and whys that?
They charge $50 an hour for the other frequencies with a fixed beam......... 9330 would cost $500 plus an hour and they wont lease out individual hours, you have to buy 12 plus hours a day on 9330
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“World’s Last Chance” broadcasts on WBCQ have ended
- Thread starter Mediafrog+
- Start date
They charge $50 an hour for the other frequencies with a fixed beam......... 9330 would cost $500 plus an hour and they wont lease out individual hours, you have to buy 12 plus hours a day on 9330
It was one of the first stations I heard when I started listening to shortwave in the mid-1960s. It was known as the “International Service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation” back then; the RCI moniker was inaugurated in the early 1970s along with the CBC’s “exploding pizza” logo.
The shortwave service was shut down in 2012 but an online version is still available via the CBC News website: Radio Canada International | Radio-Canada.ca
I mostly lost interest in RCI in 2006 when it switched from a general news, information and entertainment service and instead became a recruitment tool for potential immigrants to Canada. Rather than a broad overview of Canadian society it only dealt with very narrow slices of the immigrant experience that were of little relevance to a general audience.
2006 was also when they dropped the shortwave broadcasts of the CBC’s The World at Six and As It Happens flagship shows which I had enjoyed.
The Sackville site was dismantled a couple of years after the shortwave shutdown. I’ve always wondered what happened to the transmitters; most were 250kw ABB units installed during the mid to late 1990s that had good audio quality and likely had a lot of service life remaining.
And WBCQ has horrible coverage on 3265, 5130 and 6160. 7490 is not much better. As posted upthread, there is no way the are running 50kw on those frequencies; perhaps only a few kw if even that.
I heard New England based ham operators with far better reception than WBCQ, except for the big 9330 unit.
Is there a technical reason 9330's transmitter couldn't operate one hour at a time? In the current shortwave economic environment, I can't imagine turning down any clients whatsoever.
In the first world, the only measurable shortwave audiences remaining are preppers, who won't even tune in unless TEOTWAWKI happens, off-gridders, and some small religious and political niches. Every other listener demographic is virtually invisible, like people out camping, or Tom Hanks:
I would also count DX and ham radio nerds as listeners, but if we're being honest, they're really only there to listen to the ionosphere, not these stations' shows.
Are there any FCC rules prohibiting Allan from leasing 9330 full time to foreign media like the BBC, who might be interested in resuming broadcasts via flamethrower signals given the rapidly evolving world situation, but who're not interested in rebuilding their own sites again? If Allan could lease 9330 to an entity with deep pockets that didn't care about driving bargains, the income could fund the refurbishment of his other transmitters -- or, perhaps aided by the sale of them to potential foreign buyers, the purchasing of WWCR's two vacant transmitters, which actually get out, and which Allan could leave in place in Nashville and just feed remotely.
(This is a half-serious idea, but Trump does love building monuments to himself, and even built his own social media network. Could he be old enough to mistake shortwave as still relevant and vain enough to want his own international broadcast station blaring 24/7 replays of all his speeches and rallies around the planet for pure ego reasons?
Again, half serious here, but maybe Allan could make some calls. All he'd have to do is hold his nose while counting the money, like with the flat earth folks.)Thanks. Guess Turner did a u-turn when he realized what long blocks on 9330 would run him.
Allan said he was only going to lease it to someone who bought that much time, 12 plus hours a day......its expensive and time copnsuming to operate, so they likely would barely break even operating it just an hour here and there
The BBC is phasing out shortwave and already has the transmitter capacity it needs via its two remaining owned sites as well as leases elsewhere. Same for the few remaining government broadcasters on SW.
Besides, I don’t think any serious broadcaster wants to deal with Weiner.
There’s no airtime demand. Look at all the unsold airtime on WRMI and WWCR.
Refurbishment of WBCQ into a serious broadcast facility would require millions of dollars. Weiner doesn’t have that.
9330 was on air abit after 1500 utc today, noted by someone in NY but weaker than usual so maybe at 50kw instead of 500. it signed off at 1518utc
Oh absolutely. I couldn't care less what's being broadcast. I just want to identify it. And it's even easier now with sites like short-wave.info. Back in the day I had to wait for a station ID and/or interval signal.
When to comes to AM DX, i dont care.. im just after the log but on SW its a bit different. I loved hearing the Saudi Quran channel on SW better than most anyone else, lol.. i will also sit and listen to Radio Nacional de amazonias for an hour.
I'll listen to the news from North Korea and the music.
I remember being a kid when 9/11 happened and the first thing I tried to do was listen to the Voice of Sharia in Afghanistan. Of course I failed on an Eton E5 on a whip but I tried. In some ways it's easier now with SDRs but enough people use them now they can get overloaded. Trying to listen to anything near Ukraine when that started was impossible.
ive gotten snail mail from Voice of korea, pyongyang twice. am i on some list? possibly.
If they actually respond, I may be able to get them to fix their DRM broadcasts. 6140 and 3205 but they haven't worked in months. And getting a QSL card from them would be amazing. Did you use E-mail: [email protected] or have to send snail mail to them?
snail mail both times.. but the second time,i sent them an email i was moving and in about a month i got postal mail addressed:
Paul Walker
po box 165
galen, alaska 99741
310 south main street
warren, pa
and it arrived in PA!
but they never answered email
If memory serves, the 9330 facilities (internet-based acquisition, playout automation, processing, transmitter, tower) were all built new completely new from the ground up for the flat earthers, and were remotely manageable. Would broadcasters who knew all that even care about Weiner's past notoriety, if all he would be doing for them now was glorified site watchman and maintenance duties for tasks they couldn't engineer remotely?
Speaking for myself, I honestly wouldn't hold someone's youthful excesses or present-day political eccentricities against him if all I needed was a reliable on-site contract engineer with the skills to keep me on-air when trouble happened. He certainly seemed to have fulfilled that role for the WLC people.
I can only judge him through his weekly show and the interviews I've seen with him, but I kind of doubt Allan would even want serious (modern) facilities for any of his non-9330 operations. He seems as happy as a clam being surrounded by nothing but his old school mixing boards and vack-a-yume tube equipment. By refurbishment, I was just thinking about his transmitters. My understanding is most of them are limping along on low power thanks to deferred maintenance.
Well, no demand might be a premature diagnosis. I realize WWCR shut down one of its four transmitters completely (#1) and has another with only a few hours of programming left on it (#4). But that was mainly from the loss of Brother Stair's Overcomer Ministry and Rick Wiles' Trunews. Trunews was formerly booking 8 hours every day on transmitters #2 and #3, and the Overcomer -- besides its near-total stranglehold on transmitter #4 -- was booking an additional 6 hours on transmitter #3. After those two pulled their shows, WWCR wound up re-organizing its schedules to eliminate several of its clients' repeats (I remember VORW losing one or two, for example). That then allowed the schedules for transmitters #1, #2, and #3 to be compressed onto just #2 and #3, clearing the way for shutting #1 down for energy savings purposes. I also compared an archived PDF of WRMI's schedules from 2024 with their current grid, and WRMI also appears generally the same in terms of clients, with the exception of the vast, vast number of timeslots Overcomer once occupied.
Now 7490, there's a frequency I haven't heard mentioned in a while. I remember the old WJCR, Upton (the FM is still in operation), then WJIE, Louisville (thought they were still there). Of course, I also remember 'BCQ on 7415, the old pirate frequency.
whatever WBCQ has been running on 7490, 6160 or 5130 has likely been far less power than the 50kW they have claimed…
I’ve looked at the aerial/satellite of the property…no towers? probably a simple rhombic wire at best…hung from trees(?)
if anything, run the 500/250kW rig at 50kW… I’m sure that steerable tower antenna is far better than whatever antennas are used for 7490/6160/5130!
also…that 500/250kW transmitter could dial up any frequency from 49 to 13 meter band…certain times of the day would be better on a frequency other than 9330…
Alan Weiner… might be losing it in lala land
I’ve looked at the aerial/satellite of the property…no towers? probably a simple rhombic wire at best…hung from trees(?)
if anything, run the 500/250kW rig at 50kW… I’m sure that steerable tower antenna is far better than whatever antennas are used for 7490/6160/5130!
also…that 500/250kW transmitter could dial up any frequency from 49 to 13 meter band…certain times of the day would be better on a frequency other than 9330…
Alan Weiner… might be losing it in lala land
WJCR was a good sounding station with a solid signal during the 1990s. Was rather surprised when it shut down, but apparently listener response was far below expectations. Thus the sale of the operation to…
I only heard WJIE a few times. Very erratic operation, and was quickly gone.
I agree, with similar experiences in NC. 'JCR was solid and 'JIE off-and-on, even airing their TV station audio most of the times I heard them.
Aaaand Allan's May 8 (PDT) broadcast was a repeat of January 16, 2026. So, nothing new in a month now. I hope he and his wife are physically both alright.
@Mediafrog+, do Glenn's logs confirm that 3/13, 3/20, and 4/3 were truly new? I labeled them as such before this thread brought it to my attention that they sometimes repeated shows from many months prior.
@Mediafrog+, do Glenn's logs confirm that 3/13, 3/20, and 4/3 were truly new? I labeled them as such before this thread brought it to my attention that they sometimes repeated shows from many months prior.