MN.23.01.2023 Interview with Dr Graham Mytton
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
COVID disrupted just about everything for me. And by New Years Day 2023, I started wondering if there is any value in continuing the Media Network archive I built about international sound broadcasting in the 20th century. What has always kept me going is unearthing the stories of the past and bumping into amazing people like Dr , who I knew in the 80's as Head of BBC International Audience Research. A year ago, I had the chance to have a zoom call with him. Only now have I found a moment to start montaging it. But you be the judge. Is this aural history still relevant in 2023?
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MN.05.01.2023 Maarten van Delft ID Collection 1988 Caribbean Stations
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
Hello, welcome back to Part 2 of the Maarten van delft tapes. This time with unique studio recordings from the Caribbean made around 1988. Here is the link to LIST. Just to recap it is January 2023 and I’m playing around in the Media Network archive vault which sits on my hard drive. In the 1970’s and 80’s several of us interested in international broadcasting collected the sign-on and sign-offs of radio stations from around the world. Whilst it was easy to make an off-air tape of a far-off station, there was no guarantee you could hear it just by tuning in the right frequency. In...
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MN.03.01.2023 Maarten van Delft ID Collection 1973 Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
Here is s in this episode: Hello, it is January 2023 and I’m playing around in the Media Network archive vault which sits on my hard drive and beckons me to explore forgotten files when I have a moment to spare. In November 2019, a faithful Dutch MN listener Max van Arnhem contacted me with a request. He had about 19 reel to reel tapes from fellow radio enthusiast Maarten van Delft which he could not digitize because he didn’t have a recorder anymore. As it happens, I just restored a Studer Revox B77 to full working order and so I have the right equipment to digitize many formats. A few...
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Media Network Off Air Collection April 2 82
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
I am gradually sorting out my off-air radio cassette collection. I realise that if I don't do it now, I will never get around to it. But I also realise that a lot of off-air recordings are disappearing, especially once the radio programme is made, and very few people keep the original interview or recordings. For some reason, I did. And 40 years later I am so glad I didn't throw things away. Today, I'm sharing an off-air recording of the Falklands Island Broadcasting Station during the Argentine invasion of April 2nd 1982. There are a few places where Patrick Watts, the station manager stops...
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MN.14.08.1980 Afghanistan and the Soviets
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
This is the second edition of DX Juke Box that I hosted, having joined Radio Netherlands a couple of weeks earlier. The programme in those days was a mixture of music and tuning tips contributed by others. My goal, together with Wim van Amstel, was to do more investigative reporting. There was no production budget, but there were plenty of enthusiastic reporters. Before leaving BBC Monitoring I had also recorded several items with people like Richard Measham. In this edition we discussed how the Russian's had taken over Afghan media. Richard revealed that it all started with a tip off from...
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RadioMoscowWarmongers
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
Look what I found. When I was working for the ORF Shortwave Panorama, BBC Monitoring Service and later Radio Netherlands, I learned the importance of taping everything I was listening to. Radio has no memory. And back in the 70’s and 80’s there was no Wikipedia, no Youtube, no means to check a story on the wires. If you wanted access to Reuters or the wire services you had to monitor radio stations for news. I was collecting media news, so I used to tape colleague broadcasters. Many of the cassettes have gone, but then I discovered a box of mystery cassettes including an edition of...
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DXJB.25.09.1980
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
Another early edition of DX Juke Box, with input from my good friend Victor Goonetilleke. I sent him a tape recorder and plenty of cassette. I would phone him and he would record his answers on cassette and send them in. Phone lines were useless in those days. In this edition, Victor was still sending contributions on reel-to-reel tape, recorded at the studios of TWR. Photo when Victor visited RNW about 15 years later.
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DXJB.18.09.1980 Early days
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
A little over a month after taking over the programme, I was starting to phase out the music in DX Juke Box and bring in more equipment tests to replace the construction lessons. I got a lot of help from Wim Van Amstel. Basically just fooling around. And learning that editing was supposed to be done electronically in studios. So I found an old machine on the 1st floor and pirated it.
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MN.23.01.1986 Radio Fryslan
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
For some reason this trip up North to Friesland to visit Radio Fryslan was digitized but never uploaded to this Media Network collection. So time to put that right. The picture is the modern studio centre. Very much smaller back then.
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Media Network reflects on BBC World Radio Club
The Media Network Vintage Vault 2024-2025
Going through some cassettes on the last day of February and I discovered several cassettes of BBC's programme for shortwave listeners. World Radio Club and Waveguide. The earliest recording turned out to be from July 1977 which I recorded while at a DX camp in Austria. Nice to hear the voices of Peter Barsby and Henry Hatch.
info_outlineOn 3 July 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War, an Airbus A300B2-203, was shot down as it flew over the Strait of Hormuz by SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired from the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes. The aircraft, which had been flying in Iranian airspace over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on its usual flight path to Dubai, was destroyed. All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, perished. The only way of getting the Iranian side of the story was via shortwave from the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the transmitter was only switched on mid sentence when we listened in.
Radio Japan and Radio France Internationale have decided on a transmitter swap. NHK, for some reason, insisted on using narrow bandwidth phone lines so the audio sounded awful. Radio Bras also started relaying Swiss Radio International.
We also talked to William Marsh about changes Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. He argued that dramatic events in the Baltic were not reported on by Soviet media.
Radio Netherlands was also celebrated 300 years of Anglo Dutch relations. I went to the Dutch Postal Museum to discover that the Dutch East India Company had the right to read all the letters they were carrying. And they threw the letters from competitors into the sea. Sounds like an early NSA. (I remember that we were using a new brand of cassettes that week - but they were wrongly biased - hence the wierd sibiliance.