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NASB Elects New
Vice-President
Shortwave
Listener Survey Announced
2011 NASB Annual
Meeting will be in Miami and the Bahamas
Glen Tapley of NASB member station WEWN
in Birmingham, Alabama
was elected the new vice president of the National Association of Shortwave
Broadcasters at the 2010 NASB annual meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 21. Shortwave station WEWN is part of the EWTN
television network.
Jeff White of member station WRMI in Miami, Florida
was re-elected as NASB president. Dan
Elyea of member station WYFR in Okeechobee,
Florida was re-elected
secretary-treasurer, and Thais White of WRMI was re-elected assistant
secretary-treasurer. Glen Tapley of
WEWN and Adrian Peterson of Adventist World Radio were elected to new
three-year terms on the NASB board of directors. The other current board members are Bill
Damick of Trans World Radio, Brady Murray of WWCR and Jeff White of
WRMI. Board member and former vice
president Mike Adams of the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) resigned his
position due to increasing demands on his time due to his involvement in
humanitarian relief work and disaster response projects. The board appointed David Creel of FEBC to
fill Mike's NASB board position for the remaining one year of his term.
The sponsor and host of the 2010 NASB
annual meeting and the concurrent DRM USA
annual meeting was Galcom International, which is based on Hamilton, Ontario. Galcom has been an associate member of NASB
for a number of years. Galcom founder
Allan McGuirl, his son Al Jr. and new Executive Director Tim Whitehead
participated in the entire two days of meetings, which were largely organized
by Galcom's Jennifer Smith. Other
Galcom personnel, including David Casement, also took part.
On May 20, the two days of meetings began
with a group tour of Crossroads Communications in Burlington, Ontario,
a Christian television network. The
group participated in a live syndicated television show called “100 Huntley Street,”
which airs throughout Canada
and the United States
on a number of stations, networks and cable and satellite channels. The program included a segment about Galcom
International.
The next stop was a tour of Galcom's
factory in Hamilton
where volunteers assemble hundreds of thousands of small fix-tuned,
solar-powered radio receivers set to a variety of AM, FM and shortwave
frequencies of stations that broadcast Christian programming in various parts
of the world. Each participant was
able to program and assemble his or her own radio to the frequency(ies) of
his choice, after which they were able to enjoy a barbecue lunch at the
Galcom factory.
On the afternoon of May 20, the group assembled
at Mohawk College
in Hamilton for a three-hour DRM USA meeting moderated by Charlie Jacobson of
HCJB's Global Technology
Center in Elkhart, Indiana,
which hosted the annual meetings three years ago. Charlie presented a PowerPoint from Adil
Mina of Continental Electronics about the recent DRM Consortium meeting in Amsterdam in March and
the current status of DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) worldwide. There was a brief update on the Digital
Aurora Radio Technologies (DART) DRM project in Alaska, and John Wineman of HCJB talked
about the DRM Diversity Receiver project for tropical band STL use. Charlie Jacobson reviewed some of the DRM
receivers that are currently available and in development, and there was a
discussion of future activities of the DRM USA group.
Following the DRM USA meeting, the group
went on the road again in the late afternoon and evening for a dinner at the
Old Stone Inn in Niagara Falls,
Ontario, which was founded as a
flour mill in 1904. Dinner featured
such items as Angus prime rib, eggplant parmesan, New York style cheesecake and apple
blossom. But the big event of the
evening was an opportunity to view world-famous Niagara
Falls, which consists of the American Falls and the
horseshoe-shaped Canadian Falls which mark the border between the United States and Canada.
Friday, May 21 was the official NASB
annual meeting, which took place back at Mohawk
College in Hamilton.
Meeting attendance was only about 40 percent of the usual annual
attendance of 50-60 persons due to the economic crisis that is affecting
member stations and associate member companies and organizations. Many regular attendees reported that their
travel, advertising and promotion budgets had been cut due to the crisis, but
most expected the situation to begin improving in the coming months and
indicated that they plan to attend next year's NASB annual meeting.
The first talk on Friday morning was by
Steve Canney of the Ontario DX Association.
Steve was one of the founders of the ODXA in 1974, and he has been very
active in the ODXA's publications and meetings over the years, including some
ANARC (Association of North American Radio Clubs) conventions which it
sponsored and some local DX camps in Ontario. The club still exists today, but it has no
printed publication, preferring to concentrate material on its website,
www.odxa.on.ca, which is freely accessible to all.
Unfortunately, neither the CBC nor Radio
Canada International nor the CBC North shortwave service attended NASB's
first annual meeting in Canada. But Toronto's
shortwave station CFRX was represented.
Steve Canney, on behalf of the ODXA, has been acting as the station's
QSL verifier for many years now. The
one-kilowatt shortwave transmitter on 6070 kHz relays commercial mediumwave
station CFRB 24 hours per day.
Glen Tapley of WEWN offered meeting
participants a PowerPoint of his station, which was founded by the
charismatic Mother Angelica. WEWN has
become a multi-transmitter 500-kilowatt (currently operating at 250 kilowatts)
powerhouse station transmitting Catholic radio programming to shortwave
audiences throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa
and other parts of the world. The
station relies on Sirius, XM Radio and Internet webcasting to reach North America.
Glenn's presentation included photos of the transmitters, antennas and
other technical installations, as well as shots of the beautiful mountain-top
location of the transmitter site in Alabama.
The 2010 annual meeting took place as
long-time attendee John White of Thomson Broadcast and Multimedia was set to
retire. The NASB presented him with a
plaque in honor of his many contributions to the NASB over the years. Thomson builds shortwave transmitters and
other radio and television broadcast equipment at its plant in Switzerland. Thanks to John White's efforts, Thomson and
the NASB will be co-sponsoring the HFCC/ASBU B10 shortwave frequency
coordination conference in Zurich,
Switzerland
this August 2-6.
The next speaker was Dr, Jerry Plummer of
NASB member station WWCR in Nashville,
Tennessee. Jerry presented a very timely slideshow of
images of the recent floods in Nashville
and how they affected WWCR. The
station's antenna farm, which was one stop on a tour during last year's NASB
annual meeting, was up to 18 feet under water. The power was out and the station's four
100-kilowatt shortwave transmitters, as well as its mediumwave transmitter,
were off the air for at least three days.
Jerry showed pictures of WWCR staff members surveying the flood damage
in boats in the middle of their antenna field.
Jerry also unveiled the new NASB
Shortwave Listener Survey, which is now online. The purpose of the survey is to gather
demographic and other information about shortwave listeners in North America and around the world. Questions deal with listener preferences
regarding shortwave stations, programming, receivers, DRM and much more. The NASB is requesting and encouraging all
shortwave publications and websites to place a link to the survey, which will
be online until May of 2011. The survey
results will be announced to the public at the 2011 NASB annual meeting. The URL for links to the survey is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6LRVLJ7
Dr. Adrian Peterson, international
relations coordinator of Adventist World Radio, rounded up the Friday morning
session with a presentation entitled “Canadian Radio Panorama,” featuring
photos of QSL and other radio cards of Canadian stations – especially
shortwave – since 1901. Adrian, who
produces the weekly DX program “Wavescan,” has an extensive collection of
cards from Canadian governmental, commercial and religious stations, as well
as amateur and experimental stations over the years. A review of his Canadian collection is
indeed a trip through Canadian radio history from the beginning through
present-day.
After lunch was the NASB annual business
meeting. Member stations in attendance
with personal representatives or proxies were Adventist World Radio, Far East
Broadcasting Company, Radio Miami International, Trans World Radio, World
Christian Broadcasting, WEWN, WWCR and WYFR.
Associate members Galcom International, HCJB, Thomson Broadcast and
Multimedia, and VT Communications were also present.
Among the decisions made at the business
meeting was the location of next year's annual meeting. It will be organized by Radio Miami
International and will take place May 13-16, 2011 onboard the Royal Caribbean
Majesty of the Seas cruise ship which sails from Miami
to Nassau and CocoCay in the Bahamas. Delegates concluded that it would be less
expensive to hold the meeting on the ship than at a hotel in Miami.
The cost for the three-night cruise will be $299.00 plus $66.41 in
taxes, per person in a double occupancy inside cabin. This price includes all meals,
accommodation, transportation and entertainment. The ship has a dedicated conference center
where the NASB and DRM USA
meetings will be held, and Royal Caribbean will provide the meeting rooms and
audiovisual equipment free of charge.
More details are available by e-mail from info@wrmi.net, and they will soon appear on
the NASB website, www.shortwave.org.
The NASB membership also approved the
sponsorship by NASB of the wireless Internet system in the meeting rooms at
the HFCC/ASBU B10 Conference in Zurich,
Switzerland
in August. Other topics of discussion
were possible improvements to the NASB website and publicity for the new NASB
shortwave listener survey.
NASB Members
Adventist World Radio
Assemblies of
Yahweh
EWTN Shortwave
Radio (WEWN)
Family Stations
Inc.
Far East
Broadcasting Co.
Fundamental
Broadcasting Network
La Voz de
Restauracion Broadcasting, Inc.
Le Sea Broadcasting
Corp.
Radio Miami International
Trans World Radio
World Christian
Broadcasting
World Wide
Christian Radio
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