The Media Network years: the 1980s

Media Network, which covered international broadcasting developments, recently ended a 30-year run on RNW. In a series of four articles, Andy Sennitt mentions some of the highlights, and then looks ahead to how international broadcasting might develop in the next ten years.

Part One: The 1980s

When Media Network started in 1981, little did we know that it would be the last decade of the Cold War. I was assistant editor of the World Radio TV Handbook (WRTH) at the time, based in Copenhagen because the editor, Jens Frost, was Danish. I was already on the air with a weekly news update from the WRTH editorial office via World Music Radio, a private venture that broadcast via the shortwave transmitter of Radio Andorra. Jonathan Marks had just joined Radio Nederland, as it was still called, and soon took over as host and producer of the popular DX Jukebox show.

Jonathan’s vision was of a programme that would interest a wider audience than the shortwave listeners and DXers who formed the bulk of the DX Jukebox audience. Many international broadcasters had similar shows, largely consisting of ‘DX tips’ sent in by listeners to tell other listeners what they had heard. Media Network was designed to focus on why a station was on the air, rather than just telling people how to hear it. I was invited to become part of the team, eventually totalling several hundred people, who contributed to the programme.

Politics prevailed
Most international broadcasts at the time had a political purpose, and the biggest international broadcaster of all was Radio Moscow, which had dozens of shortwave transmitting stations all over the USSR. In those days, the Soviet authorities didn’t publish their frequencies, and at the start of each new broadcast period other international broadcasters spent a few frantic days assessing which of their frequencies had to be changed to avoid interference from the Russians.

 

There was another Moscow-based operation called Radio Station Peace and Progress, which described itself as the Voice of Soviet Public Opinion. In fact, this was just another service of Radio Moscow, even sharing some of the same announcers. It gave the Soviet authorities the opportunity to put across different ideas to gauge international reaction, without them being seen as directly reflecting government policy - in other words, a sounding board. There were also a number of smaller external services from the constituent republics of the USSR. These stations tended to focus more on regional and cultural issues.

The Chinese also had a large external service, still called Radio Peking at that time. Its programme format was dreadfully old-fashioned, each broadcast beginning with a quotation from Chairman Mao. News bulletins often consisted of reading out the names of all the party officials who had attended an important function. Four years at the BBC Monitoring Service had taught me how important this seemingly boring ritual was. The order in which the names were read out gave foreign observers vital information about who was rising up the party ranks. A lot of important diplomatic information was conveyed in this way, also by the Soviets.

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(Source : Radio Netherlands Worldwide)