No matter what subject you’re interested in, you can probably find a program about it on the radio. But a radio program on the radio that actually talks about radio?
For 38 years, “International Radio Report” has done just that. Co-hosted and co-produced by enthusiasts Sheldon Harvey and Gilles Letourneau, the report is a weekly 30-minute program heard Sunday mornings at 10:30 Eastern (1430 UTC during Daylight Saving Time) on CKUT(FM) 90.3 MHz in Montreal, and livestreamed to the world on CKUT’s website. The most recent three months’ worth of programs are available on the station’s Archives page.
Each broadcast is also posted to the International Radio Report’s YouTube channel shortly after airing.
What’s on
The report is about radio of all sorts, whether it’s shortwave, mediumwave/AM, FM, utilities, ham radio or the radio business itself, locally, nationally or internationally, according to Sheldon Harvey.
“The program started in November of 1987. As the radio station connected to McGill University, CKUT in Montreal received its broadcasting license at that time, and they were looking for programming. I wrote a proposal to them to put a show on the air talking about radio. It was accepted and the program has been there ever since.”
It is the willingness to talk about all kinds of radio that makes the report stand out.
Also, “We don’t just focus on the radio events that people are interested in, but also news items such as how radio journalists are in danger because of government oppression,” Gilles Letourneau said. “So it’s really a show that covers every single aspect of radio, including the radio industry itself.”
He said a recent show included a story about radio in Burkina Faso and government efforts to shut down stations that don’t adhere to its views.
“We just also covered the story of the death of the famous BBC DJ Johnnie Walker. We had news of the Voice of Turkey discontinuing its shortwave broadcasting service and switching over to Turkey’s TRT World television service being broadcast in its place.
“We also cover local stories and changes to radio station formats. We look at ratings of stations in Montreal and elsewhere across Canada. And there’s been a lot of talk recently of digital conversion. We have a story coming up about FM being turned off in Switzerland and DAB digital radio replacing it. It’s a pretty wide spectrum.”
Over the decades
The nature of the content has evolved.
“When we started the show, the focus was very heavily focused on Montreal radio,” Harvey said.
“There was a lot going on in Montreal back in 1987 radio-wise, and quite a bit in Canada. But we wanted to introduce people to shortwave radio listening. Many people here probably knew nothing about it, so we used the opportunity of having a show to introduce people to it. And then as the show went along, we started to use the benefits of social media and opened up a Facebook group. We’re somewhere up around a thousand members.”
One big change occurred due to COVID-19.
“We went from a live broadcast in the CKUT studio to a prerecorded broadcast mixed from our home studios, allowing us to do a lot more with the program that way,” said Harvey.
“That also got us to open up a YouTube channel where we can archive our programs and allow listeners around the world to listen to the program anytime they like at their own convenience. That’s become very popular.”
Letourneau also has a YouTube channel dedicated to shortwave radio listening, called the Official SWL Channel, with 50,000 listeners.
“This has brought a lot of people from around the world to tune in and listen every week to the different stories that we have. Most of our audience are probably radio geeks who love radio in every way, and are interested in learning more about what is happening with the broadcast media around the world.”
Sources
The hosts rely on numerous resources.
“We keep an eye on the stories that Radio World covers, and we do incorporate a lot of those into the show,” Harvey said.
“We also pick up contributions from our listeners. If they happen to hear of interesting stories in their city or in their town, or even in their country, they will pass stories along to us. We research other websites such as Inside Radio, Radio Ink, Radioinfo Africa and Radioinfo Asia, and a number of business-related websites that deal with communications and radio.” The organization Reporters Without Borders supplies information about the work of broadcast reporters in various parts of the world.
“We go through the week watching for stories and incorporate them into our program, which we record on Fridays. And then Gilles does the editing and prepares it for uploading to CKUT’s computer.”
Said Letournea, “I always give it time until Saturday night before uploading. If there’s a last-minute important story, we can get together and quickly add it to the show.”
Enduring love
If Harvey and Letourneau have learned anything over those 38 years, it is that the love of radio remains strong among its diehard fans, despite the advent of streamed audio and the decline of shortwave radio due to government funding cuts.
In fact, streaming has opened all kinds of new ways to listen to radio — for instance, it makes listening to the BBC World Service in one’s car in North America via the TuneIn app easy and convenient to do.
At the same time, disasters like the recent wildfires in Los Angeles prove the continuing value of the oldest radio technologies. When FM transmitter sites were in danger of being burned off the air, AM sites survived to keep the radio signals going.
“A program like ours is important for telling people [about] all the radio listening options they have available to them today,” said Harvey. “And at the end of the day, you can still turn on a radio and pick up all these different types of signals.”
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