I have been a shortwave listener for 40 years during which shortwave broadcasting has declined to near irrelevance. I have QSL cards from lots of the major broadcasters. They are all off the air now.
When the BBC, Radio Netherlands and Duetche Welle quit broadcasting to North America one should have known it was over!
Of course you can still be entertained by Brother Stair predicting the end of the world any day now.
I agree with your comments on shortwave being over.
I really respect the guys in this thread who love the nostalgia and honor the heritage and building blocks of modern communication. But if you are a guy like me who simply wants world news, the net is far better.
Twenty years ago I loved being able to hear BBC reports from the first Gulf war. And to get the European perspective on economic matters. It is just that stuff is now all available on the internet times ten.
Radio Netherlands made a big deal of their continuing the service when the BBC and DW dropped out, but they did the same a few years later.
I guess the Internet is the new shortwave. You can get just about all the old international services through streaming media, as well as local radio stations from around the world.
It's not the same, though. The feeling of turning the knob and not knowing what you'll find isn't there. Maybe satellite may restore some of that, maybe not.
DW also syndicates television programs over here, but it's not the same either. Radio can take an empty studio and fill it up with just words alone. German TV, by contrast, looks pretty sterile.