From WOOD@stab.sr.se
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 10:28:26 +0100
From: George Wood <WOOD@stab.sr.se>
To: thomas@acat.oden.tips.se, andy.sennitt@almac.co.uk, ab5sm@netcom.com,
hermod.pedersen@swedx.ct.se, kauto.huopio@lut.fi, kenta@sr.se,
ar416@freenet.buffalo.edu, bignoise@cix.compulink.co.uk,
tstader@aol.com, satnews@cix.compulink.co.uk, 100121.655@compuserve.com,
71163.1735@compuserve.com, 70630.560@compuserve.com,
100113.1517@compuserve.com, 76703.407@compuserve.com,
3382983@mcimail.com, 2446376@mcimail.com, jpdonnio@dialup.francenet.fr
Subject: scdx 2210 (I hope)
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:: MediaScan ::
:: SWEDEN CALLING DXERS ::
:: from Radio Sweden ::
:: Number 2210--Oct. 18, 1994 ::
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Satellite, shortwave and other electronic media news from Radio Sweden.
This week's bulletin was written by George Wood.
Packet Radio BID SCDX2210
All times UTC unless otherwise noted.
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Contributors and electronic publications: Could you please amend your address
and mailing lists to use our new Internet address, rather than the old
CompuServe mailbox? The new address is:
wood@stab.sr.se
RADIO IN CYBERSPACE:
SOUND ON THE INTERNET--Several weeks ago we announced that this program was
available as a sound file on the Internet, the global network of computer
networks that currently links between 20 and 40 million users. Until recently
everything on the Internet was text-based. But increasing capacity on links
and in computers, and the growth of multimedia, has led to an increase in
sound on the Net.
Today's English program includes recordings of several radio stations we
found on just two sites here in Sweden and Finland. One of those sites is
funet.fi in Finland. There one can find one of the major radio stations in
the digital universe, the Voice of America, which daily makes available
programs in 15 languages, including hourly news in English. There you can
also find Radio Amsterdam in Dutch, and these twice a month "MediaScan"
programs. Hopefully there will be more Radio Sweden programs available soon.
The person who is making all this possible for us is Kauto Huopio, a Finnish
student and Internet expert who gave a speech about the Net to a European DX
Council conference a few years ago. I wanted to ask Kauto exactly what he's
doing, and naturally we wanted to do the interview over the Internet. So I E-
mailed him a list of questions, and he recorded his answers as digital files,
and E-mailed them back.
That interview is in today's program.
Besides those radio stations available at funet in Finland, there are other
stations at sunet, here in Sweden. There, besides "MediaScan", you can find
daily newscasts and other programs from the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, Monitor Radio from the Christian Science Monitor, French
language lessons from Radio France International, and Internet Talk Radio,
the only radio station solely in Cyberspace.
This includes relays of "TechNation" from National Public Radio and "Geek of
the Week", a weekly interview with a computer expert.
MediaScan is included in the Internet Talk Radio package now, which means it
should be found at 31 sites in 12 countries. You can get a list of the sites
by sending an E-mail message to:
sites@radio.com
You'll get a message back with a complete list of the available sites.
The easiest way to access this programming, if you have Internet access, is
to use the ftp file transfer protocol feature. You ftp to a site, such as
ftp.funet.fi or ftp.sunet.se
You then log in as "anonymous", and for a password you give your E-mail
address.
You then use the cd, or change directory, command to find the section you
want. Typically you'll start with a directory called pub, for publications.
By the way, the text-based Electronic Edition of MediaScan is available at:
ftp.funet.fi in the library /pub/dx/text/NEWS/SCDX
At funet sound files are in /pub/sounds, while at sunet you should look for
/pub/radio.
Edward Dunne in Ireland has sent us a list of sites where RTE Radio news from
Ireland is available. One of those sites is here in Sweden, at:
ftp.medcom.se
The others are:
pell.anu.edu.au (/pub/obrien/) in Australia
www.atm.ch.camc.uk in Britain
orangutan.cv.nrao.edu (/pub/sounds/rte/) in the US
All these sound files are in a form called au, which is used by UNIX
computers. If you have a PC, you can download an au player from a BBS or an
online system, or use a program called SOX, available from the same sources,
to convert the au file to the WAV format used by PCs.
By the way, these sound files can be pretty huge....around a megabyte a
minute!
SHORTWAVE BY COMPUTER--Now, let's move from accessing Internet radio with your
computer to accessing shortwave radio with your computer. There's a new PC
computer card out that turns your computer into a shortwave radio! It's called
Softwave, it's incredibly expensive, and covers between 500 kHz and 30 MHz, as
well as 108 to 174 MHz. It includes digital signal processing, and a decoder for
morse code.
We were going to have a demonstration here at Swedish Radio, but
unfortunately the host computer melted or something. But it sounds promising,
it they can drop the price, extend the frequency coverage to include everything
from 30 to around 3000 MHz, and add other modes to the decoder, like RTTY,
packet radio, AMTOR, and all the other new exotic modes.
TEXT ON THE INTERNET--KMPS in Seattle is the first country music station
to create an interactive WWW site on the Internet. The station is making
available the material in its printed monthly magazine. This includes "Dateline
Nashville" (the latest industry buzz), reviews of new country music releases, a
directory of the station's advertisers, an entertainment calendar, and updates on
the KMPS Loyal Listener Club. There are also sound bytes, and accessers can
order CDs which are reviewed or listed in the country music chart.
The address is:
http://www.solutionsrc.com/KPMS/
(Per Alarud)
NEW LISTS--There are three new lists on the listserver at vm1.nodak.edu:
TVROSAT
DBSSAT
MISCSAT
These lists will be gatewayed to the Usenet newsgroups:
rec.video,satellite.tvro
rec.video,satellite.dbs
rec.video.satellite.misc
The lists are open for subscription. To subscribe to any of the lists, send mail
to:
listserv@vm1.nodak.edu
The body of the mail should be: SUB (name of the list) first-name last-name.
You can subscribe to more than one list in the same mail message. (K. Sankara
Rao)
NORDIC MEDIA NEWS:
SIRIUS/TVSAT--A number of people on the Usenet newsgroup
alt.satellite.tv.europe have noticed problems with Sweden's Sirius satellite, with
weakening signals. What is strange is that TV 5 Nordic, on the supposedly aging
Tele-X satellite at the same position, is as strong as ever, as is Z-TV on Sirius.
But the other PAL signals on Sirius: TV3, TV4, and TV6, are much weaker. A
DBS satellite should not produce poor signals on a 1.2 meter dish in the middle
of its coverage area, but Sirius does.
There's a rumor the Swedish Space Corporation may buy the German TV-Sat
direct broadcast satellite. The Germans say they won't need it after the
beginning of the year (all the channels on it are on other satellites, notably
Astra, of which the German Bundespost is now part-owner). TV-Sat would
reportedly be a good replacement for the "weak" Tele-X. (Bertil Sundberg in
"Paa TV") However, as mentioned above, Tele-X seems to be doing fine, it's
Sirius that's in trouble. The TV-Sat channels fall within the frequency band
used by Sirius, but fortunately all the transponders are on different frequencies
than those used by Sirius.
FINLAND--Radio Finland has introduced a weekly program in English called
"The Media Roundup". It will be aired every Thursday, and will carry items of
current interest concerning the press, radio, and television in Finland. (Radio
Finland via BBC Monitoring)
LAUNCHES:
IN ORBIT--An Atlas rocket put Intelsat 703 into orbit above the Pacific on
October 6th. The satellite will be located at 177 degrees east. The next day
Ariane carried Mexico's Solidaridad 2 (113 degrees West) and Thailand's Thaicom
2 (78.5 degrees East) into orbit. (Reuters and "Satellite News Desk")
ASTRA--The next Ariane launch will be Astra 1D, scheduled for October 31st,
and if all goes well, it ought to go into service alongside the other Astra
satellites in mid-December. (James Robinson)
HOT BIRD--Eutelsat's Hot Bird-1 has been delivered, and will be launched by
Ariane in December. The satellite will be positioned alongside Eutelsat II-F1 at
13 degrees East. It will give Eutelsat 46 transponders at this position (compared
to the 40 Astra has had for the past year, and the 54 Astra will have in
operation when Hot Bird is launched).
Among the broadcasters who have signed contracts for Hot Bird transponders
are Emirates Dubai TV, RTL, and Polish Television. Hot Birds 2 and 3 have been
ordered, and are due to be launched in 1996 and 1997, bringing to 72 the
number of transponders at 13 degrees East (digital technology will greatly
multiply the number of channels available). (Reuters)
OTHERS--Intelsat 704, the first Intelsat satellite to be built in Europe, rolled
off the production line at Aerospatiale on october 3. The satellite is scheduled
to be launched on an Atlas rocket on December 14, 1994.
Other satellites scheduled to launch before the end of the year are Orion 1
(37.5 degrees West), PAS-3 (43 degrees West), and Apstar 2 (112 degrees East).
("Satellite News Desk")
EUROPEAN MEDIA NEWS:
TURKSAT--says that Turksat at 42 degrees East has finally begun broadcasts
aimed at Europe, with TRT-1 on 10.970 GHz, vertical polarization. (Senol
Gulgonul of the Turksat Control Center, via Usenet News) But absolutely
nothing from the satellite can be seen here yet.
Kanal D has left Eutelsat II-F4, following its switch to Turksat. (James
Robinson)
INTELSAT--Intelsat 512 has been relocated from 1 degree West to 21.3 degrees
West, following the launch and deployment of Intelsat 702. ("Satellite News
Desk") Sky News is now using 4.053 GHz on 512, and Tele Sahel from Niger is
on 3.915. (Bertil Sundberg in "Paa TV")
On Fridays there is a cattle auction carried at 13:00 Hrs British Time on
Intelsat 601, on 11.135 GHz, audio 7.02 MHz. (James Robinson)
GALS--The new powerful Russian satellite GALS was visible some weeks ago at
44 degrees East, testing in Secam on 12.170 GHz. Then it disappeared. Now
satellite DXer Bo Wall has found strong signals from Russia's channel q at 71
degrees east, on 11.770 GHz, sound 7.00 MHz. This is apparently GALS new
location. (Bertil Sundberg in "Paa TV")
SHORTWAVE--Radio Moscow has dropped broadcasts in 11 languages, including
Afrikaans, Amharic, Danish, Dutch, and Somali. Other services are being cur
back. English remains at 168 hours a week, but the separate service to the west
coast of North America has been dropped. Among broadcasts in Nordic
languages, Finnish continues to be carried for 7 hours a week, but both
Norwegian and Swedish are being cut from 7 to 3.5 hours a week each. Radio
Moscow is now using less than 9000 shortwave and medium wave frequency
hours a week, compared to more than 15,000 before September 25th. (BBC
Monitoring)
SATELLITE RADIO--Trans World Radio has begun broadcasts on QVC's Astra
transponder 38, audio 7.38 MHz. (James Robinson)
A new German radio station has appeared on the WDR transponder on Astra.
WDR 1 uses 7.74 and 7.92 MHz.
The three Spanish radio stations using the Cinemania transponder on Astra have
vanished. They were Cadena 40 Principales, Cadena Dial, and Radio Madrid.
Radio Nordzee has vanished from the TV Norge transponder on Intelsat 702. It
had been on 7.74 MHz. (Robin Clark)
TELE-TEXT--Super Channel has changed tele-text services. The "In Orbit" pages
have been replaced by material from Germany's "Tele-Satellit" magazine, on
page 171. "In Orbit" remains, however, on UK Gold's teletext, on pages 333 and
334.
BBC NEWS--There are reports that the new BBC World Service Television all
news channel to Europe will begin on November 1st. ("Tele-Satellit") But the
BBC now says it will announce the starting date sometime during the next 6
weeks. The channel will reportedly use 11.617 GHz on Eutelsat II-F1. (James
Robinson)
TESUG--Don't forget that this weekend TESUG TV, operated by the people
behind "In Orbit", will be using that very same frequency and satellite for 20
hours of programming about satellite television, Saturday and Sunday between
08:00 and 18:00 hrs UTC, with the test during that same period on Friday.
(James Robinson)
ASIAN MEDIA NEWS:
TVB--TVB International has received permission from the government of Hong
Kong to launch a satellite service. The company runs two terrestrial channels in
Hong Kong. It is expected a satellite service will be strong competition for
Rupert Murdoch's Star-TV. (AP) Star's Chinese Channel and TVB are in a cable
TV ratings war in Taiwan, in disagreement over techniques to measure
audiences. Star has denounced TVB's survey, which gives it an average 21
percent share of the audience, compared to Star's Chinese Channel's 8.6
percent. (Reuters)
TURNER--Ted Turner has brought his 24 hour cartoon and movie network to
Asia. TNT/Cartoon Network is being carried on the Indonesian Palapa and
Chinese Apstar-1 satellites. The Palapa signal is in the clear, but Apstar viewers
will need a decoder. CNN International is already on Palapa. Robert Ross,
President of Turner International, says the channel will not break even for
some time. (Reuters)
PAKISTAN--Pakistan TV Channel 2 (PTV-2) is currently observed on Asiasat-1
on 4.100 GHz, in PAL, sound 6.6 MHz. There is news in English at 14:00-14:15
hrs UTC. Radio Pakistan has been observed on this transponer on 7.5 MHz,
between 00:44 and 19:00 hrs UTC; with 5 minute news bulletins in Urdu or
English on the hour. (BBC Monitoring)
AFRICAN SATELLITE BROADCASTING:
EGYPT--The head of Egypt's State Information Service says the country is
"already moving strongly ahead with Nile TV"..."If the choice and
professionalism are there, you need not worry about CNN and Sky TV (sic)".
(SAPA via BBC Monitoring) Unfortunately, while the Egyptian Space Channel
puts out a strong signal on Eutelsat II-F3, Nile TV on the same satellite is
extremely weak. It gives the impression Egypt doesn't really care in anyone
watches. To provide a choice, you have to get a signal the viewers can watch!
LATIN AMERICAN MEDIA NEWS:
CUBA--The Cuban news agency Prensa Latina has announced it has ended its
RTTY transmissions to Latin America. Monitoring observations indicate that PL
may have suspended RTTY transmissions to other parts of the world as well.
(BBC Monitoring)
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Sweden Calling DXers/MediaScan is the world's oldest radio program about
international broadcasting. Radio Sweden has presented this round-up of radio
news, features, and interviews on Tuesdays since 1948. It's currently broadcast
on the first and third Tuesdays of the month.
Radio Sweden broadcasts in English:
Europe:
17:15 hrs 1179 and 6065 kHz
18:30 1179, 6065, 9655, and 13690 kHz (also Africa/Middle East)
21:30 1179, 6065, and 9655 kHz (also Africa/Middle East)
22:30 1179 and 6065 kHz
23:30 1179 kHz
Asia/Pacific:
12:30 hrs 13775, 15120, and 15240 kHz
23:30 11910 kHz
01:30 9895 and 11695 kHz
North America:
13:30 and 14:30 hrs on 11650 and 15240 kHz
02:30 and 03:30 hrs on 6200 and 9850 kHz
Latin America:
00:30 hrs on 6065 and 6200 kHz
The broadcasts at 17:15 and 18:30 hrs are also relayed to Europe by satellite:
Astra 1B (19.2 degrees East) transponder 26 (Sky Movies Gold) at
11.597 GHz, audio subcarrier at 7.74 MHz,
Tele-X (5 degrees East) via TV5 Nordic at 12.475 GHz, audio subcarrier 7.38
MHz.
Radio Sweden is also relayed to Europe via the World Radio Network on VH-1's
transponder 22 on Astra, audio 7.38 MHz, daily at 20:00 hrs UTC.
Radio Sweden can also be heard on WRN's North American service on Galaxy-5,
on WTBS's transponder 6, audio 6.8 MHz, daily at 00:00 and 20:00 hrs.
Sound files of Mediascan are archived at:
ftp.funet.fi:pub/sounds/RadioSweden/mediascan.
If you access to the WorldWide Web, you can also find the programs among the
offerings of Internet Talk Radio at:
ftp://town.hall.org/radio/Sweden
Contributions can be sent to DX Editor George Wood by fax to +468-667-6283,
via the Internet to wood@stab.sr.se, from MCI Mail or CompuServe to the
CompuServe mailbox 70247,3516, or to SM0IIN at the packet radio BBS SM0ETV.
Reports can also be sent to:
Radio Sweden
S-105 10 Stockholm
Sweden
Contributions should be NEWS about electronic media--from shortwave to
satellites--and not loggings of information already available from sources such
as the "World Radio TV Handbook". Clubs and DX publications may reprint
material as long as MediaScan/Sweden Calling DXers and the original
contributor are acknowledged, with the exception of items from BBC Monitoring,
which are copyright.
We welcome comments and suggestions about the electronic edition, Sweden
Calling DXers, and our programs in general.
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Thanks to this week's contributors Good Listening!