It's Not Really Radio, But It's Fun

Radio is a great medium, but there are really a number of media that grow out of radio.

One of those is television. As you likely already know, television transmissions are generally sent "over-the-air" (or were before cable and satellite), in the form of radio waves.

Radio, of course, is traditionally transmitted in the same manner. That's true whether it's local broadcast radio or shortwave radio or citizens' band or ham radio. It's all radio.

Because I'm a fan of shortwave radio and the Internet, I've been spending some time recently, checking out radio "streams" and podcasts of foreign radio stations. On one of my "trips" I went to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which operates in a way similar to the BBC or CBC. At the ABC site, there are also a number of TV programs which they've previously broadcast in Australia, which are available for downloading and viewing.

One of the reasons I find that enormously convenient, is that I can pause the broadcast or -- even though they're videos -- I can play the audio in background (someone once described TV as "radio with pictures" and I'm skipping the pictures during those moments), while I'm working but not on the phone. If I miss something, I can rewind a bit, within Windows Media Player.

Three of the programs on the ABC site http://www.abc.net/au that I really enjoyed were The Einstein Factor, First Tuesday Book Club, and The New Inventors.

On Einstein, three contestants try to answer questions from the host, but each contestant answers questions on his/her own area of expertise. So they get most of the answers right, but not all of them. There's much more to the show, but that's the basic element, and it's a lot of fun.

First Tuesday has a bright group of people talking about books they recommend and advise against, and a group of kids who talk about children's books. It's also a fun show. The books of course, are from around the world, rather than just Australia. It's heavily weighted towards fiction, but there are also some non-fiction books discussed. In this age, with Amazon able to get you just about anything, it doesn't really matter where a book's published.

The New Inventors is a vast improvement over the show that was on a couple of years ago in the U.S., called American Inventors. On this show, the inventions are much more practical and useful. In the episode I saw, there was a product to make it cheaper to ship bananas and to get them to the store with less bruising and an inexpensive hoist to get heavy items up to a roof. It was much more interesting and enjoyable than it sounds. Like the U.S. show, it has a group of judges who choose each week's winner.

Of course, if English is your primary or only language, there are lots of radio and TV programs on the sites of foreign broadcasters, many of which are really enjoyable. Or you can sit in front of the tube at home and watch American Idol. Your choice.

Thanks for "tuning in."