Did you know that it is possible for you to reach the entire world with your message? Are you aware that you can reliably communicate to the entire world from a single radio station that is equipped with multiple antennas that target the entire globe and multiple transmitters? If you live in the United States, this is a secret that has been held by interest groups for nearly fifty years. This secret is broadcasting on international world-band shortwave radio.
Why has this secret been so jealously guarded by special interest groups, notably AM stations, their advertising agencies, and their broadcasting organizations? The reason is simple: world-band shortwave radio allows your broadcast from one station, with the correct antennas and multiple transmitters, to the reach the entire globe reliably. AM radio cannot hope to compete with performance like that; as a result, AM radio stations do their best to use their collective might to behind the scenes, prevent the American people from knowing about international shortwave radio. Advertising agencies realize that there is little profit for them in shortwave broadcasting. On AM radio, when an advertising agency sells a broadcast time package for 20-40 stations to cover a single state, they may make tens of thousands of dollars in commissions. However, selling a broadcast time package that covers the entire world on a shortwave station with multiple antennas and multiple transmitters may only generate a few dollars in commissions. As a result, there is no incentive at all for advertising agencies to tell their clients about shortwave radio. This situation has been the norm in America since after World War II.
The bottom line is that AM broadcasting cannot compete with a multi-transmitter multi-antenna shortwave broadcast station in audience numbers and coverage. As a result, to protect their interests, supporters of AM broadcasting try to keep international world-band shortwave radio the best kept secret of evangelism. Unfortunately for them, the secret is rapidly becoming more and more well known in America as more and more pastors and evangelists find out about shortwave radio. Read on to discover the history of shortwave broadcasting in America and the world, and the current trends that are causing Americans to become aware of and listen to international shortwave radio in record numbers.
From the 1920s to the mid 1950s, international world-wide shortwave radio was widely used all over the world, even in the United States. In America, radios were commonly sold featuring, as standard features, the ordinary AM broadcast band for picking up nearby stations and the international broadcast shortwave band for reception of stations all over the world. During that time period, shortwave was the average person's link to news sources all over the world such as the BBC in London, the Voice of America, and the propaganda of Axis Countries, such as Germany and Japan, allowing the average citizen to weigh and separate truth from fiction to stay informed to international events. Here in America, after World War II, there was a flood of former servicemen who were well-trained radio operators, electronics technicians, and engineers returning to their homes, and they were given by the Federal Communications Commission easily obtainable AM radio station licenses. Unlike many other nations involved in the war, America was not economically devastated by the war, and the infrastructure and cities were intact. Thusly, AM radio stations soon began appearing all over America, in cities large and small, owned and operated by former servicemen. The owners of these stations soon bonded together into large broadcasting trade organizations, seeking to protect their business interests by completely capturing the entire populace of the United States as a captive audience that would only listen to their advertising and messages. They began applying pressure on radio manufacturers in America to cease the inclusion of the international shortwave broadcasting bands in their radios, and after a time, they were successful. To this very day, those broadcasting organizations here in America continue to fight shortwave radio, hoping to someday render it completely extinct.
Surprisingly, the United States is alone in the world in its anti-shortwave radio policy. While the United States escaped unscathed from the horrors of World War II, this was not the case for much of the rest of the world. All over Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Pacific islands, and Southeast Asia, cities were left as ruined shells, bombed beyond recognition, and the needed infrastructure to deliver electricity was all but destroyed. To communicate with their people, the governments of these nations required a means of communication that was economic, so as not to place a burden on their war-depleted treasuries, and shortwave radio, with its unique ability to cover, with multiple antennas, the entire world from one station, was the answer. While the economically powerful United States was building AM stations, with their limited coverage, other nations that could not afford multiple AM stations used their funds to build shortwave stations. To be certain that the people of their nations would be able to hear their government's messages, the cost of shortwave radios was subsidized, resulting in shortwave being easily available and soon massively popular. To this day, shortwave remains a very large part of life in Europe, the nations of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa, Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, all of the Americas (except the United States) and Southeast Asia, to the extent of it being very difficult to find any radio in these countries that does not include the ability to receive international shortwave. Within the last ten years, to this very day, relief organizations such as various Christian charities and the United Nations have regularly freely distributed solar powered or hand crank powered shortwave radios to the poor people of the world, so that they may receive international news.
Today, the former servicemen owners of the AM radio stations in America are at retirement age. Many of them are selling, or have already sold, their radio stations to giant corporate conglomerates that are rapidly obtaining a monopoly on AM and FM broadcasting. The first thing these conglomerates do, when acquiring a new station, is to eliminate all Christian programming, for it is not considered politically correct, and replace it with programming that does not risk boycott by interest groups claiming that the programming offends them. Since the goal of these conglomerates is to make money, they will not even consider or risk taking any sort of risks or stand, for fear that to be politically incorrect would generate a boycott against their sponsors and advertisers. As a result, AM and FM radio is becoming increasingly unavailable to ministries, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes impossible for Christian ministries to buy time on an AM or FM station. If one believes their local station immune to this, due to the station servicing a small community, this is a commonly held false belief: the conglomerates often will buy these stations for the purpose of turning them off, allowing them to file a request with the Federal Communications Commission to increase the power of their other broadcast stations to fill in the gaps in coverage of stations located in large metropolitan areas.
The latest trend in broadcasting in the United States is webcasting over the internet. However, internet webcasting is a very immature technology, possesses a small and fickle listener base, and rarely generates any results. As an immature technology, its future is very uncertain, as the legal issues involved with webcasting have not yet been hammered out. For example, playing copy written music over webcasting is currently considered illegal, though only a few months ago, it was considered legal. Another example is the fact that webcasting clogs up computer networks, causing some internet providers to restrict it to prevent their networks from going down; the legality of this has not yet been decided in court. Webcasting also possesses listeners who are generally few in number. This is partly due to the inability of computer networks to handle many listeners without congestion; however, the truth of the internet is that while it is often touted as a 'world wide web,' this is a commonly perpetrated fallacy. In reality, most countries of the world restrict access to the internet, charge a fee per minute for the privilege of connecting, censor the content viewed, and, in some nations, prevent any access to the internet at all. Webcasting is impractical for anyone to listen to in most nations, being far too restricted, far too expensive, and often simply unavailable. People who do listen to webcasting rarely remain listeners of a webcasting station for any period of time before drifting away, tempted to another web site or station by an easily done internet search or a pop up ad. Finally, there is the problem of listeners finding webcasting stations. The popular search engine Google, for example, catalogs well over three billion web pages, and a search for 'webcast' gives millions of results. With that many options, all webcasters are rendered needles in a very large haystack, making a successful webcasting ministry all but impossible with so much competition.
Recently, it has come to our attention that the internet as a whole may soon become a field unsuitable for spreading the Gospel in any form. More and more it is seen on the news how the United Nations is trying to seize control of the internet. Countries that are members of the United Nations are obliged to acknowledge the United Nations as a superior authority. As a result, if the United Nations gains control of the internet, one could very easily find him or herself without the freedoms guaranteed in the United States, facing U.N. World Court in the Hague for 'hate crimes,' should someone or some interest group take offense to someone's webcasts or web page. International world-band shortwave broadcasting, however, is firmly protected in the United States under freedom of speech in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and is protected from such restriction. The idea of being brought up by the United Nations to World Court for hate crimes may seem a bit of a stretch, but then again, who would ever have thought Canada would officially proclaim the Holy Bible as 'hate literature?'
In the not-too-distant past, a very popular means of broadcasting the Gospel did not involve radio at all, but relied on the distribution of printed tracts. Even at its height, tract ministries were recognized as being largely ineffective in America, as tracts are far too easily ignored by people. They are mass produced literature, often lacking the personal element of a caring human that is essential in spreading the Gospel to people. Tract ministries also are ineffective, even deadly, in many foreign nations. China regularly jails, or even executes, those who attempt to spread tracts. Canada (try doing a Google search for "hate literature Canada tracts bibles" or "hate literature Canada") now officially considers most tracts and bibles "hate literature," and, like many countries of the world (China included,) has been known to seize and destroy such materials, either fearing the possibility of the tracts and bibles offending special interest groups or literature that goes against the official policy of a government that has officially declared their country atheist. Today, this is a rapidly dying form of ministry, as the costs of postage, printing, and distribution of tracts increase exponentially on an almost weekly basis.
International shortwave radio is the answer to the disturbing current trends in broadcasting. Many citizens of the United States, fed up with the watered-down, thoroughly politically correct, and heavily censored messages of AM and FM radio, television, and satellite, have rediscovered unrestricted, completely free for listening international shortwave and are buying shortwave radios and spreading the secret of shortwave to their family and friends in vast numbers. The secret of shortwave, the best kept secret in evangelism, kept for fifty years in America, is spreading like wildfire. In the last six years, international shortwave radio has been undergoing a massive rebirth in the United States as people recognize it as their best source of information from all over the globe as we live in the trying times of these last days of the world. Shortwave radio cannot be taxed, cannot be charged, and cannot be made available on an exclusively subscriber basis; the one time cost of an inexpensive shortwave radio is the only cost of listening to shortwave radio. People everywhere are realizing that international, world-band shortwave radio cannot be silenced or controlled, as its signals transcend national boundaries, reaching all the world with its messages. It is ideal for the spreading of the Gospel, with a listenerbase of over six billion people all over the world, and from a single shortwave station with multiple transmitters and antennas, the Word of the Lord reliably can be spread to the entire globe. Shortwave radio is the best way of fulfilling the great commission of the Lord, "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15)
You are now aware of the best kept secret of evangelism. This candle of truth, in America long hidden under a bushel, is now placed on a candlestick, where it illuminates America with the truth of the secret of world-band international shortwave radio. Shortwave radio is rapidly returning to America as people seek a source of news and information that is unfettered by the forces of political correctness and government policy. With international shortwave radio rapidly becoming popular in the United States, now is the best time to begin broadcasting, catching the wave of new listeners on international world-band shortwave.
Shortwave radios are available through retail outlets all throughout the United States. It is important, when buying a radio, to purchase one with Single Side Band receiving capability: this allows reception of Ham radio operators and military radio. In these trying times of terrorism and war, it is essential that you are able, in case of some serious emergency, to monitor the emergency Ham / military communications networks that can only be received on Single Side Band. If you need technical assistance with your radio, feel free to speak with one of our engineers after 8 PM eastern time at (931) 728-6087.