Rádio Nacional da Amazônia outage: updates from the Brazilian blogosphere

The last recording I made of Rádio Nacional da Amazônia, extracted from a 60-41 meter band spectrum recording captured in September 2016.

As reported previously on this blog, Rádio Nacional da Amazônia went silent on shortwave in March due to electricity supply issues. The station hasn't been heard since (at the time of writing, a quick YouTube search for 6180 kHz or 11780 kHz does not return any matching reception videos newer than March 2017). Recently I came across two online articles from Brazil that help to clarify the ongoing situation. I have used Google Translate to reproduce parts of both below (and tidied up the translations manually in a few places to improve legibility). In short, after a widespread regional outcry, EBC (the broadcaster currently using Rádio Nacional da Amazônia's transmitter facilities) has until December to reinstate the full service to avoid losing its shortwave broadcasting license.

Ribeirinhos and indigenous people reject the deactivation of the Rádio Nacional da Amazônia:

[...] 

Rádio Nacional da Amazônia has been suffering from maintenance problems for many years, mainly with their short-wave transmitters on the frequencies of 6180 and 11780 kHz, on 49 and 25 meter bands, respectively. The full 250 kW capacity of each channel was already reduced to 180 kW a long time ago. Often, one channel would be off the air, but at least the other one was in operation. 

However, the situation has never been as serious as it is now. On March 20 of this year, more than five months ago, a lightning struck the substation that supplies electricity to Rodeador Park, 50 kilometers from the center of Brasília, where the antennas are located in the North Region of the country. So far, no practical action has been taken to repair the damage. The transmission has since been maintained only on the internet and via satellite, for those who own a satellite dish. But the people in the heart of the Amazon [listen] via old battery radios. 

The listeners, feeling abandoned, started complaining on live shows over the phone. In May, a statement of repudiation of the deactivation of the station was sent by 15 riverine and indigenous leaderships to the EBC directorate, with copies to the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic and to the radio team. However, EBC's direction remains mute on the subject. 

Check the list of entities whose leaders signed the letter to EBC: 

Association of Residents of Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve

Association of Residents of the Rio Iriri Extractive Reserve

Council of the Ribeirinho de Belo Monte - Altamira

Indigenous Association Pyjahyry Xipaya

Tukaya Indigenous Association of Xypaya

Forest Seeds Association

Arara People of the Cachoeira Seca

Xikrin People of Bacajá

Kuruaya people

Parakanã of the Apyterewa Indigenous Land

Remaining Quilombola Association of Oriximiná

Association for the Development of Family Agriculture of the Upper Xingu

Joint Alternative Cooperative of Small Producers of the Alto Xingu

Forestry and Agricultural Management and Certification Institute

Kabu Institute (Kayapó Mekrangnoti People)

Protected Forest Association (Kayapó People Kayapó Indigenous Land)

EBC may lose Rádio Nacional da Amazônia's license after going off the air

Rádio Nacional da Amazônia has been completely off the air and Rádio Nacional de Brasilia (AM) does not have sufficient power to reach states beyond the Federal District during the night. 

The accident completely altered the routine of thousands of people from the Amazon, who have since contacted EBC, pleading for the return of the only station that can be tuned into where they live. 

[...] 

This does not happen by chance. 

Since its creation, Rádio Nacional da Amazônia has played a fundamental role in guaranteeing citizenship to the inhabitants of the northern region of the country, through access to information. But this feeling of belonging is lost every time an Amazonian tries to tune into the station and is faced with the inhuman silence coming from their radio device. 

Isolated communities in rural, riverside, indigenous and border areas, located in places where access to the Internet and other communication channels is difficult, are the ones that benefit most from the public information services carried by the station, which broadcasts to such communities, in addition to information, tips on how to seek solutions to basic health problems, domestic violence and how to take documents. 

It is also through the radio that the listeners communicate with relatives, pass and return messages and reunite with missing relatives and friends. It is no wonder that the station has earned the folklore nickname "Amazon's payphone." 

Historical programs like “Eu de Cá, Você de Lá”; "Frankly speaking"; "Meeting point"; "Live nature"; "Viva Maria"; "Our land"; "Brazilian Amazonia"; "National Evening"; "Mosaic"; "Em Conta" and "Amazon Reporter" simply stopped reaching their audience, cutting off a decades-long relationship with the forest peoples. 

[...] 

Not only does [the station] violate the right to information of thousands of people living in the Brazilian states that make up the Legal Amazon (Amazonas, Acre, Amapá, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Pará, Roraima and Tocantins), [they run] the risk of losing the radio license. 

This is because the sole paragraph of Article 55 of Decree 52795/1963 states that in case the interruption of the broadcasting service is more than 30 (thirty) consecutive days, "except for reasons of unforeseeable circumstances duly proven and recognized by CONTEL, permission shall be revoked, without the licensee being entitled to any indemnity. " 

[...] 

Now EBC has until December to reinstate the provision of the Shortwave service of Rádio Nacional da Amazônia, after authorization of the extension of the legal term granted by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC). MCTIC also gave a period of 120 days for the reestablishment of the Medium Wave service for the return of the normal operation of Rádio Nacional AM of Brasília.

Endangered stations: April 2017

CBC dismantles the transmitter towers on Tantramar Marsh land in March 2014.  Image credit: CBC.ca

Some new endangered shortwave station entries for this month:

Endangered:

Radio Nacional da Amazonia was reported off the air for several weeks in March and April 2017, apparently because the Brazilian government didn't allocate the funds for the electrical power needed to run the service (information via Glenn Hauser / World of Radio).

Medi1, Morocco has been off the air in the first two weeks of April.

Recently closed down:

Albania's Radio Tirana closure has been finally confirmed after months of transmitter problems and service interruptions (information via Glenn Hauser / World of Radio).

Farewell to Radio Australia

It's official: Radio Australia are no longer on shortwave and only time will tell of all the implications of what I feel is an incredibly short-sighted decision.

Having heard that they might switch off their transmitters at midnight universal time on  January 31st, I monitored their 17840 kHz signal remotely via a KiwiSDR server located in New Zealand (there is no night-time propagation path from their Shepparton transmitter site to the UK at this time of the year). I was encouraged to find that they were still on the air after midnight UTC and thought this meant they would go on until midnight Sydney time, in which case I might be able to record their sign-off from my usual outdoor shortwave listening and spectrum capture spot.

However, I hadn't seen the most recent updates informing listeners that transmissions would be cut at noon Australian Eastern Standard Time (0100 UTC). I thus missed their sign-off on the KiwiSDR, but I was able to record their last news bulletin from it, which gave me some faint hope that we might see them back on the air one day:

News: @radioaustralia didn't go off air at 00 UTC & @Nick_Xenophon wants to legislate reinstatement of SW broadcasts pic.twitter.com/oFut06kZRq

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) January 31, 2017

I made my last personal recording of their shortwave signal out in the park on January 30th, using my portable spectrum capture set-up. The signal was a lot weaker than normal at this time of the day but still perfectly intelligible.

Possibly my last reception of @radioaustralia on #shortwave here in London. Sad times. pic.twitter.com/POteHrWJKP

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) January 30, 2017

Three and a half years earlier, I tuned into them for the very first time, while on a trip to Moscow, Russia:

Fairwell, Radio Australia. You will be missed.

Radio Australia shortwave shutdown: the state of play

With 10 days to go until Radio Australia shuts down its shortwave transmissions after close to 80 years of uninterrupted service, below is a short survey of significant reactions to this development and related media coverage:

From The Strategist: Silencing Australia’s shortwave voice in the South Pacific

Killing shortwave disregards—disenfranchises—an unknown number of listeners. As broadcasting policy, it’s highly questionable. As strategy, it’s dumb—another bout of recurring Oz amnesia about its South Pacific role, responsibilities and history.

ASPI asked the ABC: How many shortwave listeners does Radio Australia have in PNG and the South Pacific?

ABC spokesman: ‘While there are no firm figures on audiences numbers in these regions, they are understood to be low.’

Q: What percentage of RA’s users in PNG and the South Pacific get the content by shortwave?

ABC: ‘This level of data is not available.’

No evidence-based policy there. In its closure announcement, the ABC expressed future confidence based on no knowledge of present usage:

‘Due to the nature of the technology and the remote locations of shortwave users, it is very difficult to ascertain with any precision the number of listeners who use the service… There is no available data on audience numbers for the regions affected by the closure of ABC International services. The ABC believes that technological advancement has improved accessibility of FM and online services and will negate the impact of no longer offering shortwave services.’

To stress the strangeness: Australia has no idea of the numbers or listeners in the Pacific who’ll be affected when the shortwave transmitters go silent. It has been a vital service for 75 years; with two months notice it’s redundant.

Meanwhile, Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop raised the Pacific region’s concerns about the ABC’s planned abolition of Radio Australia’s shortwave service with the national broadcaster and sought "an update in the New Year". NT Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy and Northern Territory MP Warren Snowdon have been making repeated calls to halt the closure of Radio Australia's NT regional shortwave broadcasts, referring to the concerns of their constituents, only to be met with intransigence by the ABC's management.

In a related and somewhat ironic development, the ABC advised Northern Territory residents to obtain satellite phones for emergency use in an informational advert about the closure of its shortwave services.

Is the irony of this really lost on the ABC management? Replace shortwave radio (~$20) with a satellite phone (~$700 plus subscription). Source: Lisa Herbert on Twitter

For AM, FM and DAB services to be viable alternatives to the ABC's shortwave transmissions, the local power grids and wired infrastructure would need to remain intact during emergencies. The story about phone lines going down in a remote north Queensland community after storms demonstrates that this assumption is questionable at best.

More evidence that shutting off shortwave would have negative consequences for the entire region came from French Polynesia, where the national broadcaster's decision to switch off its local AM signal in favour of FM transmissions left multiple pockets of the population without any radio coverage (Radio New Zealand International: Loss of AM radio irks French Polynesia). Meanwhile, it has been reported that in Papua New Guinea, only 10% of the population have online access, while recent failed engineering works cut the Marshall Islands off from the Internet, leaving the country largely isolated from the outside world.

Reading all of the above while the ABC management shows no signs of paying attention to the concerns of their listeners in Australia and beyond feels like watching a train derail in slow motion, with the consequences already known well in advance.

Source: Melanie Horsnell on Twitter

Endangered stations update: January 2017

Endangered stations list on The Shortwave Archive website.

In addition to moving Radio Australia to the "Critically Endangered" part of our endangered stations list for obvious reasons, I reached out to Glenn Hauser of World of Radio to see what shortwave stations he currently considers to be under the threat of closure. He kindly provided the following response:

Endangered:

Need to add Radio Tirana, Albania. Sole transmitter has severe problems, and is reported off the air lately. The webcast has been sporadic.

Recently closed down:

It should be pointed out that R. Belarus does have some relays via Germany, probably not by its own initiative.

Radio Kuwait --- recent reports that they are getting transmitters refurbished, so maybe will be back.

Vulnerable:

Amazonia is back with two transmitters functioning well for some time now.

[New Zealand], they turned one transmitter off permanently, but the remaining one is on full schedule, partly DRM.

Perhaps you should mention that some stations survive, only thanks to WRMI putting them on SW: such as R. Slovakia International, Radio Prague, Radio Ukraine International. I am sure WRMI would be open to doing more of that.

It would be sad to see Radio Tirana go, but not entirely surprising, since they have had multiple outages and transmission problems over the past three years. At the same time, it would be great to see Radio Kuwait back on air, and it's also good news that we can take Radio Nacional da Amazonia off the "vulnerable" broadcaster list.

Reaction to Radio Australia's planned shortwave closure

Image credit: Matt Kieffer

Further to my previous post on the planned closure of Radio Australia's shortwave transmissions, below are some of the reactions I subsequently came across in the Australian and Pacific media. There is now also a petition on Change.org calling on the Australian government to cancel the decision, which I encourage all Radio Australia's supporters to sign.

ABC boss Michelle Guthrie urged to abandon 'perplexing, alarming' Northern Territory broadcast decision (Canberra Times)

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie is facing conflict on a new front after two Labor MPs demanded the national broadcaster reverse a decision over the future of broadcasting in the Northern Territory.

Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon have expressed "deep disappointment" and concern about the plan to end shortwave broadcasting in the NT from the end of January.

[...]

The ABC is continuing to broadcast via FM and AM frequencies, the viewer access satellite television (VAST) service and online streaming but various NT figures have argued the shortwave transmitters - in Katherine, Tennant Creek and Roe Creek - allow remote listeners to access radio and are a crucial platform during natural disasters.

A group of Indigenous rangers told the ABC last week that ending the shortwave service could be life-threatening because, when operating remotely, the service is the "only way of getting the weather reports" that can warn of incoming cyclones.

[...]

Their intervention comes as Ms Guthrie marks an intense first year in the job, with staff at Radio National recently passing a no confidence motion in management.

Australian opposition concerned about cuts to ABC shortwave services (ABC audio interview)

Australia's opposition is asking the ABC questions about its decision to shut down its shortwave service to the Pacific.

Labor's spokesperson on International Development and the Pacific, Senator Claire Moore, says they are concerned that Australia's engagement in the Pacific will suffer because of the decision.

She was recently in the Pacific as part of a bipartisan delegation of Australian politicians visiting Vanuatu, Solomon islands and Samoa.

Ms Moore tells Bruce Hill Labor has concerns about what happens with radio broadcasting during cyclones, and whether other countries might want to fill the gap left by Australia withdrawing.

Pacific nations lose shortwave radio services that evade dictators and warn of natural disasters (The Conversation, republished by the Huffington Post)

[...] The move away from shortwave to FM transmissions and digital and mobile services has been accelerated despite the fact that FM frequencies can easily be shut down by disaffected political leaders, as happened in Fiji in 2009 on the order of then self-appointed Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

It was a matter of national pride at the time for the ABC to be providing independent information for Fijians via shortwave, with then managing director of the corporation, Mark Scott, highlighting a text message sent from inside Fiji to the ABC, which read “We are trying to listen to you online but are having difficulty. Please keep broadcasting. You are all we have”.

Shortwave radio has played a valuable role in getting information to communities in the middle of civil disturbance, such as in East Timor in the lead up to independence.

In Burma, it was internal leaders who sought the shortwave services. In 2009, Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called on Australia to provide shortwave broadcasts. At the time the ABC’s director of international, Murray Green, said the move reflected the ABC’s ongoing commitment to serving people in those parts of Asia and the Pacific who live without press freedom. Even before this announcement was made, the price of shortwave radios was increased in Burma’s Sittwe market.

[...]

[The] BBC clearly recognises a need to boost its international broadcasting, using shortwave to beat censors in autocratic regimes.

It is a great shame for the Pacific that Australia no longer agrees.

Stop shortwave cut to Pacific (Pacific Freedom Forum)

[...]

"As Pacific nations are going through the usual cyclone cyclone, its just such a shame that they will lose a key, credible information source to rely on,” says Miller.

“It's clear that no thought was given to the link between disaster communications and this service, or even the fact that FM is largely unreliable in bad weather and only available in urban areas."

"It's a slap in the face for the millions who've connected to Australia and to regional news through this service, because they are unlikely to be the ones targeted in the new digital content offerings being touted by ABC."

ABC decision to halt shortwave broadcasts criticised (ABC audio interview)

A decision by the ABC to halt shortwave broadcasts early next year has been criticised by a former manager of Radio Australia.

The shortwave transmissions to Asia and the Pacific will cease from January 31st next year, as alternatives such as FM and Internet become more prevalent.

Former head of Radio Australia and subsequently a consultant on international broadcasting in the Pacific, Jean Gabriel Manguy, tells Bruce Hill the decision is short sighted.

Radio Australia to shut down shortwave transmissions

According to the press release on the ABC website:

The ABC will end its shortwave transmission service in the Northern Territory and to international audiences from 31 January 2017. 

The move is in line with the national broadcaster’s commitment to dispense with outdated technology and to expand its digital content offerings including DAB+ digital radio, online and mobile services, together with FM services for international audiences.

This is sad news and I can see a lot of complacency in this decision. To paraphrase the post I wrote when Radio Australia had a temporary outage earlier this year, depriving people in the less advantaged territories of the ability to receive global broadcasts at no cost results in a less equal world. A good friend of mine from India who went on to become a highly successful academic in the USA attributed his career path to regularly listening to the BBC World Service and Voice of America on shortwave while growing up in a poor neighbourhood. True, India is now much better connected than it was back then, but in how many other regions will shutting down shortwave radio result in lost opportunities for the people there to connect with the rest of the world? We wouldn’t dream of cutting Internet access in poor neighbourhoods in our own countries; shutting down all libraries in less privileged parts of our cities would result in an outcry. It’s sad to see that many governments around the world no longer feel that they have this responsibility beyond their own borders.

It is particularly tragic because Australia's case is one of the few in which using shortwave is well justified both in terms of the underlying technology and the geography of the region. From a number of my conversations online I have gathered that many people use shortwave to listen to RA in the Pacific and quite a few more in the large swaths of rural Australia itself. Australia is a regional economic powerhouse, with which many smaller neighbouring nations have deep material and cultural links; many of these countries have little or no Internet or FM infrastructure to speak of.

On a personal note, I will miss hearing Radio Australia over the ether. Despite Europe being well outside their target area, their signals have always been very strong and clear, and the programming amongst the best out there — both on shortwave and elsewhere.

Radio Australia shortwave outage

Over the past few days, I and many other shortwave listeners have noted that Radio Australia can no longer be heard on the air. Many of those who contacted the broadcaster received a cut-and-paste statement in response, saying that the outage is a result of technical maintenance. The wording is somewhat suspicious, however:

We are currently working with our transmission provider on a number of shut downs over the past week and again over the next week to investigate a range of technical and commercial issues for the service.

(emphasis mine). This reminded me of a comment from one of my blog readers, left in response to our endangered shortwave stations initiative:

rubbersoul1991 on 3 May 2016 at 02:46 

Thanks for the post. The Australian Government is about to hand down its 2016/17 budget tonight and has foreshadowed another round of cuts to the ABC. The new head of the ABC is an ex Google executive [...] so a nuanced response may not be forthcoming. These are dark days for Radio Australia and it may not survive another year.

The budget was passed shortly after the comment was left, but could Radio Australia be quietly testing the waters with ceasing shortwave broadcasts in advance of the next round of possible cuts?

The usual arguments about the economics of running a high-powered shortwave radio service are well known and have been discussed many times over. And time and again, what is missing from these discussions is the humanitarian aspect: depriving people in the less advantaged territories of the ability to receive global broadcasts at no cost results in a less equal world. A good friend of mine from India who went on to become a highly successful academic in the USA attributed his career path to regularly listening to the BBC World Service and Voice of America on shortwave while growing up in a poor neighbourhood. True, India is now much better connected than it was back then, but in how many other regions will shutting down shortwave radio result in lost opportunities for the people there to connect with the rest of the world? We wouldn’t dream of cutting Internet access in poor neighbourhoods in our own countries; shutting down all libraries in less privileged parts of our cities would result in an outcry. I find it hard to believe that this point is lost on the people charged with making such decisions and one can only hope that this is indeed a temporary outage.

---

Update (17/08/16) from Radio Australia's reception advice:

The latest update from @radioaustralia's reception advice. @SWLingDotCom @UlisK3LU @philewing pic.twitter.com/AiM4yfaGaq

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 17 August 2016

---

Update (19/08/16):

Yep, it's there. Welcome back, @radioaustralia, we missed you! #TwenteSDR pic.twitter.com/lAFF30qxzF

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 19 August 2016

Endangered Shortwave Stations

Last week, when talking to my friend and fellow shortwave archivist Thomas Witherspoon about using software-defined radios to capture and preserve parts of the shortwave spectrum, he and I suddenly stumbled upon an idea: creating a curated list of endangered shortwave radio stations. We could use such a list, we thought, to focus our own efforts and those of the community on archiving the transmissions that were the most likely to disappear in the near future.

Shortwave Radio Audio Archive endangered stations page - http://shortwavearchive.com/endangered/

Thomas went ahead and quickly put together a draft version of this list, available here, and I added a few items to it. However, it's difficult to get up-to-date information on the stations' closure plans, as the organisations that sponsor shortwave broadcasters usually don't give much notice when deciding on funding cuts, so we will have to figure out a way of keeping it current (perhaps we can also use this list as a point of contact for whistleblowers?).

The list has already helped me to prioritise my shortwave recording activities. For the past four days I have been using my indoor SDR set-up (FunCube Dongle Pro+, MacBook Pro running Windows on VMWare and SDR#, plus the entire anti-interference set-up, described in one of my earlier posts) to record a small window of the shortwave spectrum that contains two critically endangered stations: the Voice of Greece (9420 kHz) and All India Radio (9445 kHz). These are late evening transmissions that I can't capture from the park for practical reasons. Some effort was required to tune the equipment for stable indoor reception:

Noise elimination at work. pic.twitter.com/TWJs8PQs2G

— London Shortwave (@LondonShortwave) 22 April 2016

The effort has already paid off, however: having recorded close to 14 hours of the Voice of Greece, I noticed that the station went off the air again last night. VOG is known for its irregular broadcasting hours, so not much surprise there, yet it's hard to predict when it resumes its programming. Hopefully, fellow enthusiasts will get in on the act and record the broadcasters that are teetering on the brink of shutdown. What stations do you think are critically endangered? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section!