Part One of one of the most popular documentaries broadcast in the Radio Netherlands Media Network programme 1993, looking at UK black propaganda.

This programme features an interview with the late Harold Robin, the Foreign & Commonwealth broadcast engineer who put a number of "fake" resistance stations on the air from a transmitter site not far from Bletchley Park. I was glad to see that they haven't forgotten the role of these broadcasts - it's mentioned in the exhibition at Bletchley.

The second part of this 30 minute documentary can be found is here  (see March 22nd 2010). The second part deals more with the Aspidistra transmitter built very near Crowborough, Sussex and still used by Sussex Police as a training ground. Little known fact is that it was also used a location in 1981 for an episode of BBC's Dr Who.

The only remaining parts of the Aspi 1 transmitter are hanging in the entrance hall of the Babcock transmitter site at Ordfordness. That site was used until March 27th 2011 for transmission of BBC programmes on 648 kHz towards Western Europe. 

 

This edition of Media Network included a fictious horse race between several international broadcasters as well as a profile of Mozambiquan radio compiled by Eric Beauchemin. I am pleased to note that there is a website recalling the early days of Radio Clube de Mocambique and Lourenco Marques (LM) radio, thought to be the first commercial radio station in Africa. I note on the list of DJs at LM Radio, the name of Fritz Greveling, one of the presenters of Media Network's predecessor. Fritz Greyling (as he called himself in English) was born on 10 October 1947 in Hengelo in the Netherlands, but grew up in Kroonstad in the Free State. He was fluent in English, Afrikaans and Dutch and joined LM where he was known as 'your tall groover' from 1969 until the station closed in 1975. Later he joined Dions stores in Johannesburg where he worked with Paul Nel in the record division. He then decided to return to Holland where he worked for a long time as a presenter with Radio Nederland Wereldomroep English Service in Hilversum. He came back to South Africa in the early 1980s and joined Radio RSA (then, the SABC's international service) as a journalist and presenter with the Dutch Service. He died in Johannesburg in 1994

This programme was the last in a series of five, broadcast in the summer of 1982. The episode examined the curious media situation between the Dutch and Republican forces looked at the time of Indonesian independence in 1949 as well as clandestine broadcasts during the Angolan civil war.

An Episode of Media Network devoted to the history of Propaganda and broadcast during the summer of 1982. This episode includes an interview with the late Gerard Mansell (former BBC External Services DG) who authored a book called Let Truth Be Told. In this programme he explains a period when the British government used clandestine broadcasting in the Suez Crisis. This was from a transmitter near Limassol in Cyprus. We also look at Eastern European clandestine stations including a white Russian broadcaster than broadcast from Munich and a clandestine voice from Romania.

Early Media Network reviewing the clandestine radio stations operating in Central America, targeting Nicaragua.

This Media Network was broadcast on 6th May 1982. It focussed on the Falklands "conflict", as the BBC called it. Remember it is just over a month after the young Argentine forces landed. British Forces Broadcasting Service got airtime from one of the BBC Ascension Island transmitters to broadcast a request show to the Falklands Fleet. The photo in the insert was taken in the city of La Plata, Argentina just south of Buenos Aires. There was a memorial there to the Malvinas dead from the Argentine side. There is also a national memorial in the centre of Buenos Aires, opposite the now derelict "English Tower".