Shortwave Radio: Making it Mainstream Again

Pretty much everyone has at least one AM/FM radio around, maybe more (over a dozen in my case). They are in cars, on shelves, and in home stereos. Most people spend at least some time listening to the radio, whether it be some NPR or music on the FM side or talk radio on the AM side. In recent years, internet radio has surged in popularity, and has become a great tool for free speech and has expanded the market place of ideas. Most conventional radio stations have one or more online streams. A fair number of cell phones can tune into internet streams on the go, and there are even Wi-Fi internet radios (and devices that have that function). I personally use my PSP to tune into some of my favorite streams. Many radio and TV shows have podcast feeds where you can download shows after the fact and listen to/watch them on a portable audio player anywhere, anytime. TV is very prevalent also, obviously, though portability is not as pervasive as in the audio field.

HOWEVER, there is one media platform that has been neglected and is fading in popularity: shortwave. Now, a lot of people at this point are thinking "what the heck is shortwave?"

Shortwave radio has been around almost since the beginning of radio. The shortwave band ranges from about 2000 kHz (2 MHz) to 27000 kHz (27 MHz), however, most activity is concentrated from 5 MHz to 22 MHz. Shortwave is possibly the best means of worldwide broadcasting; 50,000watts on a good frequency from a station in, say, Dallas, Texas has the potential to reach both of the Americas and the Pacific islands. There is an issue with audio quality a lot of the time but, a station with a good transmitter and equipment, along with listeners with good radios, can sound like a regular AM station. In its heyday (1910 or so through the 1990s) shortwave was an eclectic mix of music, talk, and entertainment. Countries would broadcast to the world via shortwave stations (many still do, most notably the USA with Voice of America and Radio Havana Cuba). People would start shortwave stations and have some great music and entertainment. Now, the band, at least in the United States and Canada, is a wasteland of right-wing fundie claptrap. There are a few oases, like broadcasts from foreign countries' governments, along with the rare non-fundie station such as WBCQ.

Why is this great band being allowed to atrophy? Shortwave still holds potential to be a voice for free speech, and even more so if the U.S. gov't helps deploy Digital Radio Mondiale, which would make the shortwave band sound like FM and give the satellite radio companies a run for their money. Shortwave holds lots of potential; in fact, I hold the belief that there should be at least 3 analog/digital hybrid shortwave stations carrying a progressive (a.k.a liberal) talk format, so that everyone in the USA would have access to some good progressive talk on their radios, since progressive talk has many, many holes in signal coverage around the nation (conservative talk is on so many AM/FM signals, they effectively cover the US anyway).

In order to make shortwave viable again, this needs to be done:

* Enough people need to be educated about shortwave, preferably by the US government and private organizations, through TV, AM/FM radio, and the Internet, so demand goes up, making more companies manufacture shortwave-capable radios, preferably with both analog and DRM capabilities. One BIG leap would be shortwave-capable (analog and DRM) car stereos.

* Digitizing the shortwave band, so that audio quality improves drastically and people want to hear music and talk on the SW bands

* Getting some good stations on the SW band, of course. Some good progressive talk, comedy, hot talk, music, etc.

Also, we could blanket the US with free to use (or very cheap) WiMax (long range Wi-Fi) and get some good WiMax receievers out there capable of streaming internet radio, podcasts, media playback, etc. In fact, it would be awesome if cars had 'super-receivers' that could get AM, FM, internet radio, podcasts, shortwave, and weather band (NOAA weather radio, another service that all radios should have), along with playing media like MP3s. Even better, home and portable receivers like that too. Maybe that is too much wishful thinking there. Carrying two receivers would still be good, one portable radio and an internet media receiver/player.