Shortwave radio: can you hear me now?

Hundred year old shortwave is cool, but today is not like yesterday

Several weeks ago when Russia launched its war against Ukraine (and by proxy the West, which I’ll get to later), there was a cacophony of calls for the re-establishment of shortwave broadcasting to undermine (not “counter,” a word used too often) Moscow’s domestic censorship. A second, and quite distant, reason was to get information into Ukraine following Russia’s initial targeting of Ukrainian communications infrastructure (which proved to be a really bad idea for Russia’s military). Though the shortwave discussion has mostly (but not completely) disappeared (for good reason), below are some facts that will hopefully get in the way of future calls and focus energies on more productive options. The bottom line upfront, as the idea of relaunching shortwave may have sounded on paper, the nostalgia does not fit with modern realities.

To start, back in 2014 when I was a Governor on the formerly-named Broadcasting Board of Governors, now the US Agency for Global Media, I led an effort to look at the viability of shortwave as a means for the agency to fulfill its mission of providing information to select audiences abroad either living under regimes of censorship or lacking the infrastructure to access news and information. The agency had been under pressure for years, partly by the White House, to shut down the admittedly expensive broadcast platform wholesale. The research by my committee and the subsequent report provided a nuanced view of shortwave’s value to the agency and, by extension, to US foreign policy.

The objective was to better understand target audiences’ choices, preferences, trends, and utility of shortwave. In developing this report, we surveyed State Department posts where BBG shortwave was received (thank you to Dan Sreebny for invaluable footwork that resulted in a nearly 100% response rate), interagency partners, and the public at home and abroad (many of the vocal and ardent domestic proponents of keeping if not expanding BBG’s shortwave failed to respond despite numerous personal requests). Virtually by definition, in-depth and reliable usage data was not available in these markets, they are, after all, challenging environments with limited access, often security concerns, and, again virtually by definition, audiences likely wary about questions about their media consumption the wrong answer may result in punishment or possibly death.

The report “To Be Where the Audience Is” was published in August 2014. An overview is available here, my comments (as prepared) introducing the report that includes details that couldn’t fit into the report can be read here, and the report itself may be downloaded here. While many, if not all of the details remain important today, the bottom line from that now-8-year-old research is that once people leave shortwave, they do not come back when alternative platforms are available. Further, even when those alternatives are shut down, and we had several contemporary examples to analyze, they do not return to shortwave. Audiences left shortwave as soon as possible and never looked back.

The nostalgia for shortwave remains. A recent article by Jeff Stein at his SpyTalk substack is one such example. I will leave aside his statement that Voice of America was “launched in 1947” as the (ironic) misinformation around VOA and US international information programs is pervasive and horrendous. Some assert VOA was launched in 1942 under the Office of War Information, but that was a pure propaganda operation, in the modern sense. I argue the VOA’s proper launch was when the radio broadcast operation, as it was commonly referred to, was moved from OWI to the State Department following an Executive Order on August 31, 1945, as it was then its mission reflected that of a truthful news operation. Maybe Stein was thinking of February 1947 when Russian was added to VOA’s language operations, in response to increasing Russian propaganda following the announcement of the European Recovery Program (aka the Marshall Plan) in 1946. The 1947 year is the least of Stein’s unintentional misinformation in this passage:

In concert with the Voice of America, launched in 1947, the campaign “burnished America‘s image and trashed the Soviet Union 2,500 hours a week with a 'tower of babble' comprised of more than 70 languages…," a former U.S. Information Agency director recalled in a 1995 memoir.

Working background, we are to understand his source is a Director of USIA, when in fact, Alvin Snyder was a director of television and film at VOA, not the Director. But, let’s also leave that aside, and also the fact that Snyder’s book – Warriors of Disinformation – is a truly terrible source (Snyder’s take on the Smith-Mundt Act is particularly bad). Let’s look at Stein’s selection of Snyder’s words of VOA’s purpose to “trash” with gobs of hours in scores of languages that we are to imagine went on since maybe soon after 1947, if not starting then.

By the end of 1947, the State Department eventually got VOA’s Russian service up to 90 minutes a day. A day. And this was not on a repeating loop. Listeners had to know what frequency, which would change with the seasons, and when to receive the broadcast. Interestingly, while the department was still experimenting and trying to select which frequencies to transmit to the Soviet Union, the broadcasts from Munich were sabotaged with the two transmitters aimed at Russia affected while six others at the same site, all broadcasting to the Balkans, were not. In their budget request for 1948, the State Department sought to increase the transmissions to 120 minutes a day. The volume was not what modern readers might assume. In 1950, VOA’s worldwide broadcasts (in all languages) amounted to 497 hours a week. In 1972, in a big push to increase activities, VOA was doing 931 hours a week, up from 830 in 1970. Further, the leadership at the State Department, which owned VOA 1945-1953, and at least in the early decades of USIA, launched in 1953, would vehemently argue against the use of “trashing.”

VOA, which broadcast news, literary programs and jazz into the USSR and its successor alike, shut down its Russian-language radio service and a 30-minute Russian weekly television program in July 2008, long after social media and email had eclipsed radio and the Obama administration was trying to “reset” frayed relations with Russia, and shifted to sending “text, audio, and video content to Russia's fast-growing Internet market.” Now, with the Kremlin blocking Internet service, criminalizing criticism, shutting down independent news organizations, and stifling access to Western media outlets including Facebook and Instagram, it may be time to haul the old Wurlitzer out of storage and upgrade it with cutting edge software.

Besides the point the Obama administration was not in office in 2008, shortwave was not a platform with impact in Russia. The same was true for television. Russians did not consume satellite TV like many in the Middle East did, for comparison. Russians had services, like the US, and did not just point a dish at a satellite for one channel and redirect the dish to another satellite. There were radio stations, and for a time if I recall correctly a tv station or two, that did carry VOA programming. More often, the station would have a VOA presenter on the air for question & answer discussion, until the Russian authorities pressured these outlets with never-ending fire inspections and other pressures on the broadcast licenses.

As for the “old Wurlitzer,” there are modern means to get information in that are more reliable, more desirable, and more cost-effective than the hurl-and-forget shortwave of decades past. That’s not to say shortwave wasn’t awesome, the US took to shortwave as a new media alternative to the British-dominated cables that included heavy British censorship and costs on the US ability to move information into and out of the US. In 1912, for example, the New York Times claimed to be receiving 30,000 words each week from Europe through its wireless contract with Marconi, which was not only faster than cable, with an average transmission of 30 minutes, but cheaper at four cents a word, half the rate of cable. Later, the Marconi operation in the US was subject to a forced sale to General Electric, resulting in the Radio Corporation of America. The perception of radio’s relationship to national security would find its way into RCA’s 1919 articles of incorporation which contained stipulations to protect the medium from foreign domination: only US citizens could be directors or officers; a government representative may attend meetings and participate in the management of the company; no more than 20% of the stock could be owned by foreigners and such shares were to be marked “Foreign Share Certificate”; and the remaining shared carried a clause restricting ownership to loyal U.S. citizens. The following clause remained on RCA stock certificates through the 1980s: “The voting rights represented by this certificate shall be transferable only to loyal citizens of the United States and/or corporations formed under the laws of the United States or for and under the laws of one of the states of the United States free from foreign control or dominate and not in any foreign interest.”

Modern alternatives to shortwave vis a vis Russia include FM stations along the borders with the Baltic states and elsewhere, and these can be replicated relatively easily (radio broadcast facilities can more than easily fit into a cargo container, and these are whole suites for content creation and not just broadcast). There are also options to deploy information within the Russian “sovereign” (ie behind the firewalls) network, or to provide access to the “outside” internet through satellite gateways (there are several options here), deploying Mi-Fi-style hubs (done before), tools facilitate easy domestic content creation and sharing which can be through traditional channels or through alternative wireless options (Bluetooth sharing on the subway or sidewalk, for example), and many more existing (and adapted to the unique needs of these users and environment) and yet to be developed and deployed. And this doesn’t even include USB devices, like the business card USB I saved for show and tell from an Office of Cuba Broadcasting effort. Lastly, I don’t even know if the USAGM still has any shortwave capacity. The hardware was many decades old and replacement parts had to be custom made as the manufacturer either closed up or moved on long ago. Even the skillset to manage these sites was literally fading as the experienced and capable retired or passed away. (Shortwave was so important that one site on the US east coast had to separate broadcast sites for redundancy and a third control site for security.)

In other words, shortwave was great but it’s not the option you’re looking for. The audience won’t be there.