Here in Alaska, it was usually a mid of the Cooban jammy jam jammer musheen and RM.. and sometimes CFVP with the jammer even when marti wasnt on
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Kari Lake previews her plans for Voice of America in the next Administration.
- Thread starter Bill Betten
- Start date
Here in Alaska, it was usually a mid of the Cooban jammy jam jammer musheen and RM.. and sometimes CFVP with the jammer even when marti wasnt on
You mean like all the Cuban refugees I interviewed for my evaluations of Radio Martí who said they could not hear the service because it was "covered" by local stations?
We have that kind of very solid data for the VOA and its annex services from every totalitarian nation.
That's her political stance. She'd be more broadly received if she simply said that the ancient services were not effective. In any case, the reach is very small, partly because "nobody" has shortwave radios today and the internet in restrictive nations is censored and partly because the content is, well, boring.
I think, based on my experience, that the advisors tended to overemphasize audience sizes and penetrations. As I said, in all my international experience inspecting and auditing ratings in many countries, I never saw the VOA mentioned. And, of course, the bigger question is "why is every other nation reducing or closing its shortwave operations?
The VOA has a huge staff of people who would like us to believe that their service is effective. So they make stuff up.
That's what we call anecdotal.
They must be great at what they do. They somehow managed to convince congress and 14 presidents for over 70 years they were providing a valuable and useful service. Meanwhile a local TV newscaster with absolutely no international experience and no documentation was able to shut the entire place down in a day. We tell ourselves we're so rich and powerful as a country, and within months a small group of people have completely paralyzed the entire government and most of our private business. If I was someone who was plotting an overthrow, I can see just how easy it would be.
Ironic that CFVP gets shut down, and then the 6030 kHz frequency becomes vacant with the Marti closure.
Should note, though, that 6030 has been occupied by U.S. government broadcasts for decades, so CFVP didn’t stand much of a chance at night. Back in the 1960s and 70s AFRTS used the frequency for its Caribbean beam, transmitted from the Bethany, Ohio site.
When you have a totalitarian socialist regime where listening to Radio Martí will bring sanctions on you and your family, anecdotal data from refugees is the only valid research. And one can find a huge sample of them in Miami.
If your job depended on a chimera, you would dimension that mythical entity so that it could be perpetuated.
How long does it take for a person to be told that shortwave is dead... nearly all the countries that used to have huge SW agencies have closed them... and radios are not commonly found anywhere now?
The government's debt is approaching $40 trillion dollars. There are lots of things government has expanded to do that should either be stopped, scaled down or returned to the individual states for local administration. VOA is one that should be stopped.
An example is U.S. Information Service, USIS, now merged into the Department of State. When I was living and working in Latin America, it was referred to as "Useless". The idea was to provide information about the USA to media, college teachers, etc. It never seemed to achieve any measurable impact.
"The United States Information Service (USIS) was the overseas arm of the United States Information Agency (USIA), which was responsible for the U.S.'s public diplomacy and exchange programs worldwide. USIS offices were located in embassies and consulates abroad. In 1999, the USIA and USIS were merged into the Department of State"
Good example of an initiative that should be totally closed.
I've been in front row seats for actual overthrows and attempted ones as they were happening... Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama and Perú. What is happening in the U.S. today is not even Junior High School league compared with what it takes to "overthrow" a government.
Nobody told her that, because she fired them all. It's not why she shut it down. She'll gladly use the same outdated platform and just put OAN on it.
Not one dollar from this shutdown has been directed to pay down the debt. They're handling this debt just like Cumulus. They never pay down the debt. Instead they keep increasing expenses. The new budget being worked on will add ever more trillions to the debt, and they will increase the debt ceiling once again. So don't waste my time telling me about the debt. This president is taking VOA money and spending it on a military parade for himself.
People in this country are too rich to take to the streets. As long as they can still bet on sports, they're fine with whatever happens to the country.
Television is the opiate of the masses.
So, if Shortwave doesn't get through (jamming, etc) and Internet doesn't get through (censorship, firewalls), and satellite doesn't get through (equipment too costly or unavailable), then what would get through?
Through various means, these totalitarian regimes have either severely restricted or blocked all technological sources of outside information quite thoroughly, haven't they?
So, what to do? Word of mouth is extremely dangerous and life threatening, but it seems to me to be the only method of getting outside info that can't be absolutely completely 100% blocked.
c
Through various means, these totalitarian regimes have either severely restricted or blocked all technological sources of outside information quite thoroughly, haven't they?
So, what to do? Word of mouth is extremely dangerous and life threatening, but it seems to me to be the only method of getting outside info that can't be absolutely completely 100% blocked.
c
Ask China and Russia. They figured it out.
Not necessarily, but probably, since there's no way to formally discontinue or change anything of that magnitude without input from Congress (for better or worse, they have appropriated the funds to run VOA's outdated SW platform, and by law, they will continue to do so unless and until they change or repeal said law).
It's like they're doing the right thing (finally doing away with their wasteful SW networks) for the wrong reasons (shutting it all down for political reasons without considering any technical metrics such as demographics and so on).
Yes. It's all a bunch of hypocrisy. There appears to be no intention to actually put the money "saved" to good use elsewhere in the government where it might be useful, despite any words to the contrary that may be said.
To that end, throwing a military parade for himself is not only a waste of that VOA money but also of military resources (and everyone's time, because I'm sure he will want to tacitly mandate that all the major radio and TV networks to cover it by making vague threats of "consequences" if they don't).
Sad but true.
Yeah, I suppose they did. We in the West can't seem to get much, if any useful info in no matter how hard we try, but they sure can get stuff out despite any and all efforts to block it.
That said, there are some very smart and able people in these places who are really good at hacking their way around most blockages if they really want to see something from the outside, so maybe the "Internet is ineffective because totalitarian regimes can block it with ease" argument is actually moot?
c
You know, if SW listening was so negligible, why are China and Russia still doing it. There are times, I think, when U.s. soft power (shortwave, Internet streaming) could go a long way towards getting our message across without making threats or actually using military force, no matter how small the audience might be.
Most of China's SW is for its own nation. Russia has vastly reduced its SW usage.
In both cases, they are authoritarian governments that likely think that it is better to program to just a few remaining listeners, despite the expense.
Again, nearly every other broadcaster that used short wave either for national identity or religious purposes has abandoned the band. Obviously, they know that listening is nearly zero.
Except for the recent tests of Radio rossia/Vesti FM, Russia hasnt really been on SW on AGES, except for a 2-=3 week broadcast back in 2016-17 relay of astate network for some disaster or something. Russia registers but never uses the HFCC frequencies it registers
China still has an extensive international shortwave service, though programming in a number of languages has been replaced by music fill. For instance my recent checks of the Portuguese language broadcast to Brazil at 0000 UT reveal nothing but music, no news or other spoken word content.
Domestically China has a large number of stations still on shortwave. Online SDRs in East Asia reveal lots of activity on shortwave bands that are pretty empty elsewhere in the world.
Russia eliminated what was left of its domestic and international shortwave services in 2014, along with longwave and all but a few mediumwave stations. There have been a couple of domestic shortwave outlets that have had brief appearances since then, but nothing permanent.
Outside the U.S. a number of religious broadcasters including FEBC, TWR, AWR and Reach Beyond (ex HCJB Global) still have a considerable amount of shortwave activity, though down from what it used to be. I suspect that they are aware the audience is tiny, but if they are “saving souls” they consider the effort to be worth it. However a money crunch along with new generations of evangelists and their modern outreach philosophies will likely force reductions and closures of current SW output.
They clog up the 7 mhz band on U.S. SDRs from the West Coast to the Midwest in the early a.m. hours.
I'm not sure whether it was shortwave, but the Hulu series "Paradise" has had its episodes on ABC and last night, radio broadcasts were coming from somewhere. There is a small group of survivors in a bunker that looks very much like the real world, and the people in charge are trying to cover up the fact that people on the surface did survive the end of the world and are trying to communicate.
Sounds like we need to keep shortwave.
Sounds like we need to keep shortwave.
they clog up the band everywhere all the time here
China really knows how to clog things up!
I guess much as they do with trade (overwhelm markets with millions of products at prices so cheap no one else can compete), they gain information dominance by simply drowning out everyone else.
And unlike most everyone else, they don't seem to be opposed to including old technology.
c
I guess much as they do with trade (overwhelm markets with millions of products at prices so cheap no one else can compete), they gain information dominance by simply drowning out everyone else.
And unlike most everyone else, they don't seem to be opposed to including old technology.
c
The dream of no federal government is coming true for cities and towns with tornado damage. Maybe the ghost of Ayn Rand can help.
I wonder how they're liking it? Considering the fact that many of the hardest hit areas are, to my knowledge, strongly pro-Trump and pro-MAGA (and thus very anti-government), it all seems rather ironic.
c
I imagine she would justify their suffering much like she did during the train crash in Atlas Shrugged.