Short Wave Radio and CB Radio Podcast Transcript

Before the earliest online social networks, there were earlier "online" social networks. We'll discuss short wave and CB, explain why we think these were early signs that we wanted to connect in new ways, and think about what these early networks had in common with what came next.

Taryn Ward  Hi, I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  And I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And this is Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.

Steven Jones  We're taking a closer look at the core issues around social media, including the existing social media landscape. To better understand the role social media plays in our everyday lives and its impact on society. This time, we're taking a look back before the rise of social media, the internet, or even personal computing into the deep mists of the dawn of time, and how primitive humans from the 20th century, used shortwave ham radios and citizen band radios to reach out and communicate with one another.

Taryn Ward  This segment arose because even though we're very focused on social media, and where we're going during prep for one of our other podcasts, we touched on the fact that decades before there were personal computers, there was a very active amateur radio community that talked to other operators they would never meet, or even see. And that struck a chord with both of us. And it seemed linked to our need for social media and a connection more broadly. Again, we'll start with a question, what was amateur radio all about? And why were people willing to spend hundreds of pounds and hours of their time? But Steve, since we're talking about things from the dim and distant past, and I am far too young to remember any of that? What was your involvement with amateur radio?

Steven Jones  Thanks for that Taryn. The first amateur was licenced in the UK was issued in 1913. So that was before even my time. In fact, my grandparents were six and five years old at the time, but the BBC World Service broadcast on shortwave from 1932, and I believe it is using shortwave radio gain in the broadcast to the Ukraine and Russia because these other ways of broadcasting blocked. But back in the 1980s, I was in the Air Training Corps now the Royal Air Force cadets, and we did use both VHF and shortwave radios. And I had to say, despite what people might think it was quite a lot of fun. There are apparently still around 75,000 Amateur Radio enthusiasts in the UK. And whilst I was preparing for this episode, I found out that during the pandemic, there was a resurgence in amateur radio use. 

Even in the early 80s. And even in a relatively nerdy youth organisation like the Air Training Corps radio operating was seen as nerdy, put, you know, me, and you know that I am a proud nerd, we would use VHF radios to communicate between Air Training Corps squadrons, and even with senior officers who would use their cars to visit multiple locations and leading you would have a radio unit just in their car. The first mobile telephone call UK was apparently made on the 1st of January 1985. So and these radios were not small for context, band aids, "Do they know it's Christmas?" was number one, and, and so that sort of dates when the first mobile call was made. And it was years before mobile phones became widely available. So being able to communicate using these radios between different places during the evening, and even to people actually on the move was, was really cool.

Taryn Ward  That's really interesting. So, you know, we were talking about these radios, and then we're talking about cell phones. Can you tell us a little bit about how cell phones replace this? And how maybe they didn't? Because this wasn't just about communicating with one specific person, right? I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but you could sort of communicate with anyone who is on the same station.

Steven Jones  Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So I mean, this is before, we talked about CB radio, which was pretty free, free-flowing and how you did it. But to use these radios that operated on essentially a military band, you had to use a certain amount of strict protocol. And you could definitely talk to everybody wants, it was, in some ways, a bit like a chat, chatroom. And then you could, you know, direct radio traffic to a specific individual, either using their callsign or sort of like switching to a specific channel that they might be on. Again, this is before the days where you could use a computer do anything other than play computer games at home, really. So it took to be able to talk to people in real-time was a surprising amount of fun. And I think that mobile mobile phones, as you rightly point out, you use to speak to one person. So it's a little bit less flexible in that you could if you had something important to say you could broadcast it to the entire network, and everybody would hear it. But of course, you just pick up the phone and have a conversation the same way that we're doing now across the Atlantic using this podcasting system. So yeah, it was just it was just very different. These radios wouldn't. Somehow it was sort of, for me and my fellow Air Cadets that enjoyed using them. It was somehow fun and special because it wasn't an everyday item that everybody had access to.

Steven Jones 
And shortwave radios were even more cool, because they had a much greater range. So our VHF radios operated, essentially, you know, to the horizon, and that was about it, but the shortwave radios actually have a significantly greater range. Now, it's important to note that there isn't really an official definition of shortwave radio per se, but it's the range, which includes all of the high frequency band, which extends from three to 30 megahertz. Sorry, for those of you who are not quite as nerdy as me, that's the equivalent of a radio wave that spans 100 to 10 metres and is above the medium frequency band. And then that goes all the way to the bottom of the VHF band. Any questions? Taryn?
Taryn Ward  A few. So for those of us who are, if not less, nerdy, less technically inclined, can you give me some idea so I can picture the difference? So you said the VHF radio was really like from here to the horizon? How much further could short waves reach? Was it like one town to the next was it much, much further how, how, how far are we talking about?

Steven Jones  Right, so this is the really interesting, and frankly, a little bit nerdy bit, but radio waves in the shortwave band actually can get reflected back from the layer of electrically charged atoms in the atmosphere called the ionosphere. And therefore, if you direct the radio waves at an angle to the sky, they can be reflected back to Earth well beyond the horizon. And this is called Skywave or skip propagation, skip this massive amount of space. And so shortwave radios could be used for communication over incredibly long distances, hundreds, if not 1000s of miles, and people did talk to people on the other side of the, of the world. And, you know, shortwave radio operators will also pass messages along if they couldn't get a signal all the way to where they wanted them to go.

Taryn Ward  That I understand the appeal of it seems like there, there are a lot more different things you could do with the shortwave radio than you could with previous iterations. Is that fair?

Steven Jones  Yeah, broadcasting literally to the world, you know, and since it started with the day, and I say 1932, those were the days of Empire. So, you know, British citizens in Empire outposts, would get it, but really, it provided service to everybody. And there are still a lot of people across the world who who listen to this, as I, as I mentioned at the beginning, shortwave radio is being used now to to broadcast accurate news to Russia and the Ukraine, given the other ways of propagating the news have been blocked.

Taryn Ward  It's amazing talk about a technology that's found a way to endure. 

Steven Jones  Yeah,I mean, this really was really interesting technology that we were using in our Air Training squadron building these, these were shortwave radios that had been taken from decommissioned bombers that were in service during and just after the Second World War. So this wasn't new equipment. They had, you know, the old valves and things that also used to exist in the backs of CRT, cathode ray tube televisions. So if it went wrong, yeah, to replace these things. And that was also quite a lot of fun. But you know, it wasn't like we were using these to talk to Australia. But we could have done if we had really had a need to. But we did talk to people sort of like hundreds of miles away from where we from where we were, in a world where it wasn't possible to do that other than with the telephone, which my recollection is per call, it was a lot more expensive back in the 1980s than it is now. It was a it was something that most people didn't have any experience of. Everybody else was receiving information, either over the radio or the TV, but we were actually transmitting it, which was what I think what made it exciting.

Taryn Ward  And why do you think people weren't making regular calls to Australia? Or the US? Do you think it was just that nobody thought to do it? Or it was sort of a you know, people had better things to do? Or? Or was it? Did it have to do with maybe the quality of the broadcast?

Steven Jones  Yeah. So I mean, I think I think what I meant to say was that we, me personally, we weren't making those types of calls. But there were people, and in fact, there still are people in the UK who are using shortwave radio to talk to people on the other side of the world. You know, that was something which nobody could do. And I think that when I was a kid, you would see TV programmes and documentaries about this, they would arrange for these people to meet have to 15-20 years of constant communication, they would actually still be broken to bring these people together. And it was always very touching because they never these, they never expected to me because of the cost involved in flying and the difficulty of doing it back in the 19', in the 1980s. These friendships were real. In the same way. I guess that you know, pen pal friendships were real, I think which we talked about on another episode as well, you know, I never had a pen pal, because I wasn't very good at remembering to write letters, but I'm sure you were much better.

Taryn Ward  I would like to say yes, but probably not. Not much.

Steven Jones  Right. But you know, if I had the technology in front of me if I was actually using a piece of kit to do this, I was all over it. So it was just a different experience. So we took you know, I think this this topic came up and we were talking about the people who had to put all that work into the early Internet message boards, which were completely self supported, and required a lot of expensive equipment and time. So there was this fundamental need to communicate with one another and this was the probably the first high-tech relatively high-tech means of doing that before this, it probably was just writing letters to people.

Taryn Ward  A big step forward. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Steven Jones  And then the arrival of CB radios, citizen band radios were, was was sort of another burst of activity in in the UK, particularly. CB radios were very different, much cheaper and easier to buy and they became popular in the UK after the 1975 pop hit convoy by CW recall. And I would imagine that many people who are listening to this have not heard that song, in which case you have missed out on Convoy, and you should definitely try and listen to it. I'm sure it's on your favourite streaming service. 

Steven Jones  And that song was on the radio, literally all the time. I found out again, whilst preparing this, this podcast, the citizens band radio became popular in the US because of the energy crisis in the early 1970s. And it allowed truckers to tell one another where the were diesel or gas for their trucks was available, and also share information about you know, police traffic stops or whatever. And that was, essentially the, the plot of the movie that was made because of the song, not the other way around. Now, I think that you probably did have some experience with citizen band radios when you were a kid, right?

Taryn Ward  I did. Yes. I can't claim that that was before my time. I think two things made it I, I think a lot of people in the US had experiences with this. I think if you talk to somebody who's even a little bit older than me, certainly my parents' age, they would have a lot more stories about how this played, you know, a central role in their lives, maybe even to the extent that AOL Instant Messenger played in mine, maybe not quite that much. But very quickly, it fell off, which actually would be an interesting episode to explore separately. 

Taryn Ward  But I think, you know, the US has a culture of road trips, it is just something that we all grew up doing. And I think especially, especially people who grew up in the Midwest, you know, here I feel like if we drive here in the United Kingdom if we drive three hours, that's, that's a long drive. That's a that's a big drive, it's a big drive to do in one day. You know, growing up, we would drive from Wisconsin to Florida, which is something like 24 hours, not all the way straight through, but sometimes straight through. And it was that that wasn't unusual, we weren't the only ones doing it, it was long road trips, were just sort of a part of what we were doing. And so CB radios during a time when cell phones were not even a dream, were, were really important. And I you know, I can remember being in the car as a kid and not so much about, you know, where you could buy petrol or gas. 

But you know, if the road was flooded, or if there was a big storm, or if there was an accident, or if they were police cars, monitoring or giving tickets, you know, there are all kinds of abuses. And I do have some really funny, interesting memories of this. And I think it's always made me, you know, have warm feelings about truck drivers, in probably weird ways. But I think listening to, you know, have each other's backs on these radios and looking out for other cars, too. It was a really nice community. 

Taryn Ward  Now, I should say also, they made a horror movie about this. I think when I was a teenager, that was really, really disturbing. And I don't remember exactly how CB radios tighten. But you can imagine that while there's this very light side, and very helpful, and very, you know, solid community, there is another side to some of these things, too.

Steven Jones  Yeah, I mean, isn't that true? That everything including the internet, there is this fun side, it brings people together and forges communities. And then there is the dark side. I mean, it says I think a lot about human nature rather than technology.

Taryn Ward  That's true. I mean, I would say the difference is back then no one was profiting based on other people's bad behaviour. So nobody was motivated to encourage it or to look the other way, at least in the US. How about in the UK? Was this something that people were using in the UK during that same period?

Steven Jones  So it's really interesting and I, I was definitely around when social media burst into the UK as a collective consciousness. So in the beginning, it was illegal to have citizen band radio, I mean, in the same way that the government regulates how cellphone networks and what frequency bands they can operate on, it also regulates what radio frequencies can be used, and they had not freed up frequency bands for CB radio. So you could buy these things freely. You could buy them from catalogues. You could buy them from, you know, the equivalent of Radio Shack, but you weren't actually supposed to operate them. 

And of course everybody did. And I mean, once a certain number of people do it, it becomes almost impossible to enforce the law, like you just don't have enough people to go around, do it, you know. And there was a lot of public pressure, there were demonstrations and the government finally gave in to sort of like that public pressure and allowed Citizen Band radios to be used and the equipment was just significantly cheaper than the equipment you needed to do shortwave radio. And the aerials didn't have to be big, up cert shortwave radio towers that were metres and metres high in people's back gardens, these things were you know, the you could do it from the narrow, you could stick on the top of your car with a magnetic clamp. So really much, much simpler in scale. And, and I didn't use CB radio, but I do remember that a number of families on our streets. And this is the, these are the days when everybody listens to radio and TV over the air, right, there wasn't any streaming service. And unfortunately, some of the CB transmissions interrupted the.. or interfered with the the over the air TV signal, which was quite annoying for people's neighbours. And you know, it was this rabbit ear sort of aerial that you would have on top of the, the TV and mum would make you go and move them if the signal wasn't so good, and you couldn't see the picture. Maybe I'm just talking to myself now. And you don't remember that because it was so long ago. 

But interestingly, they also impacted remote-controlled vehicles, another relatively nerdy community. And I can say that because I had a remote control car. And if you had a car or a boat, it wasn't much of a problem. But if you had an aircraft, not only were the models themselves really expensive, you could actually hurt people if you lost control of them, and they crashed up the sky. And so that did that did happen. And there were there were some sort of like conflicts between these, these communities. Because of that, it was relatively relatively cheap. You know, it cost about £15 back in the day to get a CD licence, which is approximately £57 today, with a cost of living crisis. That's not chump change. But it's also not a ridiculous amount of money. 

Steven Jones  And, you know, whereas to use shortwave radio, you had to sort of follow protocols and so on and so forth. You didn't obviously with CB radio and people adopted a lot of the terminology that the US and the trucker community had developed to talk on on CB. So as as we've sort of like been a common theme through these podcasts, people love to reach out and have conversation. And I do remember, one sort of like conversation between my mother and her friends who sort of like got spoke, sort of conspiratorially and sort of like in that way, where you're not supposed to pay attention to them. But as soon as they do that your parents do that you automatically listen to because you know, something good is being discussed. I mean, like telegraph, the fact that you're having a conversation, you know, they were talking about how one of the one of the one of the neighbours was using the CB radio, to, to meet men. 

This was, of course, scandalous, but also demonstrates just like the internet, that meeting people and getting together is is just fundamental to human nature. We're just social animals. And we'll use any kind of technology we can to do it. You know, whether it's the language of the fans, or you know, a mobile phone, and social media, we're going to reach out and connect with other people. It's just a fundamental human drive. Given the people using CB radios to meet members of the opposite sex, we shouldn't be surprised that as soon as the internet was capable of it, we started to see the rise of dating apps on, on social media.

Taryn Ward  Absolutely. And before dating apps, there were chat rooms, which, you know, lots of lots of fun stories about that coming up. In fact, in our next series, we'll start to look at some of the earliest social media networks, or at least attempts to socialise using the early Internet. 

In the meantime, we'll post a transcript of this episode with references on our website. You can find this is more information about us at TheBrightApp.com. And if you'd like to take a deeper dive into the history of social media, check out our other episodes along the same lines.

Steven Jones  Until next time, I'm Steven Jones.

Taryn Ward  And I'm Taryn Ward.

Steven Jones  Thank you for joining us for Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.