Shortwave broadcasting and QSL cards.

Few people are fortunate to be able to turn a hobby into a career. When I started listening to shortwave radio in the early 1980s, I never knew that I would one day be writing books and articles about international broadcasting. I progressed from listening on my father's wonderful 1950s Bakelite with glowing green valves and a wonderful bass hum that grew louder as the set warmed up (this radio now has pride of place in my office) to a Russian Vega Selena 215.

By the end of the 1980s I upgraded again. This time, I wanted a digital set so I could key in the frequencies of stations that were printed in the wonderful World Radio and TV Handbook. My parents bought me a Saisho SW5000.

As I started to travel on fieldwork for my PhD, I bought a small portable shortwave receiver. I continued to listen when I went to Caversham Park where I used the wonderful BBC Written Archives Centre; to Kew when I spent time at the Public Records Office; to Taiwan; and then to Washington DC. I always enjoyed listening overseas in anticipation of all the new stations I would access.

  

During the Gulf War of 1991 I hooked up my Saisho to a tape recorder and recorded hours of broadcasts (from the Voice of America, Kol Israel, and the BBC World Service)  for Phil Taylor who was writing his book, War and the Media. I had seen my name in print before: I had articles published in Shortwave Magazine and in various newspapers, but nothing matched the thrill of seeing my name in Phil's book, thanking me for undertaking this work for him. 

I recently corresponded with David Jackson, former Director of the Voice of America. I told him of my excitement when, during PhD fieldwork in Washington DC in 1993, I took the VoA tour. Like the classic class nerd I threw my hand up at every opportunity to ask and answer questions. David made reference the VoA QSL cards, and this reminded me of the hours I spent listening through the crackle of faint transmissions at all hours of the night and writing reception reports for the stations. I sent these in the post, and weeks, sometimes months later, the station would acknowledge my report with a QSL card and other souvenirs (stickers, magazines, books). I found my collection for the late 1980s and though I would share my QSLs in this blog. 

QSL is international radio language for "Please verify". 

This part of my collection represents the closing of an era. With the rise of the internet and the ability to listen to radio stations from all over the world on a computer or tablet, the age of shortwave has largely passed. Yet there is still something romantic about turning a dial at 3am and listening eagerly through the crackle to hear which station one is listening to (oh no, not Radio Moscow again!). Those were the days ... The collection also a reminder of another era in international politics, with the Soviet Union represented by Radio Moscow World Service, sending me pictures and stamps of Lenin; with Radio Prague Czechoslovakia responding to an essay I wrote them about Marxism by sending me books about Czech foreign policy. While still at school in the  mid-1980s I wrote an article for Shortwave Magazine called 'What is the role of the shortwave radio in international politics?'  In 1994 I completed my PhD, supervised by Phil Taylor, entitled 'Nation Unto Nation: The BBC and VoA in International Politics, 1956-64'. This was subsequently published as Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda (Macmillan, 1996).   

Radio Austria International, June and July 1988 

Radio HCJB The Voice of the Andes, Ecuador, June and July 1988: "Thank you for your letter  to Salados Amigos"

Top: Radio Prague, Czechoslovakia, July 1987.
Bottom: Radio RSA, The Voice of South Africa: 'The Bokmakierie. Here the bokmakierie is feeding its young. A species easily identified by its familiar call and beautiful plumage'

Top: Radio RSA, The Voice of South Africa, July 1988 'Johannesburg - a dynamic city founded on gold, soars into the future'
Bottom: Radio Kuwait, July and August 1987 'Agriculture in Kuwait'

  

Radio Australia, August 1987. 'The Koala, a familiar symbol of Australia,is found in the south-east and north of the country.' 

Top: All India Radio External Services, October 1987. 'Gate Keeper to India, Sabha Ellora'
Bottom: The Voice of Vietnam (Socialist Republic of Vietnam), July 1988

The Voice of America, February 1987: Top: 'The White House on a wintry evening in Washington DC. US Presidents and their families have lived here since 1800.'
Bottom: 'The VOA newsroom in Washington DC where news from all over the world is compiled and prepared'

Top: Voice of America, March 1987: 'One of the new VoA studios in Washington DC where broadcasts in 42 languages originate'
Bottom: Radio Polonia, Poland, March 1989. 'The station you listened to is Warsaw' 

The Voice of Vietnam, Xmas 1988; Season's Greetings

Radio Prague, Xmas 1988: 'With best wishes for a happy, prosperous and peaceful new year'

Radio Moscow World Service,June 1989: 'Dear Mr Rawnsley. Thank you for writing to us and taking part in the listeners' forum dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the International Service of Radio Moscow. Please accept our small souvenir - a set of post cards and Soviet stamps. We hope you will like them. We are glad to hear more from our listeners, so if you have any suggestions, questions and requests, you are welcome.'

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Unfortunately, only the envelope is in the collection. I wonder what was included?

Kol Israel, Israel Radio International: 'You have a friend at Kol Israel'.

International Communications in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Today, 14 August 2015, John Kerry became the first US Secretary of State to visit Cuba in 70 years. He reopened the American embassy, and watched the US flag rise in the presence of the same marines who lowered it in 1961.

Cuba played an important part in my life over twenty years ago. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a case-study in my PhD thesis on international radio broadcasting in the Cold War, and you can read the chapter in my first book, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda (Macmillan, 1996). The chapter studied how international radio broadcasting, specifically Radio Moscow and the Voice of America, played an important role in not only projecting propaganda, but also in resolving the crisis. At the  core of what I called 'media diplomacy' was the ever wonderful BBC Monitoring Service, located at Caversham Park near Reading in the UK, which has helped to gather open intelligence from the world's broadcast media since before World War Two. Below are my abridged conclusions. I cringe a little now when I read them, but please remember I wrote this at some point between the age of 21 and 23.

In the context of the Cold War, the defusing of the Cuban missile crisis represented a step of progress in the conduct of international relations: it had been the first real crisis of nuclear proportions; it provided the pretext for further negotiations between the Superpowers that paved the way to an eventual, but short-lived, detente; and it facilitated their relationship in that the need for a direct line of communication between the White House and the Kremlin - the so-called 'Hot Line' - was recognised and accepted. More importantly for the purposes of this study, while Kennedy and Khrushchev conversed with each other through traditional channels, radio had been explicitly used as an integral part of the diplomatic procedure, marking watershed in global broadcasting on a series of levels. The Soviet Union was forced by circumstances to recognise that the value of radio was no longer rooted merely in propaganda, the importance of the monitoring service was acknowledged, and public opinion was accorded a position as a contributory factor in the formulation of political foreign policy. At the start of the crisis, the British Ambassador in Havana, Sir Herbert Marchant, had advocated the launch of a 'really serious propaganda exercise' by the US. 'I mean, really serious and probably expensive, but still cheaper than a war.' (1) Such an observation implies recognition that propaganda can often be a substitute for military conflict, as the missile crisis vividly illustrated.
                 Together the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis had confirmed the importance of harmonising government action with propaganda and broadcasting policy. It had not been easy; the gravity of the crisis had forced the USIA into supervising VoA broadcasts to a degree that had so far been avoided. The crisis also opened up deep wounds between the VoA and its parent agency, USIA. The Director of the VoA, Henry Loomis, told Ed Murrow [Director of USIA] that the station 'failed to sound convincing because of our monolithic tone. ... During the ... crisis,' he said, 'we were required to distort and concentrate our programme at the expense of credibility and relevance to our audience.' Loomis believed that by broadcasting Presidential and State Department announcements, the Voice suffered from a markedly dull output and at the same time revealed itself to be a propaganda station. [2]  However, given the scope and nature of the crisis, this comment is unjustified. At a time when the political risks were incredibly high, when the future of the whole world was at stake, audiences for foreign broadcasts (which inevitably increase at times of major crises) were more interested in government pronouncements of intentions rather than often wild speculation. As America's role in the Vietnam war continued to escalate, this dichotomy posed by VoA's dual purpose was exacerbated, and the relationship which the government enjoyed with its propaganda agencies was to prove crucial.

References:

1.  FO371/162347/AK1051/11, 22 October 1962 (Public Record Office, Kew Gardens)
2.  Sorenson, Thomas (1968), The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda (New York: Harper & Row), p. 238

 

              

A Christmas Sing with Bing

Christmas has a smell. For some, it may be mince pies or a turkey roasting in the oven; for others, pine or holly. For me, Christmas smells of vinyl.

My parents had a small collection of Bing Crosby Christmas albums from the 1950s and early 1960s. There was a lot of crossover content between them and invariably the holly-trimmed sleeves would feature a picture of Bing himself in a Santa hat. I usually played these 33½ rpm records (mums and dads, please explain the idea of a 'record' and 'record player' to your offspring) early in the run-up to Christmas, driving up my child-like Christmas excitement and driving down my parents' tolerance levels. These records, or at least the vinyl from which they were made, had a smell that I will always associate with Christmas.

Which brings me to the public diplomacy angle of this blog.

One of the records, which I rediscovered today in my mum's wardrobe, was called A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World. This is a recording of a show ('originally sponsored by The Insurance Company of North America Companies') Bing Crosby broadcast live on Christmas Eve 1955 on CBS Radio and which was transmitted all around the world by the Voice of America. The sleeve notes tell us:

Almost everybody in the world was able to hear that Christmas Eve broadcast, first presented on December 24th at 9.00 pm Eastern Standard Time, with Bing, the Paul Weston Orchestra, the Norman Luboff Choir Group, and many of the famed choirs of the United States and foreign countries.  

What makes this such a special recording is that Bing speaks as well as sings - it is a radio programme, after all - talking about the joys of Christmas and handing over to correspondents in other parts of the world who describe Christmas Eve wherever they are (England, Holland, Canada, France, the Vatican, Salt Lake City and Hollywood). Moreover, there is a letter written and read (in southern drawl) by eleven years old Delores Short of the Dessie Scott Children's Home, Pine Ridge, Kentucky on the theme 'What Christmas Means to Me.'

I am not going to offer any substantive or critical public diplomacy analysis. It's now the holiday season and I want to turn off my computer and turn my attention to Die Hard on TV. But I just wanted to share this (re)discovery with you, and consider how teaming the Voice of America and Bing Crosby must have signalled to audiences around the world a particular (American) style or brand of Christmas. It is also personally interesting because listening to this record every year in the 1970s and early 1980s I had no idea that I would become such an avid listener of the Voice of America, visit its headquarters in Washington DC, and write a PhD and book about this remarkable radio station.

I would be interested to know from my historian readers if they have come across any information about this annual broadcast during their research. In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a peaceful 2013.

The Voice of America: Silenced in China

This is a fascinating and very perceptive panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation of the consequences of silencing the Voice of America in China. I don't think I can add anything to the comments, only to say that depending on so-called 'new media' in a country like China - a huge country in both geographic and demographic terms - is a big mistake. At a time when China's political, geostrategic and economic power is expanding, and when Beijing is investing resources into public diplomacy and soft power that would shame other major powers, it is necessary to use all means necessary to engage with the people there. VoA does have an audience in China. By focusing only on the internet, Washington puts at risk the availability of alternative information for millions of Chinese. This is especially worrying at a time when the Communist Party's grip on the media and communications - especially the internet - is becoming tighter. Dependence on one platform that is so easy to censor and excludes a large section of the potential audience is not a recipe for effective public diplomacy. Shortwave signals are not that easily controlled; and radio remains the ultimate 'democratic medium' because it is inexpensive and does not require a level of technical competence or education. It remains the medium of choice in many parts of the developing world, including parts of China.

This panel discussion is highly recommended.

http://www.heritage.org/events/2011/05/voa-china