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US Domestic Shortwave
- Thread starter Radig
- Start date
Obviously, some are listening, or the stations wouldn't be on the air still. I know TWR believes in the medium. They say so on their website.
And one could easily argue why we have swaths of spectrum dedicated to hams, who only comprise 200K-300K in the US, and many, if not most, of them are inactive. The rest of the world probably only adds a million more to that number.
And one could easily argue why we have swaths of spectrum dedicated to hams, who only comprise 200K-300K in the US, and many, if not most, of them are inactive. The rest of the world probably only adds a million more to that number.
In Europe, just as in the US, the average citizen has no idea about SW, yet these private stations continue to operate.
WBCQ, that has been around for a twenty odd years, basically caters to the US population, their signal is so bad it can't normally be heard outside the USA.
K
kenglish
Guest
No one really knows how many people listen to shortwave. It could be less than five (like many people on this forum love to say), or it could be a million.
There's nobody counting them.
Advertisers don't advertise on stations that don't have numbers. Agencies won't buy on shortwave, because they don't understand it.
There's nobody counting them.
Advertisers don't advertise on stations that don't have numbers. Agencies won't buy on shortwave, because they don't understand it.
The only advertising I recall hearing on a US shortwave station is on WTWW, during its mostly-secular oldies show on 5085. And most of that advertising has been from ham equipment dealers.
I believe most of the US stations are non-commercial, with WTWW being an exception. In any case, the old FCC prohibition against licensing shortwave stations that primarily target the US has been dead for a long time. So is their prohibition against using the so-called "tropical" bands for US broadcasting.
Those stations are little more than hobbyist operations, or “shortwave for shortwave’s sake“ aimed at hardcore shortwave geeks so they’ll have something to listen to as the medium continues to slowly die. It’s a lot like taking modern musical recordings and pressing them on 78 rpm records so some people can play them on their vintage Victrolas.
The general public in Europe has no idea these stations exist and would have no interest in listening to them, especially when modern distribution methods are far superior.
Basically nostalgia run amok. And I say that as a longtime shortwave listener who understands the medium is in its twilight.
Advertisers don’t use shortwave because there is no real way to quantify the audience. And that audience would probably be too small and diffuse to be of any use for commercial messaging.
Actually pretty much all US private stations are commercial, as they use a brokered time model, much like many AM stations. “Commercial” doesn’t necessarily mean :15, :30, and :60 spots, as half-hour, hour long, and multi hour slots are sold to outside programmers.
The one exception might be WEWN, which is operated by EWTN, carrying its domestic English and Spanish programming networks...depends on what business model you use to describe that operation.
The use of frequencies outside of the usual bands has been going on for many years now on a “non-interference“ basis. The emptying out of the old “utility” bands has made many more frequency options available. And the tropical bands are becoming pretty empty as activity has been in decline since the 1970s.
There are 779,725 licensed hams, as of 4/28/2021. eHam.net
The reasons we are able to keep our bands is the bands below 88 MHz (54 MHz for hams) are of no use to commercial (read: cellphone) interests. Our bands from 420 MHz and up are protected by the US military or are shared with ISM devices. The military has priority on pretty much all UHF-and-up frequencies not used for television or telecom. Two meters is still very actively used, and there seems to be little interest in our 3 MHz sliver at 222 MHz.
Ad agencies place ads in each nation through local offices or affiliate local agencies.
Local agencies adapt copy to the local language or vocabulary and the accents to appropriate ones for each nation and market.
My first station in Ecuador in 1964 got its first time buy from, naturally, McCann Erickson Publicidad, S.A. The buy included products like Coca Cola and The Sidney Ross Company, makers of Mejoral.
The only time I ever got an ad buy from outside of Ecuador was from a regional office in Colombia that handled one of the large international cigarette companies. They placed ads for Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador... probably because all three started out as a single nation.
So, international short wave, which was proven in national ratings to be seldom listened to almost 60 years ago, was not a factor and of no interest to advertisers. However, to reach the smaller towns and rural areas, some local stations that had AM and Tropical Band shortwave got buys based on the non-urban area coverage.
But, as more and more towns got local AMs, by the end of the 60's SW was pretty much dead. I bought an AM/SW station in San Pedro de Amaguaña, Ecuador in 1967. The first thing I did was turn in the license for the tropical band short wave and move the AM to Quito. We left both transmitters behind in a dump.
And these are some aspects of why agencies and advertisers don't buy shortwave and have not for more than half a century.
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TWR believes that enough radios remain that have short wave in Third World nations to make use of SW useful for their mission. I disagree; a national survey of radio in Ecuador in the late 60's... Fifty-some years ago... showed essentially no listening to international short wave.
Today, in most of the world you have to try very hard to find a short wave radio in a store.
Then why do several hundred thousand more than that still pay membership to the ARRL?
TWR still broadcasts on SW to Africa and parts of Asia, but gave up on shortwave to Latin America when it shut down its Bonaire SW transmitters in 1993.
K
kenglish
Guest
How would anybody know without any numbers? I remember Ralph Carlson telling me that the ad agencies just couldn't grasp the concept of shortwave. Funny thing is, KUSW was really just broadcasting rock and roll to millions of potential listeners in the northeast and Canada, like most other stations. Just using different bands.
The idea was the same....kids, their ears, their money.
Per the ARRL, they have about 160,000 members out of the close to 780,000 hams currently licensed. This percentage of members has been typical for the 51 years I've been a ham.
ARRL Members - Members
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
And KUSW was a colossal flop, as was similarly formatted KYOI. TBN had no better luck after it bought the Utah facility, and wound up shutting it down completely.
Not to mention that you have to be an auditory masochist to listen to rock music on SW in the 1980s instead of on FM.
Perhaps it wasn’t that ad agencies didn’t grasp the concept of shortwave, but rather shortwave operators not being able to understand that advertisers need proof of significant and saleable audiences.
An empty restaurant is packed with ”potential” customers. But you make no money until you turn “potential“ into “real”.
OK, I was apparently off by 50% but how many of that 779K number of licensed hams are active? Even 2 meters is dead, dead, dead most of the time here. In the 1980s, when the total number of US hams was probably 100-200K lower, there was usually at least some activity day or night, and the number of hams was about the same. I've been monitoring the HF bands for over 35 years and the activity has been dropping, not going up.
You're correct that there isn't much commercial (i.e. cellphone and data) interest below VHF. But that doesn't mean that it isn't possible for HF and VHF ham bands to be reallocated in the future.
My overall point is that all RF spectrum is finite, and it's all under the jurisdiction of the US Government. They grant privileges, and they can take them away.
And the typical city in sub-Saharan Africa has about double the number of FM stations of a comparably sized US market. Even in our Hemisphere, Cap Haitien, Haiti, has about twice as many FMs as the boroughs of New York City and the contiguous counties of NY and NJ.
Who would put up with the quality of SW when they have dozens of local stations. (No question mark, That's a statement, not a question.)
You are right. I incorrectly used an estimate of world-wide active hams
And that advertisers tailor their message to the needs of each country and even distinct markets within each nation. There is no such thing as "international ad campaigns". There are international ad budgets, perhaps, but the creative and placement are done locally in each country for the most part.
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