The Future of Broadcasting

Abstract

At the end of the last century, a dictionary could confidently define broadcasting as the transmission of a signal for television or radio. Within a decade, every element of that definition had changed. Transmission had branched out from the cumbersome business of placing masts bearing receivers and transmitters at the highest vantage points across the countryside. A signal was no longer confined to the band waves that the air could carry — invisible streams snaking their way across the landscape: Ultra High Frequency (UHF) carrying television, as long as the hills weren’t in the way; Very High Frequency (VHF or FM)carrying wonderful quality sound, as long as the same hills were not joined by chimneys, bodies, the wrong sort of cloud or stonework; Long Wave, unstoppable by anything except distance, it seemed,carrying cricket and the shipping forecast across Europe and far out to sea; Medium Wave(AM), the carrier of choice for hosts of daytime local music stations and great for listening in the car, but hopeless when night fell and the waves went bouncing around the ionosphere bringing martial music from Albania where the football commentary should have been; and Short Wave — the touchiest of the wave bands, that made catching the words as hard as catching fish, but finally gave national broadcasters a global reach.