goonetilleke

This was a general news programme with an indepth interview with Victor Goonetilleke who was visiting The Netherlands. European winter time has started. People using electronic mail more and more. InfoDutch promo. News from WRTH editorial office. In-depth Interview with Victor Goonetilleke.

I recall that several of the early experiments in Europe wide satellite broadcasting by public broadcasters started on the top floor of one of the villas in the Emmastraat in Hilversum. Its started on the Orbital Test Satellite which required a huge dish to receive it. In this early episode of Media Network we talked to Klaas Jan Hindriks who was one of the early pioneers. The IBA from the UK explains about plans for direct satellite broadcast television in 1986. We suggest to Joop Acda, DG of Radio Netherlands, that this might be an opportunity for RNW. The programme concludes with the BASICODE promo (the famous Sherlock jingle from Pete Myers) and DX News from Victor Goonetilleke.

This was a news review, one of the early editions with Diana Janssen. We talk about the Philips Transmitter Site Christmas Tree. Radio Luxembourg ceases 6090 kHz for its French programme. Victor Goonetilleke reports on the delays to VOA transmitter site in Chilaw, Sri Lanka. He is hearing Radio Fana, targeting Ethiopia. RIAS on 6005 kHz has closed down, Radio Volga has also shut. In Austria all mediuumwave transmitters have closed down. There will be no central media archive for the time being. Radio Netherlands expands its Papiamentu service. BBC World Service relays in New Zealand on 1386 kHz have been replaced by VOA, much to the surprise of local listeners.

Safety officials in the US are studying the navigational black boxes to determine the final moments of the Korean Airlines Boeing 747 which smashed into a jungle covered hill on Guam on Wednesday. Later on Wednesday evening we reached Glenn Scheyhing, assistant news director at KTWR in Guam. Because from the news video it looked as if the plane came down very near their shortwave radio station. Was that the case? In receiver news, the International Centre for Humanitarian Reporting in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the USA passes on the results of two major field tests of the BayGen Freeplay radio. These have been undertaken by the BBC Afghan Education Drama (AED) Project in Afghanistan, and the Cranfield Disaster Preparedness Centre (DPC) in Eritrea. Each of the tests was designed to test whether the clockwork radios would match up to the expections and durability claims that we’ve seen widely quoted in the press in many parts of the world.  Victor Goonetilleke (photo taken in 1997) joins us to discuss  a non-governmental Tamil language station based in London which was starting a series of test transmissions to South Asia. Former members of the BBC have started a station called IBC from the studios of the World Radio Network in South London.

We start with news of changes in ownership in Soviet media. Victor Goonetilleke reports on a mysterious station calling itself Colombo International Radio. Radio Ulan Batar now on 22 metres, VOA announced that Radio Marti and Worldnet are to be merged. Albanian refugees in Italy demand loudspeakers to listen to VOA Albanian. BBC is planning to start a BBC World News. Tony Barratt reports hearing HCJB from Quito on SSB. A strange story from Vietnam about cable radio and TRT expands. Arthur Cushen has tuning tips including WWCR and Brazzaville. We called Algerian radio to find out more about the Voice of Palestine. Very quiet conditions on the sun, reports Mike Bird in Melbourne.

Remember Trevor Baylis and the wind-up radio? I organised a conference for Radio Netherlands at the International Broadcasting Convention IBC between September 11-14th 1995. We decided to celebrate the fact that we were 5 years away from a new Millennium by looking at the technologies that would carry us forward. That included a look at different codings for DAB, a reality check on radio by Sri Lankan broadcaster Victor Goonetilleke and a special performance about the Clockwork Radio from Trevor Baylis, the British inventor who turned up in Amsterdam and charmed the audience with his frank, funny and brilliant introduction to the concept of wind-up radios. A few weeks after the conference we produced a special CD for those who took part. This is a copy for those who missed it. It's double the length of a normal Media Network, just over an hour.

I co-hosted the show with Victor Goonetilleke who was passing through Hilversum on his way back to Sri Lanka. With recent discussion in January 2011 about funding of the BBC World Service, this flashback to a conference in September 1995 is rather topical. Sam Younger was the Managing Director of BBC World Service in 1995 and he questioned whether it is desirable for public broadcasters to work with commercial operations, especially in television. He predicted that the growth of international TV would have a major impact on radio transmissions. He also warned against certain types of sponsored programmes. The programme also contains the voice of the late Pete Myers who explains the reason for ending the run of the Happy Station programme. A nice cup of tea was one of the standard tunes that recurred in the Happy Station programme hosted by Eddy Startz, first on PCJ in 1928, and after the war when broadcasting resumed, Happy Station was a station within the station, Radio Netherlands. Last Sunday saw the last transmission of entertainment in English under that programme title. Pete Myers is one of the four hosts of the show during its 67 year run. Before the recording started he explained why the entertainment will continue, but not under the title of Happy Station.

In this edition: Chris Greenway of BBC Monitoring reports on RFE-RL moves from Munich to Prague. Paul Rusling has an idea for a longwave radio station from the Isle of Man (Atlantic 252 for grown-ups) and Wolf Harranth reports on plans to revive a radio station in Lichtenstein. In other news here in Holland the PTT, quote media and the De Telegraaf newspaper have launched internet access for the general public. You pay 20 dollars a month for 6 hrs access. Meanwhile in London the BBC is in talks with Compuserve with the view to providing news and information to customers of this American online news provider. And in Israel, English programmes on shortwave are being cutback again as from July 1st. But the 19 hrs UTC transmission is being restored to a full half hour. However the feature programmes will not come back because Israel radio is closing its English features department at the end of June 1995. This week European Digital Radio changed its name to Radio E, ready for a test DAB launch in late August. Thats a group of stations including the BBC, RFI, Deutsche Welle and Radio Netherlands. Does this mean there’s a trend away from individual international broadcasters. You see smaller stations clubbing together and larger ones starting to talk more and more about their own region. There is always a danger than when public money is tight policy makers simply want to broadcast news about their own country, saying that regional news from other parts of the world is too costly to collect. It was a point that our correspondent Victor Goonetilleke raised at the EDXC conference a few weeks back.

This edition includes a mean Christmas contest promo, Media News from Victor Goonetilleke and we talk to special guest Karl Rossiter, on the future of digital television and radio. At that time, the economic downtown in Asia had actually stimulated the broadcasting business to tighten its belt and look for alternative technologies. Karl predicted that costs could be cut to 1/5th if IP protocols were adopted. TV New Zealand was running a couple of networks on servers as early at 1998. Note Karl's use of the word Hybrid, because that word seems to be very much in vogue again now, 12 and a bit years later. Actually, I would argue that digital radio has been rather slow to see the advantages of a hybrid approach - using broadcast for mass distribution and IP technology to narrowcast things like profile driven commercials or specialist programming. Karl was spot on - and I see he is still in the business (at least according to Linked-In). Towards the end of the programme Mike Bird gets an intro from Jim Cutler like never before (and never since).

August seemed to be the month when we frequently looked at off-shore radio. This edition was crafted together with a big contribution from Nic Newman, at that time working for Radio Netherlands before going on to do great things at the BBC's Interactive Departments. Nic went out to the ship on one of the boats - pretty brave since we had some pretty dreadful storms in the summer of 1985. He talks to the DJ's on Laser 558 including , now a political commentator living in the UK. The show also looked at communications with the Space Shuttle and there are tuning tips from Arthur Cushen, Victor Goonetilleke and Sarath Weerakoon. I know that off-shore radio editions seem to score as some of the highest in the download figures, so let's see what this one does. Enjoy.

It is April 30th as this entry is published. Its a national holiday to celebrate the Queen's Birthday, although Beatrix is not actually having a birthday today. Her late mother was born on April 30th and this is a better time of year than the queen's official birthday on 31st January (1938). So when she was inaugurated in 1980, Queens Day didn't move. The programme attached to this entry is also from Queens Day, but as broadcast on Thursday 30th April 1987....23 years ago. In this show we learn that VOA Europe goes stereo and will also carry commercials, through a barter arrangement with Westwood One We hear the plans for satellite scrambling in MAC mode. AWR Guam signs on. There's also a feature on Audience research - Tom Fikkert of Radio Netherlands and Graham Mytton who was Head of the International Broadcasting Audience Research department at BBC World Service. I find it fascinating to hear how shortwave was declining back then. Finally, clandestine radio expert John Campbell reports on some fascinating books he discovered at book fairs across the North-West Europe.

In this edition, we're going back to May 23rd 1985 when I was fortunate to visit Sri Lanka for the first time, as part of a stop-over on Air Lanka to Tokyo. Actually, it was great to spend some time with two long time friends of the Media Network programme, Victor Goonetilleke (pictured) and Sarath Weerakoon. This was just before a new round of hostilities broke out in the North and East of the country. I travelled with Adrian Petersen (AWR) to see the Deutsche Welle Trincomalee relay station - a trip of almost 8 hours. We stayed in the Moonlight Bay hotel, which I found out later was blown up a few weeks later. On our return, Victor had organised a meeting of Radio Netherlands' listeners and I was amazed to discover that some people had travelled over two days just to say hello and express their appreciation for Media Network and Pete Myers show at the time called Mainstream Asia. Again, as you listen to this it important to realise this is 10 years before Internet had mass appeal, only a few satellite TV channels requiring 11 metre dishes and the only way for ordinary folk to follow events was with a shortwave radio. Enjoy this one. I personally love the story from the late Chairman of the SLBC about how SLBC got its transmitting station by clever negotiations with the British. He also explains the relations with VOA and TWR. At the end of the programme is late-breaking news from Dennis Powell as hits the airwaves for the first time.