I've been meaning to wrap up this travelogue, as I don't know whether whether interest in this thread is starting to fade.
On Sunday (June 7), I was on the Tica Bus out of San Jose, headed back to Panama city. This was to be a 16 hour bus ride. I started the trip listening to the Universidad de Costa Rica radio station (870) but felt the need to change the station when they went into a long program on how to select the best pet for one's family. I ended up landing on Radio Libertad 570, with their unique and exciting mix of oldies hits. Exiting the San Jose area, I passed by an AM site that I think might have been Radio Rica 640. The antenna was a single folded unipole tower, and it looked somewhat short for the wavelength. Not finding the programming there too compelling, I flipped back to 570 and listened to it until it was almost gone. After that, I tried listening to some the FM stations, but I got frustrated with the way that their signals popped in and out, and the way that the AFC jumped willy-nilly between all of the closely-spaced stations.
After I came to terms with the fact that I had entered a rural area of Costa Rica where there were no receivable AM stations and a few fringe FM stations that were frustrating to listen to, I turned off the radio and went about making more progress in my reading of _Murrow_ and of catching up on my sleep. The Costa Rican radio experience changed my mind, to some extent, regarding why AM radios with those awful 3kHz audio bandwidths were once in vogue: they were made with markets like this in mind. Although I was glad that I had the SRF-42 as an AM transmitter diagnostic tool, I wish that I had something with a less hyperactive FM AFC to help in dealing with the close-spaced FM stations. Sometime later, my travel companion gave me a hard time about having an AM/FM radio, boasting how her iPod could hold 1750 songs and play movies and videos from Comedy Central. I said that I could have brought an MP3 player, but if I had, then I would be listening to stuff that was already familiar to me, but what I wanted to do on this trip was to find out what people in that part of the world listened to. I don't know whether she understood or cared for my answer--and it doesn't really matter. Somewhat ironically, the San Jose FM dial had a number of stations that played English-language music.
Approaching the Panamanian border, around 8 PM, I started to hear some stations. If memory serves me correctly, there were two AMs, both broadcasting network programming, and a handful of FMs. Crossing the border on a bus is a multi-step operation that almost left me stranded. The operation works like this: the bus stops at the Costa Rican border office and lets everybody off. One is supposed to stand in line there to get one's pasport stamped to reflect having exited Costa Rica and to turn in a form about one's travels. Then, one walks to the Panamanian border office, and several things are supposed to happen there: one is supposed to buy a tourist card for $5, one's luggage is inspected, and then one stands in line for a clerk the Panamanian entry window, where one turns in a form about swine flu and has one's passport and tourist card stamped. Unfortunately, I got the order of operations on the Panamanian side screwed up, thereby wasting precious time. To make matters worse, the lady who manned the window where the tourist cards were sold had vanished (she was eventually found, as the bus was almost ready to leave!!)
After getting back on the bus, I listened to the radio for a bit. In this somewhat rural location, the few formats available were all things that I had heard before, so I opted for going back to sleep, as the bus reading lights didn't work. About 11:30 PM, the bus made a food stop at a travel cafeteria. Cafeteria food is very cheap in Panama: I bought two tortillas (these were corn patties about the size of a small hash brown) and a little beef empanada for a total of 75 cents!
Approaching the Panama City bus station from Central Panama, I heard an unusual musical style that I would later hear identified as "Montañero." This type of music featured a concertina, percussion, and an electric bass guitar. The rhythm of the music and male Spanish lyrics had a staccato quality to them; interspersed in the male lyrics was a female voice chanting what I assume was some indigenous language. The novelty of Montañero music seemed like something that would wear off very quickly, as many of the songs sounded similar to my ears. After a long cab ride from the bus station, I arrived in Gamboa, where I spent the night. Gamboa is next to the Panama Canal, roughly halfway between the two ports (Panama City and Colon).
The next day, after a visit to the Panama Canal, I did another spin of the radio dial while my travel companion was doing more tourist-ey things. Gamboa is approximately 25 miles from both Panama City and Colon. I could hear stations from both cities, but the signals were surprisingly weak, even on the AM side, for the relatively short distances involved. What surprised me the most was that Radio Lider from Panama City (which was 550 or 560 AM), was very faint. Radio Lider was probably one of the worst of the Panama City AM stations: they had low modulation levels and badly distorted audio. On this particular day, a Monday afternoon, no less, their automation puked, and they were just playing an endless string of Radio Lider IDs without any music or commercials.
The next day, I flew back to the US. Although this trip was pretty interesting and certainly a new experience, I was glad to return to Portland. Before ending this travelogue, I have to mention one key difference that I observed between radio over there and in the US. That difference is that with the exception of some of the shows that I heard on the religious stations, there is no syndicated or pre-produced programming over there. Thus, the radio networks and stations over there are completely responsible for producing everything that they air. I think that this may help to explain the poor production values that I heard on some of the smaller market local programs (such as those of Imagen Estereo 97.9) and why many small communities are not able to sustain local radio stations.
Posted on June 16, 2009 - 12:17 AM
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