I think some of you may be missing my previous point. SW reaches into Asia, Africa and similar areas of the world where billions of people live, and operations like TWR and AWR and the VOA and DW and BBC and Radio France Int'l and several others wouldn't bother devoting hours of broadcasting to those regions on SW if there were zero listeners.
But all of those have cut way back on SW broadcasts in more recent years as they understand that nearly nobody listens to SW any longer. Most of those that you mention are government sponsored, and inertia keeps them going beyond their real end of life.
And obviously some of their justification for using SW is that it can't be easily geofenced by unfriendly governments, and then there is the issue of Soft Power and reaching a potential audience, which comes into play whenever international, government backed broadcasters are involved..
Again, the near total absence of affordable SW radios in any of those locations makes the reach of such stations zooming in fast on "zero".
A lot of the countries in Africa and Asia have repressive regimes, and overseas information and SW is one way for people to get information, be it news or otherwise (or, in the case of religious broadcasters, a religion frowned upon by the state). Many may not be using the SW services. But they're there, in case someone chooses to listen.
If they could find and afford a radio.
And, of course, it doesn't mean a lot of people are listening. But someone is obviously listening. The BBC famously pulled its North American SW services because they determined that the small listenership on SW in NA was not worth the expense of using SW to cover this part of the world. They have shown that they are well aware of potential audiences (or lack thereof), and apparently must get enough feedback from listeners in regions like Burma, Iran, Sudan, and West Africa to determine that SW is reaching people. They still devote two full hours, in English, to West Africa, nearly every night.
But they have the facilities and, up to now, the budget. But as their SW facilities age, none are being upgraded or replaced. This is like an old car that you keep as long as it runs but never replace.
And sure, Africa has FM. In the cities. And yes, there are millions in the cities like Lagos and Accra and Kinshasa but there are millions more in the countryside.
And even the smallest towns have FMs, often more than they can support. Closer to home, Port-au-Prince has about 50 FMs. Tiny towns in the mountain areas have five or six, many of them unlicensed. Same is true in much of Africa and many places like Indonesia, Myanmar and the like.
South Africa even has nationwide coverage of their national networks on FM (installed during the apartheid era). But it's arguably the most developed country on the continent. Millions of people in Africa and Asia live in rural areas, probably beyond the reach of the FM stations in the cities.
But they are close enough to towns and smaller cities that all have FM.
I'm sure the issues of terrain shadows, poor or marginal FM coverage, and similar factors come into play in Africa and Asia as much as they do here in the US and Canada.
But it is a minor factor. Those nations would not have closed their government operated AM stations if this were significant.
The principle appears to be much the same with the religious SW broadcasters, and probably some of the governmental SW broadcasters as well -- the principles of potential reach, and Soft Power -- something the Chinese are definitely aware of. I think those in the VOA are aware of the concept as well.
But the VOA is taking a much more new media approach. They stream, and in some nations they buy time on one of the less successful FM operations.
Every time I hear VOA's broadcast to Africa there is a brief and to-the-point "Opinion of the United States Government" broadcast on it. I doubt any FM or MW station in Africa would allow that to be broadcast. And internet streams from the VOA might be blocked in some African and Asian countries.
The local VOA broadcasts (and they go back to the 50's providing taped shows to local radio via the US Embassy offices all over the world) are either run free or paid in many places. For a while, I had an FM that ran French, British, German, Italian, British, Spanish and US embassy shows prior to 6 PM and did classical music 6 to Midnight and made good money.
