And why amateur radio matters more than ever.
There was a time when you could sit in a room, turn a dial, and listen to the world.
Not the world as selected by a search engine, curated by an algorithm, or delivered through a subscription service. The actual world, arriving through the atmosphere as electromagnetic waves, carrying voices, music, news, and ideas from places you might never visit.
Some signals were strong and clear. Others drifted in and out of the noise, distorted by interference, fading as propagation conditions changed. Occasionally, a station thousands of kilometres away would emerge from the static with astonishing clarity.
There was something remarkable about that experience, and I think we’re losing more than we realize as traditional radio broadcasting retreats from the airwaves.
The disappearance of long-wave and shortwave broadcasting isn’t simply a technological transition. It represents a change in our relationship with distance, communication, and the wider world.
And it makes amateur radio more important than it has been in a very long time.
Radio as a Window on the World
Most of us grew up with broadcast radio as a familiar presence. In Canada, that generally meant AM and FM stations carrying news, music, weather, sports, and conversation.
Broadcast radio was local, immediate, and accessible. Turn on a receiver, and somebody was there, talking or playing music. You didn’t need an account, an internet connection, or permission from a network operator to listen.
There was a particular intimacy to radio. Unlike television, it didn’t demand your full attention. It accompanied you in the kitchen, in the car, in the workshop, or late at night when the rest of the house was quiet.
But conventional broadcasting was only one part of the radio experience.
Medium-wave AM broadcasting could sometimes carry distant stations hundreds or thousands of kilometres after sunset. Listening at night, you could hear stations from American cities you had never visited, sometimes competing for the same frequency. The changing ionosphere would bring distant signals into reach and then take them away again.
Long-wave broadcasting offered something different. Especially in Europe, high-power transmitters like the 200 kHz, 500 kW Droitwich Transmitting Station, near Wychbold in Worcestershire, England, could cover enormous areas, sending signals that travelled reliably over long distances. They became familiar fixtures in people’s lives, connecting communities across national borders and over stretches of sea.
Shortwave took that experience to another level.
Through the peculiar interaction between high-frequency radio waves and the ionosphere, broadcasters could transmit across continents and oceans. A relatively modest receiver and a piece of wire could bring voices from Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, or the Pacific into your home.
The world was quite literally on the dial.
And importantly, you never knew exactly what you might find.
The Magic of Shortwave
International shortwave broadcasting was unlike ordinary domestic radio.
Stations such as the BBC World Service, Radio Netherlands, Deutsche Welle, Radio Australia, Radio Moscow, Radio Japan, and our own Radio Canada International gave listeners access to news, culture, language, and perspectives from around the world.
Some of those broadcasters had explicit political objectives. Others emphasized cultural diplomacy, international understanding, or public-service journalism. Whatever their motivations, they provided an extraordinary opportunity to encounter voices beyond one’s immediate surroundings.
You didn’t have to agree with what you heard. Indeed, part of the value was hearing different accounts of the same events, recognizing the biases and assumptions underlying them, and developing a more informed understanding of the world.
There was also the experience of reception itself.
A shortwave listener wasn’t simply selecting content. They were observing a physical phenomenon.
Signals varied with the time of day, the season, solar activity, and ionospheric conditions. A broadcaster audible one evening might be impossible to hear the next. A transmission intended for another part of the world could unexpectedly arrive with remarkable strength.
The hiss, crackle, fading, and interference weren’t always welcome, but they reminded you something real was happening. These were electromagnetic waves travelling enormous distances, not packets of information being delivered through a managed network.
Even the imperfections were meaningful.
Listening required patience, experimentation, and curiosity. You learned something about geography, propagation, antennas, frequencies, and the behaviour of the natural world almost without realizing it.
Shortwave didn’t just tell you about distant places. It made you conscious of the distance between you and them—and of the extraordinary fact that radio could bridge it.
The Slow Silencing of the Bands
Over the past couple of decades, especially in recent years, many great international broadcasters have reduced or abandoned their traditional transmissions.
For Canadians, one especially painful example was the end of Radio Canada International’s shortwave service in 2012.
image: Bill Jarvis
For decades, RCI transmitted from its remarkable facility near Sackville, New Brunswick. Its antennas carried Canadian voices across the world. The shortwave operation ceased, and the great antenna arrays were subsequently dismantled.
A piece of Canada’s international communications infrastructure simply disappeared.
In 2026, Canada’s time station, CHU, went silent after more than 100 years on the air, beating time for our country. CBC Radio’s 1 o’clock time signal broadcast came from CHU. Another piece of Canada’s communication infrastructure was silenced.
image: National Research Council of Canada
image: Engineering Radio
Elsewhere, the pattern has continued.
Ireland’s RTÉ Radio 1 ended its long-wave broadcasts on 252 kHz in April 2023. In June 2026, the BBC closed its historic Radio 4 long-wave service on 198 kHz, ending transmissions from sites including Droitwich, which had been broadcasting since 1934.
image: By Trounce – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2695624
These weren’t merely obsolete pieces of equipment being retired. They were long-established radio landmarks, familiar presences on the dial for generations of listeners.
Of course, broadcasters have perfectly understandable reasons for these decisions. High-power transmitters are expensive to operate and maintain. Electricity costs money. Ageing infrastructure eventually requires replacement. Audiences have increasingly migrated to FM, digital radio, satellite services, and the internet.
There is little point in pretending that every transmitter can or should remain in service forever.
But there is a difference between understanding why something is disappearing and concluding that nothing important is being lost.
When a long-wave or shortwave station closes, we lose more than one way to hear its programming.
We lose another voice that can be received directly, without an intermediary.
We lose a signal that can cross borders without depending on the infrastructure, permissions, commercial arrangements, or algorithms of the internet.
We lose another opportunity for someone with a simple receiver to discover the wider world.
And we lose part of the shared experience of radio itself.
Streaming Is Not the Same Thing
The obvious response is that nearly everything once available on shortwave can now be heard online.
In many respects, that’s true. Internet streaming generally offers better audio quality, greater programme choice, and vastly more convenience. I can listen to international broadcasters from my computer or phone without wrestling with fading signals or atmospheric noise.
That’s a wonderful achievement, and I have no desire to turn back the clock.
But streaming and radio broadcasting are not equivalent experiences.
An internet stream travels through a complex network of telecommunications infrastructure, servers, service providers, software platforms, and commercial relationships. Its availability depends on that infrastructure continuing to function.
A shortwave broadcast, by contrast, can be received directly from a transmitter thousands of kilometres away. Provided the transmitter is operating, the propagation is favourable, and you have a working receiver, no internet connection or intermediary is required.
There are obvious limitations. Shortwave communication is affected by propagation, interference, and deliberate jamming. It isn’t invulnerable, and international broadcasting has never been entirely free of political influence or censorship.
Nevertheless, its independence from conventional telecommunications infrastructure is a valuable characteristic.
There’s also a more subtle difference.
Streaming encourages us to choose what we already want to hear. We search for a station, a programme, or a subject, and an elaborate technical system delivers it.
Tuning a radio encourages discovery.
You encounter whatever happens to be on the air. You stumble upon unfamiliar languages, unexpected music, distant conversations, and signals whose origins aren’t immediately apparent.
One experience is about obtaining content.
The other can be about exploration.
I think we underestimate the cultural value of that distinction.
From Listening to Participating
This brings me to amateur radio.
I’ve become increasingly interested in amateur radio not simply as a technical hobby, but as a way of maintaining a direct, personal connection with the wider world.
There is an important qualitative difference between broadcast radio and amateur radio.
Broadcasting is fundamentally one-to-many communication. A broadcaster speaks, and an audience listens. Even when programmes invite audience participation, the broadcaster remains in control of the medium.
Amateur radio changes that relationship.
With amateur radio, I don’t have to wait for someone else to transmit something worth hearing. I can transmit myself.
I can call CQ and discover who responds.
I can exchange information with another operator in a neighbouring town or on another continent. We can talk about our equipment, our interests, the weather, our communities, or simply the pleasure of making contact.
The encounter doesn’t have to be scripted, commercially sponsored, or selected by an algorithm.
It’s a conversation between people who have developed the skills and acquired the equipment to communicate directly.
That distinction is profound.
Shortwave broadcasting brought the world into our homes.
Amateur radio lets us reach back.
More Than Contacts and Signal Reports
Much of modern amateur radio activity involves digital modes, automated exchanges, contesting, and the pursuit of awards. These activities can be technically fascinating, and they have unquestionably contributed to the hobby’s vitality.
I’ve enjoyed experimenting with digital modes myself, particularly those that reveal just how far a low-power signal can travel under favourable conditions.
There’s something astonishing about transmitting only a few watts and discovering that a receiving station on the other side of the planet has detected your signal.
But for me, making contact isn’t quite the same as communicating.
An automated exchange of callsigns, signal reports, and acknowledgements demonstrates that a radio path exists. It can be satisfying, particularly when the conditions are difficult or the distance is exceptional.
Yet the part of amateur radio that most interests me goes beyond proving that a signal can make the journey.
I want to know something about the person at the other end.
I want the possibility of a genuine conversation, however brief or ordinary it might be.
A contact with someone thousands of kilometres away becomes much more meaningful when it involves two people rather than two pieces of equipment exchanging predetermined messages.
And this, I think, is where amateur radio inherits something of the spirit of international shortwave broadcasting.
Both invite us to become curious about people and places beyond our immediate experience.
But amateur radio adds reciprocity.
The distant voice can hear us, too.
A Different Kind of Resilience
There is also a practical reason to value amateur radio.
Modern communications systems are extraordinarily capable, but they are also highly interconnected and dependent on infrastructure that most of us neither control nor fully understand.
Cellular networks require functioning base stations, backhaul connections, switching systems, and power supplies. Internet services depend on a similarly elaborate chain of infrastructure.
Amateur radio offers alternatives.
Depending on the circumstances, operators can establish direct communication over local, regional, or intercontinental distances without relying on the public telecommunications network.
This doesn’t mean amateur radio is a magical solution to every emergency. Effective emergency communication requires training, planning, appropriate equipment, reliable power, disciplined operating procedures, and coordination with the organizations being supported.
Nor can a relatively small community of amateur operators replace the coverage and capacity of established broadcast networks.
But amateur radio preserves something valuable: a distributed community of people who understand how to establish communications using radio itself.
Those skills matter.
They matter when infrastructure fails. They matter when conventional services are unavailable. And they matter because practical knowledge of radio communication is worth maintaining independently of its immediate commercial usefulness.
The fewer independent ways we have to communicate, the more important the remaining ones become.
Keeping the Spectrum Alive
There’s another consequence of disappearing broadcast services that deserves attention.
Radio spectrum is a finite and heavily contested resource.
As familiar broadcast services disappear, public awareness of radio as a physical, shared communications medium may diminish. To many people, wireless communication increasingly means Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or cellular service—a useful feature built into a device, rather than a technology worth understanding in its own right.
Amateur radio provides a valuable counterpoint.
It gives individuals opportunities to experiment with propagation, antennas, modulation techniques, electronics, and communications systems.
It encourages technical curiosity and practical learning.
And, perhaps most importantly, it maintains a community of people who regard the radio spectrum as more than commercial real estate.
Amateur radio isn’t merely a way to communicate. It’s also a means of learning how communication works.
That educational and experimental role becomes increasingly significant as other forms of direct radio communication become less visible in everyday life.
The Value of an Unpredictable World
I sometimes wonder whether the disappearance of traditional broadcasting reflects a broader cultural change.
We have become accustomed to communications technologies that are remarkably reliable, convenient, and predictable.
We expect information to arrive instantly. We expect search results to be relevant. We expect entertainment to match our preferences. We expect our devices to shield us from the complexity of the systems supporting them.
Radio, particularly long-distance radio, offers a different experience.
It reminds us that the natural world does not always cooperate with our expectations.
Propagation changes. Signals fade. Noise intervenes. An antenna that works beautifully on one band may be practically useless on another.
You can’t command the ionosphere to deliver a particular station at a particular time.
You can only learn, experiment, adapt, and try again.
And sometimes, when everything comes together, you hear a voice from an extraordinary distance.
That experience is still capable of inspiring wonder.
I don’t think we should dismiss that wonder as mere nostalgia.
Curiosity about how the world works is valuable in itself. So is the experience of encountering something unexpected.
Traditional international broadcasting encouraged both.
Amateur radio still does.
When the Broadcasters Go Silent
I don’t expect a wholesale return of the great shortwave broadcasting networks. The economic and technological forces behind their decline are real, and the ways people consume information have changed fundamentally.
Nor do I think amateur radio can replace the international news reporting, cultural programming, and public-service missions of those broadcasters.
They serve different purposes.
But as long-wave and shortwave stations fall silent, amateur radio becomes one of the few remaining opportunities for ordinary individuals to experience long-distance radio as a living, participatory medium.
It preserves the possibility of making a direct connection with someone far beyond the horizon.
Not through a social media platform.
Not through a streaming service.
Not because an algorithm decided that two people should encounter one another.
But because one person put a signal into the air, another person heard it, and a conversation began.
To me, that’s something worth preserving.
The great broadcasters once filled the bands with voices from around the world. Many of those voices are gone now, and I think we should recognize the magnitude of that loss.
But the bands aren’t silent.
There are still people out there, listening, experimenting, calling, and answering.
And perhaps that’s the most important reason to keep amateur radio alive.
When the world’s broadcasters go quiet, we can still talk to one another.
