https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/business/media/bbc-arabic...

So stupid, it's a lot of soft power for peanuts. Probably the suits are saying "but what about the internet" but the people you want to reach are the people whose internet is likely to be turned off when you want to talk to them.

Tragic absolutely, shortsighted - no. You can't operate without money and news organizations can't survive in todays environment. The way we consume and gather around information simply isn't the same anymore.

How on earth have you obtained such obvious misinformation and why are you posting it so confidently?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/tv-licence

Whoever figured "well its on the internet" appears to have forgotten that its purpose is to serve people under the sorts of governments that would aggressively block internet access to news sources unfriendly to the government.

I appreciate technology may have changed but in the cold war many East Germans listened to the BBC East German service, in particular a programme called "Letters Without Signatures" [0] which relied on East Germans writing letters to the BBC . The programme ran for many years and clearly had a significant audience, I think if the Stasi had been able to detect reception they would have done so.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbchistoryresearch/entries/9a651...

Seemed like magic at the time, got me into simple electronics.

(proceeds to be extremely pedantic)

However, a nonlinear junction detector will still find a receiver (among other things).

But even commercial pilots know their radios are AM for instance.

Does it include LW/MW only, or is shortwave also called "AM radio"?

I don't think it's just a US or NA thing. In my experience, at least, every casual consumer radio I ever handled that had English labels on it, outside of vintage stuff, used this terminology. More advanced consumer radios like Tecsun will usually avoid "AM" and use LW/MW/SW as appropriate, but then still refer to VHF as FM.

I referred to pilots as a counter example.

We know what AM really means and we call it a “radio.”

People also say CB radio - I’ve never heard it referred as a transceiver by that group. Hams, both.

https://www.circuitbasics.com/what-are-fm-receivers/

And FM is intolerant of multipath reception which happens a on SW.

AM is not dead between cities in Texas, if you're into Country, Tejano, or church broadcasts.

And FM is absolutely not "better" than AM. It does give a clearer signal on strong signals, but is demonstrably worse on weak signals.

BTW in addition to shortwave BBC World Service broadcasts (or provides material for rebroadcast by local operators) in : Long Wave; VHF; DAB and Satellite.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Building a receiver out of whatever scrap you have around is a highly recommended exercise, and even more so if you have any kids (do it with them) --- the astonishment at seeing a pile of parts come together and make sounds, seemingly without any power source, is definitely an unforgettable experience.

Radio was among the first means of long-distance, widespread wireless communication owing to its simplicity, and that simplicity means it's very hardy against adversity and unlikely to meet its practical demise any time soon.