The Importance of Effective Listener Feedback
Guidelines for compiling USEFUL Reception Letters for QSLs
By Bob Padula, Mont Albert, Victoria, Australia
January 2004
| The Importance of Effective Listener Feedback Guidelines for compiling USEFUL Reception Letters for QSLs By Bob Padula, Mont Albert, Victoria, Australia January 2004 |
PREAMBLE
In recent years, interest
in securing QSLs from the external services of broadcasters has
trended downwards, and I expect this to continue. Interest in
seeking "QSLs" from domestic HF broadcasters has also
declined, mainly due to the increasing migration of such stations
to cost effective mediumwave or FM platforms for local or regional
coverage.
My comments which follow are mainly intended to apply to international
shortwave broadcasters...
TECHNICAL
LISTENERS
In the past, a great percentage
of QSL requests were from "technical listeners", who
had developed a continuing awareness and understanding of the
benefits which such two-way communication and feedback with broadcasters
would generate.
The newer generation of "shortwave monitor" tends not
to be involved with the preparation of reception reports, having
entered the hobby via subscribing to countless internet lists
and groups. Their interests and satisfaction arise come from seeing
their innumerable "loggings" in E-mail listings, often
instantaneously!
To many of these people, program content is of diminishing importance,
due to the unfortunate "loggings" culture which is now
dominating the global monitoring community.
SERVICE
EFFECTIVENESS
Assessment of service effectiveness
by many broadcasters is now a very ad-hoc affair, whether for
program content and message, or for technical issues, or for both.
What I am seeing is a marked trend towards outsourcing the frequency
management function from the organisation itself, with technical
coordination and transmitter usage being sub-contracted to commercial
"Frequency Management Organisations".
This inevitably introduces serious gaps within the overall business,
where there is limited coordination or linkages across the broadcaster
itself, and its outsourced technical operations arm.
In other words, there is no useful and simple process where listeners
can alert the broadcaster to inappropriate frequency usage or
scheduling, or for advising the relevant frequency management
organisation of such problems.
Program production personnel at many broadcasters often have minimal,
or no, interaction with the technical delivery people, and QSL
reports commenting on engineering issues are frequently ignored.
Requests for traditional QSLs are no longer viewed by many broadcasters
as useful, due to the high unfamiliar technical content which
they may contain, and the disappearance of a "technical department"
to which such correspondence could be referred.
Furthermore,
many international broadcasters have chosen to phase out formal
QSL responses, arguing that they have limited resources to devote
to preparing QSLs or (simpler, non-detailed) feedback acknowledgments.
Thus, many listeners,
technical or otherwise, have distanced themselves from some broadcasters,
due to the impossibility of securing any form of response, including
QSLs. Some broadcasters will no longer send out postal mailed
schedules, falsely assuming that all listeners have ready
access to the Internet!
LISTENER
FEEDBACK
Despite these trends, many
broadcasters are delighted to receive, assess, and respond to
QSL reports, to keep in touch with their "customers"
(ie, listeners). Broadcasters are "businesses", and
businesses require feedback from their customers! Without such
interaction, the business has no idea of where it is going, or
if it is going at all!
Many listeners receive fully detailed QSLs as responses to their
feedback letters, which take time and effort by the broadcasters
to prepare and mail. In many instances, the listener merely seeks
some form of simple reply, such as a "Many
thanks for your letter, etc" and neither requests, nor needs,
a full "QSL".
This is where the broadcasters, and many listeners, are getting
tangled up, in not being able to distinguish between a request
for a formal QSL or a simple acknowledgment. In may cases, the
programming people have little, or no knowledge of actual operating
frequencies, some of which are subject to continual churn by sub-contracted
frequency management organisations or consultants.
Regrettably, some DX Clubs these days seem to have little understanding
of these sorts of issues, with negligible effort being directed
into member skill development or guidance.
Thus, discussions on "QSLs" and "acknowledgments"
become meaningless, as the club "leaders" often tend
to be people having little familiarity with the vital "listener-station"
feedback process.
VERIFICATIONS
There is also a shift away
from the historical concept of the "QSL", which was
originally used to complete the two-way listener-station feedback
process, as it is today within the Amateur Radio Movement.
Somewhere along the way, the term "QSL" became misused,
with broadcasters being asked to check reports for authenticity
against "program logs", by "verifying" that
the report was correct in every detail, and to "confirm"
that it was their station which had been heard. Thus, the term
"verification" came into accepted usage, which in my
view was and is inappropriate.
This spawned a whole new generation of "Verification Hunters",
and competitions within the DX Clubs, as to who could gain the
most "veries" in various categories.
This detracted from the fundamental purpose of the "report"
as a feedback mechanism, with reports being generated by the thousands,
mostly containing little or no "verifiable" program
detail. This resulted in an incredible "QSL culture"
being maintained, with many reports containing no other details
except "man talking woman talking" All stations have
"man talking, woman talking"...! This barrage of garbage
forced many broadcaster to discontinue replying to such rubbish.
QSLS
IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
My definition of a "QSL",
in this millennium, is that it is a
response from a broadcaster,
acknowledging the report, and stating that the details submitted
by the listener were correct, and showing those details - date,
time, frequency, and transmitter site (if available).
I am advocating that the term "AKNOWLEDGMENT
QSL" be
used .
| There is no longer any real requirement for broadcasters to "check" imaginary "program logs" and to confirm with the listener that it was indeed "our station which you heard" (and not some other station!) If someone wants a QSL acknowledgment from, say, " Radio Hot Chocolate", then they know that they heard that station! If there is some doubt that they heard that particular station, then they should not be writing to it in the first place! Thus, the onus is now on the listener to manage the reporting process. The listener should not be asking the station to tell them that they heard the station! |
| The Guidelines which follow have been based on nearly 50 years of personal involvement by the author in reception reporting.
They have been formulated primarily for writing to international shortwave broadcasters. The same general principles apply when communicating with domestic shortwave stations, acknowledging that letters from listeners distant from the primary target area of domestic broadcasters are generally regarded as novelties from "radio operators", and are of little benefit to these stations! |
| I am pleased to send you this letter concerning my reception of your shortwave broadcasting station.
I would be delighted if you could acknowledge this listening report, stating the frequency, date, and time of my reception, to assist me in completion of my records. I hope that this listening report will be of interest to you and I thank you for your consideration of my request. I will look forward to your reply. |
| Addresses of the listener for receipt or reply - postal, FAX, E-mail, SMS, telephone, Internet | |
| Location of the listener - urban, suburban, rural, high-seas (or anywhere else) | |
| Brief personal details about the listener - age, vocation, education, other interests, family | |
| Date UTC, and local date at the receiving post | Time UTC, and local time at the receiving post |
| Frequency (as accurate as possible within 5 kHz) | Antenna (such as active, passive, indoor, external, in-built) |
| Receiver , including designator (such as: portatop, tabletop, portable, professional, casette recorder/radio, scanner) | |
| Reception quality - a simple SIO is all that is required (signal strength, interference, overall). Information about propagation would be useful. | |
| Interfering signals from other broadcasters (if any) and local electrical interference (if any) | |
| A specific request for an "ACKNOWLEDGMENT QSL", showing frequency, date and time, using the information supplied by the listener. It is the obligation of the listener to submit correct information. | |
| Language of the program | |
| Specific program content of at least 15 minutes (to avoid reports of the "man talking woman talking style" of one minute in length). The name of the program should be given. This is in effect a quality "audit" by the listener, so that they will actually listen to the station, and not use the process to gain a collection of picture postcards under the guise of "QSLs"! (Postcards can be purchased at the newsagency or post office!) Succinct remarks about content of the program should be included. | |
| Reports can be by postal mail, cassette, SMS, CD, FAX, E-mail - broadcasters should make these requirements known. Inclusion of a self-adhesive address label with postal mailed reports may be of assistance to the station. Reports should be sent promptly - within a day of the reception - whether via E-mail or other means. | |
It is up to the broadcaster to decide
whether it wishes to request return postage (cash, PayPal, IRCs,
etc) That requirement could be shown in broadcaster publicity
material on the Internet, in actual programming on-air, through
postal mailed information, in annual reference books. or distributed
by hobby monitoring organisations.
Broadcasters would need to manage this feedback process as they
see fit, if they choose to differentiate between "ACKNOWLEDGMENT
QSLs" and/or "THANK YOU's.
The broadcaster could also indicate publicly if it will issue
"ACKNOWLEDGMENT QSLs" in the accepted sense or
respond with a simple Thank you message, or nothing at all! Thank-you
messages can also be given on the Internet, by Email, or in actual
broadcasts. Some broadcasters may wish to respond with E-mailed
QSLs, or with Internet-pickup QSLs. Many options!
Listeners often send localised material with their reports, accompanying
their requests for ACKNOWLEDGMENT QSLs, such as postcards, badges,
maps, souvenirs, calendars, photos, newspaper articles, audio/video
tapes, etc, as personal gestures. Many broadcasters welcome these
personal souvenirs.
Return postage may be included to stations which request this.
The author has received nearly 8000 QSLs and Acknowledgment QSLs from over 900 shortwave broadcasting stations, dating back to 1954. |
|
FURTHER READING Please see these articles about Reception Reporting, which are available to EDXP members at the Resource Page "CODE OF ETHICS FOR DXING" "LATIN AMERICAN SURVEY" (by Rob Wagner) "RECEPTION REPORTING GUIDE", a print article, issued by the European DX Council . |
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