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BBC revives shortwave broadcasts to Ukraine

K

kevtronics

kevtronics said:
"As Russia is trying to cut off the flow of information in Ukraine by attacking its communications infrastructure, the British news outlet BBC is revisiting a broadcasting tactic popularized during World War II: shortwave radio."

www.nytimes.com

BBC revives shortwave radio dispatches in Ukraine, and draws ire of Russia. (Published 2022)

The British broadcaster is turning to frequencies that still work during a communications blackout.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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They've been doing this for a week now under two frequencies for two hours every day.

15735 kHz from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Kyiv time / 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Easter time.
5875 kHz from 12:00-2:00 a.m. Kyiv time / 5:00-7:00 p.m. Eastern time.
 
I believe these new transmissions are in English. That won't help much. They need to be in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. VOA should think about adding those languages as well.
 
Yes. English is the language of the broadcasts but it should be in Ukrainian and Ukrainian only so that the Russian and Belarus governments can't understand the broadcasts to make it easier for the Ukrainians who are fighting as well as the government to access the information.
 
bigdonho said:
Yet, when it really hits the fan, shortwave comes through.
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A broadcast only "comes through" if there are receivers in the right places. I have no idea how many shortwave receivers are in place in Ukraine, but I'd wager penetration is relatively low. Possibly somewhat higher than in the US, due to people wanting to receive broadcasts from the other side of the Iron Curtain during the Soviet Union days.
 
radioman148 said:
Indeed, over the air radio still is important.
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Not if the target listeners do not have shortwave radios. In today's world, nearly nobody has them any longer.
 
I found it interesting that when I've checked out European SDRs in their evening, there are still a fair number of signals on 49 meters. Certainly nothing like the 70s. That doesn't mean I think they are viable.
 
Now Russia is blocking the BBC and VOA web sites, as well as Facebook. And with the new law making it a crime punishable by 15 years in prison to broadcast or publish anything the Russian government decides is "fake news", pretty much all foreign and independent media is going to disappear from the country.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Not if the target listeners do not have shortwave radios. In today's world, nearly nobody has them any longer.
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And we've brought this on ourselves folks! Americans, in particular, have gotten quite complacent, and soon they ask "Who uses this", or "Who uses that", and so we shut it down. Ukraine/Russia is a modern day prime example of the government easily cutting off your access to the world. So, a Reverse Tinkerbell Effect, of sorts. "We don't need radio! We have the internet!" Well, the internet is a web of local entry points, all connected together as one, so Putin had an easy time pulling the plug. So, ironically, Ukrainians and Russians need radio again. So the next time someone tells you that medium-wave or short-wave is a waste of spectrum that needs to be shut-down, just remind them of the 2022 Ukrainian War, especially when someone thinks that a crackdown can't happen in the modern day.
Even if not many people will receive the shortwave broadcasts, because society has "moved on" from radios, the BBC is right to at least try, as they have been through a lot, and they just know how easy it is to be isolated from the rest of the world by the crackpots.
kevtronics said:
NEXUS of Italy has also increased the power of their 1323 kHz medium wave (AM) frequency to serve Ukraine and neighboring countries:

AM Medium Wave | NEXUS-IBA

www.nexus.org www.nexus.org
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Awesome!
 
itsTheRolyPoly said:
Yes. English is the language of the broadcasts but it should be in Ukrainian and Ukrainian only so that the Russian and Belarus governments can't understand the broadcasts to make it easier for the Ukrainians who are fighting as well as the government to access the information.
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Russians and Belorussians can probably understand Ukrainian to a certain extent. And so can Russian officials who would be monitoring the broadcasts. Ukrainian and Russian are similar, the way Norwegian and Swedish are similar, to the point that many words and phrases are close enough to identical that the Russian on the ground would understand much of it. I used to teach Ukrainians, Russians, and at least one Belarussian guy, and they were all talking to each other, probably in Russian. I was told by Ukrainian refugees I knew that they even could understand some Polish, as there was a bit of mutual intelligibility.
 
As for the usefulness of the BBC trying to beam news and info into Ukraine via SW, even if one resident in an apartment block has a SW radio (or MW radio), the word would get out to other people in the apartment block or neighborhood. There are still a lot of Soviet era transistor sets in that part of the world.
 
boombox4 said:
Russians and Belorussians can probably understand Ukrainian to a certain extent. And so can Russian officials who would be monitoring the broadcasts. Ukrainian and Russian are similar, the way Norwegian and Swedish are similar, to the point that many words and phrases are close enough to identical that the Russian on the ground would understand much of it. I used to teach Ukrainians, Russians, and at least one Belarussian guy, and they were all talking to each other, probably in Russian. I was told by Ukrainian refugees I knew that they even could understand some Polish, as there was a bit of mutual intelligibility.
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Thanks for that first hand insight. I have not seen this covered online or on the "news" channels and it is important in the understanding of the cultural aspects of the conflict.
 
Bongwater said:
Twitter and Facebook now banned in Russia. All the Russian people really have to get hard information through inside Russia really is radio, right now. And Putin's likely going to crank it up to martial law on the Russian people this weekend.

I'm sure it's probably dawning on the younger folks there by now that something's not right about this. What did they do to deserve it? They don't know the Soviet Union. To them, it's something Grandpa mumbles about after his third glass of vodka. All they known is big time capitalism. And 24/7 smartphone access with friends all over the globe. Then like, BOOM! The smartphone apps don't work. No more room-dancing for TikTok, sharing photos with Grandma on Facebook, playing games with Americans on X-Playstation, the latest thing they ate on Twitter, etc. They're literally back in 1922. That's a leap for young folks. Easy now. Unless you want to answer to them all how it all supposedly worked before again...

And they're the ones who are going to call this with Putin. And at that point, it turns back into 1990 again. And it's going to be just as ugly.

There's tech geeks galore in Russia. They're going to find a way through, eventually. Count on it. So whatever blackout isn't going to be for long. And the Russian people's side of this increasingly tragic story will be known.
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gr8oldies said:
I found it interesting that when I've checked out European SDRs in their evening, there are still a fair number of signals on 49 meters. Certainly nothing like the 70s. That doesn't mean I think they are viable.
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I'm definitely banking on the hope that the "older" Russians haven't forgot what it was like to live in the USSR, and kept their radios around just in case. The youngsters could be kept informed by their grandparents who have shortwave tuners lying around. @gr8oldies you might be missing the point then. War time is a whole different animal then Peacetime. Actually, shortwave's "demise" is a great disguise because it maintains it's secret.
MarioMania said:
The only thing is Radio

Russia can't ban that
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In the case of the BBC, they simply turned off access to the website, but they can't just turn off a station on another continent. However, the Russians might begin jamming signals (hopefully they don't).
kevtronics said:
Now Russia is blocking the BBC and VOA web sites, as well as Facebook. And with the new law making it a crime punishable by 15 years in prison to broadcast or publish anything the Russian government decides is "fake news", pretty much all foreign and independent media is going to disappear from the country.
Click to expand...
Yikes. Not suprising, but definitely despicable. It's like they're copying North Korea's playbook
boombox4 said:
As for the usefulness of the BBC trying to beam news and info into Ukraine via SW, even if one resident in an apartment block has a SW radio (or MW radio), the word would get out to other people in the apartment block or neighborhood. There are still a lot of Soviet era transistor sets in that part of the world.
Click to expand...
Exactly. People haven't entirely forgotten.
 
Another factor is that during the Soviet era, all school children in Eastern Bloc countries were required to learn Russian as a second language. My mother, who grew up in Slovakia, still complains about how they were forced to study Russian in school -- although she says the teacher wasn't too happy about it either, so during tests he would leave the room, allowing the students to share the answers.
 
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