I guess helping people is a needless expense.
Maybe we should start trading with Cuba again, so I can get some good cigars.
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Kari Lake previews her plans for Voice of America in the next Administration.
- Thread starter Bill Betten
- Start date
I guess helping people is a needless expense.
Maybe we should start trading with Cuba again, so I can get some good cigars.
How can a service that is blocked by nearly 30 co-channel stations all across Cuba (data from Cuban government, WRTH and both the National Radio Club and the IRCA) going to help anyone? The co-channel stations on 1180 are anywhere from 1 kw to 100 kw, and totally block the signal. The programming is of no interest outside of Cuba.
Totally different issue. And you can get the cigars in Canada.
It doesn't matter to me. I'm not Hispanic. But apparently a lot of Hispanics in Florida think it's a big deal. For some reason they think it's a bad thing.
Now with 50% tariffs. If the border police catch you with Cuban cigars, they get confiscated.
Radio Havana Cuba’s shortwave output is down to almost nothing, due to a decrepit power grid and failing transmitters. What little there is is badly modulated and virtually unlistenable. Had been in reasonable shape four or five years ago. Would not surprise me if RHC on shortwave simply disappears one day with no notice or fanfare, never to return.
No, a few remaining Cubans who think they are "en el exilio" and dream of going "home" think it is a big deal. Nobody else cares.
Remember, well into the 80's there were militia groups of people in their 40's and 50's who trained in the Everglades with dreams of invading Cuba and killing Castro. Few of them remain.
That does not seem to prevent some of my Cuban friends from trying. One is such a fanatic that he flies from LA to Seattle, rents a car and goes to Vancouver to buy the cigars and then drives back.
With the heightened border and tariff issues, I have to ask him if he is going to give up those "puros" for a while. You can also get them in Mexico, but only sporadically along the CA border.
There was some hope that the Chinese would rebuild the SW facilities and add their own to the site. But China has pulled back from "public works" in Cuba and I have heard that all the AMs and FMs they rebuilt even have trouble getting parts.
Voice of America staff and their unions have filed suit against the administration and Kari Lake:
Voice of America staff sue Trump administration for shutting down network
Six Voice of America journalists and a director at its parent agency have sued the Trump administration, alleging its moves to shut down the U.S.-funded network are unconstitutional.
www.opb.org
Scott Fybush has just posted at Site of the Week 3/21/2025: VOA Remembered a marvelous article about Radio Martí's closing with pictures of the Key Marathon 4-tower AM array. But that's not all... he has given us a wonderful tour of the VOA main site with all those huge transmitters, transformers, parts supply rooms and antennas galore. Very much worth viewing.
It’s not supposed to help. That’s the plan. Weaken us as a country.We're talking about how shortwave is obsolete, and the best approach to reach people in enemy countries is with the internet. Now the president has just shut down a program that helps people in China access the free web around government restrictions:
President Trump ends program millions in China use for internet, worrying Congress
The Trump administration’s move to shut down the Open Technology Fund (OTF), an internet freedom project that helped millions of people in China access the open web, has stirred concern from lawmakers, including Republicans, who argue the nonprofit is a crucial tool to counter the rise of...www.benton.org
Maybe I don't understand how this is supposed to help us?
I have a simple solution to the VOA problem: Privatization. Turn over the VOA and its mission to CNN WorldWide. They already have the infrastructure to get it done. There is CNNLatino that covers Central and South America. Get the government out of the broadcasting business. That's what they're saying.
Only one problem: The ideologues in the government hate CNN. If they could get past their ideology, and allow their conservative economics run the system, they would be able to handle all of this cheaper, more efficiently, and without any of the staffing or shortwave problems they have now.
Voice of America staff and their unions have filed suit against the administration and Kari Lake:
Voice of America staff sue Trump administration for shutting down network
Six Voice of America journalists and a director at its parent agency have sued the Trump administration, alleging its moves to shut down the U.S.-funded network are unconstitutional.www.opb.org
Dang this is the second lawsuit the VOA has deal with in the past week over the defunding issue. The other lawsuit was Radio Free Europe because of funding they were supposed to get from the VOA.
USA: RSF sues Trump administration to defend Voice of America
Following President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the government-funded, editorially independent news outlet Voice of America (VOA), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) joined VOA employees and their unions in filing a legal complaint against the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) —...
rsf.org
Now another party has joined in the VOA lawsuit and it's Reporters without borders defending the VOA Staff that were removed from the organization.
USA: journalists endangered as 75 per cent of Radio Free Asia’s US staff furloughed due to Trump executive order
Seventy-five per cent of the US-based staff at the government-funded, editorially independent news service Radio Free Asia (RFA) were put on administrative leave due to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump a week earlier dismantling the administrative body that funds RFA, the...
rsf.org
After hundreds of Radio Free Asia staff placed on leave, some fear deportation
About 75% of Radio Free Asia staff were placed on leave Friday, the result of funding cuts ordered by Kari Lake, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
www.cbsnews.com
'Massive gift to America's enemies': US cuts government media funding
US President Donald Trump slashes funding to a government agency that houses multiple media organisations including Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe.
www.abc.net.au
Radio Free Asia faces cuts to staff in response to the VOA shutdown.
Historical note: Some of VOA's transmitters used to belong to Crosley Brodcasting, owner of WLW, "the nation's station." In addition to operation at 700 KHz at 500,000 Kwm they also operated a short-wave service
Correct. W8XO. That became the Bethany (really Mason) relay station. The building is now a museum with some of the equipment still there.
Crosley built its own transmitters for the shortwave operation, installed in the mid-1930s to the early 40s. Some of those transmitters were still in operation as late as 1989.
IIRC, VOA took over several companies' shortwave transmitters: Crosley's in Ohio, NBC's and General Electric's in California. Not sure about the others.
Interesting and original idea.
Remember, in the later 30's when shortwave was expanding, the NBC and CBS groups both tried to do international services for Latin America. While most "experts" say that there was not a large enough listener base with good radios, I think that the advent of WW II prevented that area from expanding and becoming very popular.
I've never found the CNN services to be particularly engaging. I don't mean ideological issues but just style and presentation. Informative, but not exciting. Part of that, and also an issue for VOA, is that the language in each nation is so different from that of other nations... meaning that writing has to be done in a neutral style and delivery done with a neutral accent. In other words, boring and dull.
I'll repeat the old saying, "twenty nations divided by a single language".
But what if the U.S. government was an official "sponsor" and ran paid ads about U.S. travel, investments, products, etc? That sounds too "pioneering" and we know that most pioneers simply get shot. Yet we look at what Televisa/Univision is doing with its video services and how they have made what was an upstart into a profitable enterprise and it looks like there is money there. But it may come from the consumer, not the advertiser.
And with ad buys shifting away from demographics to lifestyle and consumption, this might fit in a new model of ad buying.
Even you will admit it's better than the current VOA. It would have to be a different feed from domestic CNN.
The money is already appropriated. The main difference is CNN becomes a contractor like Musk and other government contractors. That way CNN pays the staff, not the government.
Totally agree. But it is still boring, much to do with the "neutralization" of language, accent, style and local and regional interests.
I'd say "this is different enough to be worth a try". I vote "yea" on your idea.
Going a step further in ideology and farther in geography, it would be interesting to do such an international information source with a union of the NATO nations or some other multi-national group where there would be a combination of editorial freedom along with guidelines on governing principals. Yes, I realize that such an amalgamation of voices may actually be impossible, but there has to be a way to have a voice bigger than a single nation and, worse, a single voice within a single nation.
The Delano, California and Brentwood, Long Island facilities were originally CBS properties. NBC had Dixon, California and Bound Brook, New Jersey. Schenectady was General Electric, which also had KGEI in San Francisco. Can’t remember if the old WRUL Scituate, Massachusetts site was ever used by VOA…?
By the mid 1960s the Greenville facilities had replaced all the east coast transmission sites except for Bethany, Ohio.