DC -- Voice of America:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- VOA_031028_04.JPG: Tanya Shen on Voice of America tour
- VOA_031028_05.JPG: The Voice of America is Born:
On February 24, 1942 -- 79 days after the United States entered World War II -- FIS beamed its first broadcast to Europe via BBC medium and long wave transmitters. Announcer William Harlan Hale opened the program -- a short, 15-minute German broadcast -- with the words: "Here speaks the voice from America." [Another sign: "The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth." -- Announced William Harlan Hale during his first VOA Broadcast.]
By June 1942, VOA's broadcast operations had been transferred to the Office of War Information (OWI). Using a network of 23 transmitters, VOA broadcasters were broadcasting in 27 languages. By the end of the war, that number had increased to 41.
- VOA_031028_12.JPG: Forerunners of the Voice of America:
In 1941, the US Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) leased several private transmitters to broadcast programs to Latin America. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Foreign Information Service (FIS) in mid-1941.
Roosevelt named speech writer Robert Sherwood as the first director of the FIS. Sherwood set up operations in New York City and began to make arrangements for FIS programs to be relayed by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) facilities.
Sherwood asked John Houseman, the well-known author, director, and theatrical producer [who I normally think of from the movie "Paper Chase"], to take charge of the radio operations at FIS. Ironically, Houseman was not yet a US citizen, He was still classified as a Romanian, and with the outbreak of war became an enemy alien overnight. Recalling the time in his autobiography, "Front and Center," Houseman writes: "I did not mention this to Sherwood in Washington, nor did I emphasize it in the official forms I filled out for the Civil Service. If I had any secret doubts of my suitability for the post... I kept them to myself..."
- VOA_031028_16.JPG: The Post War Years: The Debate Begins:
Many VOA language services were reduced or eliminated after World War II. However, a committee of private citizens chaired by Columbia University professor Arthur McMahon advised that the US government could not be "indifferent to the ways in which our society is portrayed in other countries." Consequently, on December 31, 1945, the VOA and CIAA's broadcast services were transferred to the Department of State. Congress reluctantly voted funding for their continued operation throughout 1946 and 1947.
The Need for an International Broadcast Service Takes Hold:
In 1948, the Soviet Union and Soviet-controlled countries began an intensive international broadcasting campaign. The actions of communist governments, such as the Berlin blockade, played an important role in convincing US government officials and members of Congress that the United States must counter the Soviet effort. That year, Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act, establishing the United States' international information and cultural exchange programs. The legislation covered VOA's continued operation.
- VOA_031028_27.JPG: The Cold War:
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, VOA added new language services and developed plans for construction of large transmitter sites on both the east and west coasts of the United States.
- VOA_031028_30.JPG: A New Global Information Service:
On August 1, 1953, the United States Information Agency was established. COA was transferred from the Department of State, becoming USIA's largest overseas operation. A year later, VOA moved its studios from New York to its present location [in Washington DC].
- VOA_031028_43.JPG: VOA Programming for the 1990's and Beyond:
In 1991, the Voice of America established the Affiliates and Placement Office to coordinate all VOA placement activities. The Office assists individual language services in making arrangements with affiliated stations throughout the world to carry VOA programs. A total of 1400 hours per week of programming is now available to affiliate stations via satellite. Stations can either simulcast the feeds or record them for later use.
- VOA_031028_46.JPG: "The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth."
-- Announcer William Harlan Wale during the first VOA Broadcast
- VOA_031028_50.JPG: VOA Modernization:
"The truth is mankind's best hope for a better world." -- President Ronald Reagan, September 10 1983.
In 1983, COA launched a $13 billion program to rebuild and modernize VOA broadcast capabilities. By mid-1980, more than a dozen new "state-of-the-art" studios had been constructed, a new master central computer built and installed, and a Network Control Center built to coordinate and direct VOA's relay station network.
- VOA_031028_58.JPG: Covering the Tough Issues:
The Voice of America follows the guidelines of the VOA Charter, covering all news stories accurately and objectively, and presenting all sides of controversial issues. In the 1970's, VOA earned great respect both among the American press and listeners overseas for its coverage of the Vietnam War and Watergate.
- VOA_031028_75.JPG: This display talks about VOA's "Special English" programming. Part of their effort is to teach listeners English.
- VOA_031028_80.JPG: One of the control booths for the operation
- VOA_031028_87.JPG: CNN seems to be a major source of news for VOA broadcasts
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- Wikipedia Description: Voice of America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Voice of America (VOA), is the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. Its oversight entity is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).
VOA broadcasts by satellite and on FM, AM, and shortwave radio frequencies. It is also available through the Internet in both streaming media and downloadable formats at VOANews.com. VOA has affiliate and contract agreements with many radio and television stations and cable networks worldwide.
Transmission Facilities:
One of VOA's radio transmitter facilities was originally based on a 625-acre site in Union Township (now West Chester Township) in Butler County, Ohio, near Cincinnati. The Bethany Relay Station operated from 1944 to 1994. Other former sites include California (Dixon), Hawaii, Okinawa, Liberia, Costa Rica, and Belize.
Currently, the VOA and the IBB continue to operate shortwave radio transmitters and antenna farms at two sites in the United States, located at Delano, California and Greenville, North Carolina respectively. The Delano site is famous among radio enthusiasts for having a rare installation of a TCI HRS 12/6/1 directional curtain array antenna. They do not use FCC issued callsigns.Other radio stations on US soil are required by FCC rules to have and use callsigns.
Languages:
The Voice of America currently broadcasts in 46 languages (TV marked with an asterisk):
* Afan Oromo
* Albanian*
* Amharic
* Armenian*
* Azerbaijani*
* Bangla*
* Bosnian*
* Burmese
* Cantonese*
* Creole
* Croatian*
* Dari*
* English* (also Special English)
* French*
* Georgian
* Greek*
* Hausa
* Hindi*
* Indonesian*
* Khmer
* Kinyarwanda
* Kirundi
* Korean
* Kurdish
* Lao
* Macedonian*
* Mandarin*
* Ndebele
* Pashto*
* Persian*
* Portuguese
* Russian*
* Serbian*
* Shona
* Somali
* Spanish*
* Swahili
* Tagalog
* Thai
* Tibetan*
* Tigrigna
* Turkish*
* Ukrainian*
* Urdu*
* Uzbek*
* Vietnamese
The number of languages broadcast and the number of hours broadcast in each language vary according to the priorities of the United States Government and the world situation. In 2001, according to an International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) fact sheet, VOA broadcast in 53 languages, with 12 televised. For example, in July 2007, VOA added 30 minutes to its daily Somali radio broadcast, providing a full hour of live, up-to-the-minute news and information to listeners.
Overview:
The Voice of America has been a part of several agencies:
From 1942 to 1945, it was part of the Office of War Information, and then from 1945 to 1953 as a function of the State Department. The VOA was placed under the U.S. Information Agency in 1953. When the USIA was abolished in 1999, the VOA was placed under the Broadcasting Board of Directors, which is an autonomous U.S. government agency, with bipartisan membership. The Secretary of State has a seat on the BBG. .
VOA's parent organization is the presidentially-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG was established as a buffer to protect VOA and other U.S.-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasters from political interference.
History:
American private shortwave broadcasting before World War II:
Before the Second World War, all American shortwave stations were in private hands.. The National Broadcasting Company's International, or White Network, which broadcast in six languages, the Columbia Broadcasting System, whose Latin American international network consisted of sixty-four stations located in eighteen different countries, as well as the Crossley Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, had shortwave transmitters. Experimental programming began in the 1930s. There were less than 12 transmitters, however.
In 1939, the Federal Communications Commission set the following policy:
A license of an international broadcast station shall render only an international broadcast service which will reflect the culture of this country and which will promote international goodwill, understanding and cooperation. Any program solely intended for, and directed to an audience in the continental United States does not meet the requirements for this service.
Washington observers felt this policy was to enforce the State Department's Good Neighbor Policy but many broadcasters felt that this was an attempt to direct censorship.
In 1940, the Office of the Coordinator of Interamerican Affairs, a semi-independent agency of the U.S. State Department headed by Nelson Rockefeller, began operations. Shortwave signals to Latin America were regarded as vital to counter Nazi propaganda. Initially, the Office of Coordination of Information sent releases to each station, but this was seen as an inefficient means of transmitting news. .
World War II: VOA Begins:
In January, 1942 , the U.S. government then leased 15-minute blocks of time on each station, calling the program "The Voice of America," which included the Yankee Doodle interval signal. .
VOA was organized in 1942 under the Office of War Information with news programs aimed at areas in Japan and the south Pacific and in Europe and North Africa under the occupation of Nazi Germany. VOA began broadcasting on February 24, 1942. The initial announcement of the VOA stated, “Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.” The Office of War Information took over VOA's operations when it was formed in mid 1942. The VOA reached an agreement with the British Broadcasting Corporation to share medium-wave transmitters in Britain, and expanded into Tunis in North Africa and Palermo and Bari, Italy as the Allies captured these territories. The OWI also set up the American Broadcasting Station in Europe .
Asian transmissions started with one transmitter in California in 1941; services were expanded by adding transmitters in Hawaii and, after recapture, the Philippines. .
By the end of the war, VOA had 39 transmitters and provided service in 40 languages. .Programming was broadcast from production centers in New York and San Francisco, with more than 1,000 programs originating from New York. Programming consisted of music, news, commentary, and relays of U.S. domestic programming, in addition to specialized VOA programming.
About half of VOA’s services, including the Arabic service, were discontinued in 1945..
The Cold War:
In 1947, Voice of America started broadcasting in Russian with the intent to counter more harmful instances of Soviet propaganda directed against American leaders and policies. Soviet Union responded by initiating aggressive, electronic jamming of VoA broadcasts on 24 April 1949.
The Arabic service resumed on January 1, 1950, with a half-hour program. This program grew to 14.5 hours daily during the Suez Crisis of 1956, and was 6 hours a day by 1958. .
In 1952, the Voice of America installed a studio and relay facility aboard a converted U.S. Coast Guard cutter renamed Courier whose target audience was Russia and its allies. The Courier was originally intended to become the first in a fleet of mobile, radio broadcasting ships (see offshore radio) that built upon U.S. Navy experience during WWII in using warships as floating broadcasting stations. However, the Courier eventually dropped anchor off the island of Rhodes, Greece with permission of the Greek government to avoid being branded as a pirate radio broadcasting ship. This VOA offshore station stayed on the air until the 1960s when facilities were eventually provided on land. The Courier supplied training to engineers who later worked on several of the European commercial offshore broadcasting stations of the 1950s and 1960s.
Control of the VOA passed from the State Department to the U.S. Information Agency when the latter was established in 1953. to transmit worldwide, including to the countries behind the Iron Curtain and to the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the 1980s, the USIA established the WORLDNET satellite television service, and in 2004 WORLDNET was merged into VOA.
During the 1950s and 1960s, VOA broadcast American jazz, which was highly popular, world wide. For example, a program aimed at South Africa in 1956 broadcast 2 hours nightly, along with special programs such as “The Newport Jazz Festival”. This was done in association of tours by U.S. musicians, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, sponsored by the State Department.
Throughout the Cold War, many of the targeted countries' governments sponsored jamming of VOA broadcasts, which sometimes led critics to question the broadcasts' actual impact. For example, in 1956s, Poland stopped jamming VOA, but Bulgaria continued to jam the signal through the 1970s. and Chinese-language VOA broadcasts were jammed beginning in 1956 and extending through 1976. However, after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, interviews with participants in anti-Soviet movements verified the effectiveness of VOA broadcasts in transmitting information to socialist societies. The People's Republic of China diligently jams VOA broadcasts (see Firedrake). Cuba has also been reported to interfere with VOA satellite transmissions to Iran from its Russian-built transmission site at Bejucal.David Jackson, director of the Voice of Amrica, noted "The North Korean government doesn't jam us, but they try to keep people from listening through intimidation or worse. But people figure out ways to listen despite the odds. They're very resourceful."
In the 1980s, VOA also added a television service, as well as special regional programs to Cuba, Radio Martí and TV Martí. Cuba has consistently attempted to jam such broadcasts and has vociferously protested U.S. broadcasts directed at Cuba. In 1985, VOA Europe was created as a special service in English that was relayed via satellite to AM, FM, and cable affiliates throughout Europe. With a contemporary format including live disc jockeys, the network presented top musical hits as well as VOA news and features of local interest (such as "EuroFax") 24 hours a day. VOA Europe was closed down without advance public notice (even to its own audience) in January, 1997, as a cost-cutting measure. Today, stations are offered the VOA Music Mix service.
Post Cold War (1991 – present): Changes in services:
In 1994, the Voice of America became the first broadcast-news organization to offer continuously updated programs on the Internet. Content in English and 44 other languages is currently available online through a distributed network of commercial providers, using more than 20,000 servers across 71 countries. Since many listeners in Africa and other areas still receive much of their information via radio and have only limited access to computers, VOA continues to maintain regular shortwave-radio broadcasts.
The Arabic Service was abolished in 2002 and replaced by a new radio service, called the Middle East Radio Network or Radio Sawa, with an initial budget of $22 million. Radio Sawa offered mostly Western and American popular music with periodic brief news bulletins.
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