READERS AWAY
One issue that could be affecting the decline in the newspaper audience isn't mentioned in the press, and that is the increasing use of paywalls to limit online readers to only those who are paid subscribers. Sometimes you don't even get one or two free stories before the paywall kicks in.
Although this seems at first blush to be a practical and proper idea, being that a) no one should be working for free, and b) those who read the print newspapers either had to pay at the news box or they subscribed for delivery -- paywalls also have their negatives. First off, any time I see a news article appearing in my social media news feed, and I click on the article, and find that it's behind a paywall, I don't read it. They may get a click out of me (using their headlines as clickbait?), but they're not getting my readership, nor am I seeing their ads.
It's a bit irritating, because the paywalled stories often appear in my news feed -- and often it's a distant news magazine, news site, or non-local paper. If something is in my news feed, I should be able to at least read that item. After all, the papers who do this not only want clicks, they want "engagement". How can they get engagement from far away readers if the story that they place on people's news feeds is behind a paywall?
So, how many readers, and potential readers, are these papers losing by being super tight with their paywall? Some of the papers and news mags / sites I've seen in my news feed I've never read before. I don't even have a chance to get the 1 or 2 free stories out of them before the paywall occurs.
It just often seems counterproductive -- especially for an industry that is losing readers and losing revenues year to year. I know that running everything for free won't bring in revenue, but tight paywalls definitely aren't helping many of these news sites, papers, and periodicals either.
Tight paywalls may be part of the reason for the Pew Research statistic that the "average" time spent reading an online newspaper is about one and a half minutes. That's enough time to discover that the article is paywalled.
FACING THE REALITY -- THE NATURE OF ALL MEDIA HAS CHANGED
Sooner or later, that sector of the news media has to realise that internet commerce is a completely different business model from the old, traditionally delivered one. Online news and entertainment media is not just an online version of the traditional newspaper, radio or TV media.
Online is a completely different animal.
Online you have nearly INFINITE competition. It's just the reality of online news, music, and information delivery. Everything has been reduced to just another form of "Content". As I mentioned previously, I've seen this reality in the eBook world.
Visibility is everything, and Competition is IMMENSE. That usually means you're going to make less money than you did under the old model.
Further, you're going to have plan on making less money off the new model, than you made off the old model. Because you are competing with a gazillion other "content" creators, who are turning out stuff just like yours.
So, in my view, newspapers -- online or the remaining paper ones -- have a tough job cut out for them. I don't envy them. But, being an eBook creator, I get it. In a business model where there are basically no gatekeepers and the marketplace in every genre is saturated with content, it's a tough slog trying to get seen, and trying to gain revenue.
It can be done, but not easily. In 1995 or even 2005, I wouldn't have been published. No one would have published my books. My revenues from book writing would have been zero. Today, I make modest money. It's better than nothing. I can go to eBook publisher and author forums and see that most of them are probably just making a modest amount of money. Some of them, however, pay more in marketing than they make off of their book sales. Because of all the competition.
But under the old model -- the print model -- probably 99% of them would never have had a chance. Under the new, online electronic media model, they at least can gain an audience, even if their income from selling their books is modest.
This is what the newspapers face. And it's also what radio faces when it goes all online.
I don't envy them. There will be thousands more jobs lost. Radio, in particular, will be gutted. Most newspapers will be the same way. Less money will be made per unit of content produced -- be it news, music, or other "content". But it's the reality, and there's no putting the genie back into the bottle.
MANTISSA -- Kickass Oz Rock From Melbourne, 1993!!
I shall end this article with another music video or two, these ones being quite a bit different from the Debussy ones above.
How about some Mantissa?
Of course, you probably never heard of them. But you should have.
Mantissa were a relatively short-lived Australian rock band that got attention playing pubs and clubs in the Melbourne area in the very early 1990's. Formed originally in 1989, they called themselves Killing Time, until they got signed to a US record label in 1992, and it was found that an East Coast punk rock band already had that name. So they changed their name to Mantissa, apparently the title of a book they liked.
Mantissa played a mix of hard rock, metal, and grunge. The 'grunge' was mostly their clothing and attitude. After all, the grunge music and fashion explosion had hit Australia, just as it had hit the rest of the world. Mantissa also had some songs that sounded clearly like alternative rock, without the metal sounding guitars. They also had a chick bass player, who was a co-writer on a lot of their songs -- not unlike White Zombie. Women were getting more recognition in rock music in the 1990's.
Their one US album, Mossy God, is no longer available, unless you can find a used CD somewhere. This seems to be the case with a lot of 1990's and 2000's era, second and third tier, signed rock bands. I can't even find the whole Mossy God album online at YouTube -- there are several tracks available, though, along with some early Killing Time-era live performances.
I first learned of Mantissa when the CD single came into my place of work. The single never got used by our rock formats, and the CD single was placed in the grab bin. I grabbed it.
Here's the track -- Mary Mary. Like most Oz rock of the time, it KICKS. This is the official audio from the album track.:
Blogger's search doesn't bring up the actual video panel to the official video -- where the band is shown on a Sydney region freeway bridge (that was under construction at the time), and in a rural location near Healesville, Victoria -- but here is a link to it. Just click it and it will take you to YouTube where you can see it.:
The cinematic photography for the Mary Mary official vid looks 90's to the max!
This next vid is the official vid for the track that was on the CD single I've still got. It's a live recording of Mantissa playing Mary Mary at the Big Day Out in Melbourne in 1993. The Big Day Out was a massive festival in Australia during the 1990's -- it was similar in bent to the Lollapalooza Festival here in the US. And, just like Lollapalooza, it travelled from city to city. In the case of the Big Day Out, they played the major capital cities in Australia -- Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, and Perth (I'm not sure if they played Hobart and Darwin).
Big Day Out went away not too long after the Grunge and Nu-Metal eras faded.
Although it's clear that the band here are playing parts to another track (by looking at the guitar chords and the like), the video gives a good picture of what it was like for a band to play the Big Day Out, and the recording here is definitely live. Being that Blogger's YouTube search doesn't bring it up, I can only insert the link. Click it and it will take you there.
Here is another track by Mantissa, Land Of The Living. It's another single that was released during the Mossy God years, 1993-1994. Not too long after this, the band disbanded. Another victim of varying trends during the 1990's, as well as the difficulty for even a great band like Mantissa to break the US when there was such a plethora of great rock, pop, and alt music on the radio during that incredible decade.:
Land Of The Living also has an official video, which Blogger's search function couldn't seemingly find. Here is a link to it on YT.:
I hope that this article finds my readers everywhere doing well. The holiday season is now behind us -- except some parts of Scandinavia, which apparently hold off until the "20th day of Christmas" (Tjugondag Jul in Sweden) to take down their Christmas tree. Whether that custom still is common, I have no idea.
But for most of us, it's back to the grind again. Here in Western WA, it means more cold and rain. Lately, we've managed to avoid the 25-28 degree temperatures F that we experienced in late November and early December.
2024 is upon us. In the US, that means election year, and all the junk that goes with it. I plan on getting some projects done this year, and being that my boss is retiring, I'll have more time to do them in.
Let's all hope that 2024 is better than 2023 was.
Until next time, my friends,
Peace.
C.C., January 2nd and 3rd, 2024. Re-edited on January 5th, with a news article on video streaming services losing subscription added. January 16th I corrected the call letters of KTFI Twin Falls (I had mistakenly typed in KTWI).
ADDENDUM, January 24th, 2024: The Los Angeles Times is reported to layoff approximately 20% of its remaining workforce (about 115 people), even after its owner propped the paper up with $1 Billion (after purchasing the paper with $500 Million) since he purchased the LA Times in 2018.
The owner, a billionaire, reportedly has lost "tens of millions of dollars" from the paper's operations, including a loss of $40 Million last year. The second article below states that the LA Times' staff had previously been cut from 1,200 to 500.
Here is an article about the layoffs from MSN (the article exhibits some bias):
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