External service (broadcasting)

International broadcasting is broadcasting that is deliberately aimed at a foreign, rather than a domestic, audience. It usually is broadcast by means of longwave, mediumwave, or (more usually) shortwave radio, but in recent years has also used direct satellite broadcasting and the internet as means of reaching audiences.

Although radio and television programs do travel outside national borders, in many cases reception by foreigners is accidental. However, for purposes of propaganda, transmitting religious beliefs, keeping in touch with colonies or expatriates, education, improving trade, increasing national prestige, or promoting tourism and goodwill, broadcasting services have operated external services since the 1920s.

International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was the country's sole means of long-distance communication.

The US Navy Radio Service radio station in New Brunswick, Canada, transmitted the 'Fourteen Points' by wireless to Nauen in 1917. In turn, Nauen station broadcast the news of the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 10, 1918.

Guglielmo Marconi pioneered the use of short wave radio for long distance transmissions in the early 1920s. Using a system of parabolic reflector antennae, Marconi's assistant, Charles Samuel Franklin, rigged up a large antenna at Poldhu Wireless Station, Cornwall, running on 25 kW of power. In June and July 1923, wireless transmissions were completed during nights on 97 meters from Poldhu to Marconi's yacht Elettra in the Cape Verde Islands. High speed shortwave telegraphy circuits were then installed from London to Australia, India, South Africa and Canada as the main element of the Imperial Wireless Chain from 1926.

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