Kari Lake previews her plans for Voice of America in the next Administration.

[boombox4]

Just shut it off and save the money. VOA is irrelevant in the Internet age. Then the folks on this board (who probably never listen to it anyway), and who's heads are exploding over the politics of this can find something else to be aghast about.

Not everybody in the Third World has internet. And what internet they may be accessing may be controlled by their government. The whole idea of VOA was to present an American point of view to the rest of the world, and SW was intended to supply it to those without other means of accessing US news and US news media.

I just heard a program on the CBC the other night describing a rural area in Guatemala where they had no cellphone coverage, and had no internet. They did have local FM. But local FM means that whoever is running that station is controlling your media and news. VOA was meant to overcome that. In this case the local FM'er was run by an NGO, which had its own agenda.

If the US intends to extend its influence to the average African or other Third World citizen, VOA is still useful. It's cheaper than a lot of other items on the US national budget, which bring the same, or less, return dollar-for-dollar than VOA does.

 

[boombox4]

There have been a couple of SW outlets in the Russian Far East the past decade that targeted local indigenous communities. They didn’t seem to last long.

I’m out and about, but will have to recheck the 2025 WRTH. I don’t recall seeing any Russian domestic SW listed in the latest edition, other than the time signals in the vicinity of 5, 10 and 15 MHz.

The only Russian language broadcasts I've heard in the past several years are KNLS (religious station out of Alaska), MWV New Life (religious station beamed at European Russia from Madagascar) and CRI Radio Kitai, which beams to Siberia and the Russian Far East for a couple hours a day.

The last domestic Voice of Russia program I remember hearing was out of Magadan before it got the plug pulled early in the 2010's.

 

[JJSPC]

Not everybody in the Third World has internet. And what internet they may be accessing may be controlled by their government. The whole idea of VOA was to present an American point of view to the rest of the world, and SW was intended to supply it to those without other means of accessing US news and US news media.

I just heard a program on the CBC the other night describing a rural area in Guatemala where they had no cellphone coverage, and had no internet. They did have local FM. But local FM means that whoever is running that station is controlling your media and news. VOA was meant to overcome that. In this case the local FM'er was run by an NGO, which had its own agenda.

If the US intends to extend its influence to the average African or other Third World citizen, VOA is still useful. It's cheaper than a lot of other items on the US national budget, which bring the same, or less, return dollar-for-dollar than VOA does.

How many Third World folks still have shortwave radios and/or use them on a regular basis though?

 

[boombox4]

The point continues to be why an international service would want to focus of domestic politics in the originating nation.

Beyond that, the fact that shortwave is totally dead means that the traditional VOA distribution is also dead. VOA "worked" in the limited fashion that all international shortwave operations did only when there was a shortage of news sources. The internet changed all that.

And if the VOA wants to compete on the web, they have to produce a product that is vastly more interesting than the sources of news and information people use now.

VOA has a website, with news video clips and the like. An excellent one I saw about Zimbabwean farmers and their experiences in Zambia. Well done and fairly done video. How many views it actually had from Africa is anybody's guess. For all we know, the SW service has more listeners on the continent, which has well over 1.3 billion people, a significant number of them (55% or more) in rural areas, most of them having little internet.

 

[boombox4]

How many Third World folks still have shortwave radios and/or use them on a regular basis though?

I don't know, but the VOA also broadcasts in some areas on MW. And people in poorer areas don't throw away radios and electronics every year like Americans and Europeans do.

That said, one could ask how many rural Africans in the far northern reaches of Nigeria can access a website like this one over the internet? .0002% maybe? But if someone in the village has a SW radio, they can hear VOA or the BBC. And they tell other people what they heard. Or there is communal listening. Not every section of the world is like the US or Canada, or the rich countries of the EU.

 

[davideduardo]

How many Third World folks still have shortwave radios and/or use them on a regular basis though?

Answer: NONE

 

[davideduardo]

I don't know, but the VOA also broadcasts in some areas on MW. And people in poorer areas don't throw away radios and electronics every year like Americans and Europeans do.

That said, one could ask how many rural Africans in the far northern reaches of Nigeria can access a website like this one over the internet? .0002% maybe? But if someone in the village has a SW radio, they can hear VOA or the BBC. And they tell other people what they heard. Or there is communal listening. Not every section of the world is like the US or Canada, or the rich countries of the EU.

They all have FM radios because essentially all local and domestic broadcasting in those areas is on FM.

 

[boombox4]

They all have FM radios because essentially all local and domestic broadcasting in those areas is on FM.

True, they have radios, probably ones made in China (which has been the dominant manufacturer of radios since the late 1990's) and many of them probably have SW as well as MW on them. That doesn't mean that they are all using the SW band, but the availability is probably there for it to be accessed. The fact remains that in probably most areas of rural Africa -- where over half of the people live -- the cell and internet coverage is non-existent, so radio is still used for information.

 

[TheBigA]

They all have FM radios because essentially all local and domestic broadcasting in those areas is on FM.

You're missing the point. You may have the best knowledge about global media, but they're not going to talk to you about it. They already have their experts who they trust. If their trusted experts tell them to spend money on shortwave, then that's what they'll do. They're not doing this to serve the public or any similar traditional broadcasting reason. They're about furthering their ideology, which is more about speaking than about listening. This administration is like having Pacifica and WBAI take over the government. You can talk about practicality all you want. They're not listening.

 

[blizzard59]

VOA is on the FM dial in some of the regions they target. They also produce much more video programming than I think a lot of people realize. These Language Service Fact Sheets they publish are useful summaries of their activities in each of the languages they serve. There are also claimed audience figures available for a few languages.

VOA Language Service Fact Sheets

www.insidevoa.com

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

VOA is on the FM dial in some of the regions they target. They also produce much more video programming than I think a lot of people realize. These Language Service Fact Sheets they publish are useful summaries of their activities in each of the languages they serve. There are also claimed audience figures available for a few languages.

VOA Language Service Fact Sheets

www.insidevoa.com

VOA Broadcasting in English to Africa

VOA Broadcasting in English to Africa

www.insidevoa.com

I've heard africa news tonight, daybreak africa, south sudan in focus african music mix and music time in africa.

Anyone calling african news tonight, daybreak africa and south sudan in focus leftist agenda or fake news or whatever... has never actually listened to it.

Is there a slant? MAYBE in long form discussion, but in the news reporting.. its fact based journalism in detail that people arent going to get anywhere

Is SW the best answer? Prob. not anymore, but thats where I've heard it on 9775 and 15580 via Botswana real damn well.

But Im sure that content is available online. I've heard other African language stuff from the VOA online when i was trying to match it up with an errant unscheduled frequency

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

But on AM, it is simply the regular programming of one of the Cuban radio networks.

Of course, SW radios are not sold in Cuba, making listening to anything on that band impossible. And Amazon does not deliver there.

I'm a member of various Latin American groups involving radio and electronics repair and shortwave radios from Cuba come up every so often.

The most sought after and fondly remembered item to repair is the VEF Vega 206 radio from the Soviet Union, probably things bought in hard currency stores.

A medium sized portable with decent audio and very good performance on SW.

 

[boombox4]

One thing to remember here is that when dealing with regions of the world like Africa -- which is a major target for Shortwave broadcasts, not just from the VOA but BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Int'l, the BBC and others -- is that every country north of the Namibia / Botswana / South Africa line is more or less undemocratic, with authoritarian regimes being the norm more than not. There are maps available to see online that show that nearly every country north of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa are authoritarian, except a couple flawed democracies like Ghana and Zambia.

So it's highly likely that in much of Africa all news locally is filtered through the lens of the government in power. This is what VOA is supposed to counter.

And it doesn't take all of the population of a country or region to influence thought in that country. The idea is to make real news available to the people on the continent. It's the same with much of Asia. This is why the Chinese jam Radio Free Asia and the VOA. They know that its presence on the radio dial represents a threat to their dictatorship in some way. It's also why the Cubans jam Marti's SW broadcasts. If they believed that Marti is ineffective and that no one listens, there would be no jamming. They jam it because they think that at least some people will listen, and that percentage of people might influence others they know. That word-of-mouth thing.

Soft power is not like commercial radio's ratings system. It's a completely different paradigm.

 

[davideduardo]

And it doesn't take all of the population of a country or region to influence thought in that country. The idea is to make real news available to the people on the continent. It's the same with much of Asia. This is why the Chinese jam Radio Free Asia and the VOA. They know that its presence on the radio dial represents a threat to their dictatorship in some way.

It's been decades since SW radios were widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost everything is on FM now, with most AM facilities gone or deteriorating. And the use of cheap smartphones even includes a banking system in most of those nations.

It's also why the Cubans jam Marti's SW broadcasts. If they believed that Marti is ineffective and that no one listens, there would be no jamming. They jam it because they think that at least some people will listen, and that percentage of people might influence others they know. That word-of-mouth thing.

The Cubans mostly jam the AM broadcasts on 1180. The SW jamming is not very effective, but the Cubans know that SW radios are not widely available and few will listen.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

One thing to remember here is that when dealing with regions of the world like Africa -- which is a major target for Shortwave broadcasts, not just from the VOA but BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Int'l, the BBC and others -- is that every country north of the Namibia / Botswana / South Africa line is more or less undemocratic, with authoritarian regimes being the norm more than not. There are maps available to see online that show that nearly every country north of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa are authoritarian, except a couple flawed democracies like Ghana and Zambia.

DW has almost nothing left on SW

https://static.dw.com/downloads/70900711/B24_Radio_shortwave.pdf

 

[boombox4]

It's been decades since SW radios were widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost everything is on FM now, with most AM facilities gone or deteriorating. And the use of cheap smartphones even includes a banking system in most of those nations.


The Cubans mostly jam the AM broadcasts on 1180. The SW jamming is not very effective, but the Cubans know that SW radios are not widely available and few will listen.

So when the VOA states that between 1% (Zimbabwe) and 25+% of people in a given African country (Rwanda) are tuning in, are they making those figures up?

You say that no SW radios have been available in Africa in decades, yet image searches show numerous photos of African people listening to radios with SW and or other multiband capability. Certainly there are radios available there that cover SW as well as AM/FM.

 

[boombox4]

DW has almost nothing left on SW

https://static.dw.com/downloads/70900711/B24_Radio_shortwave.pdf

And those remaining target regions are in Africa, too.

 

[TheBigA]

All of these posts about shortwave are fascinating, but have nothing to do with what I expect Brent Bozell will be doing with USAGM. He doesn't really care about the transmission system at all. His primary interest, the area he has spent his life in, is content. To him, the media is biased, and is lying to the public. ALL media. He doesn't do any original reporting himself. He never has. He mainly criticizes everyone else. What I expect to get from Bozell when he starts running USAGM and VOA is non-stop coverage attacking the world's media outlets in the way they report on the US. It won't matter if 99% of the story is factual. He'll zero in on the 1% he feels is biased, and use it to attack the credibility of the reporter and the news service. Everybody's lying. Is there a market for that?

Watch his videos:

Home | Media Research Center

www.mediaresearch.org

 

[Mediafrog+]

All of these posts about shortwave are fascinating, but have nothing to do with what I expect Brent Bozell will be doing with USAGM. He doesn't really care about the transmission system at all.

Any cuts in shortwave output will be the result of Elon Musk’s budget cutting, not Brent Bozell’s ideology. Musk likely regards SW as antiquated and ineffective, thus a target for elimination.

Africa has been a target area discussed upthread, but I suspect the current administration has little to no interest in broadcasting to that continent. I think programs for Africa are the most likely to be cut, along with the closure of the Botswana transmission facility.

The bigger question is how much interest there is for continuing SW broadcasts to Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China and North Korea. Transmitter facilities in The Philippines, Thailand, and Kuwait cover those areas; several additional transmitters in Kuwait are supposed to go in the air sometime this year, part of an expansion that has been in the works for several years. The future of those outlets is very much up in the air.

It has been widely presumed in shortwave circles, and seemingly confirmed by USAGM’s own published plans, that the Kuwait expansion will result in the closure of the two remaining SW facilities in Germany.

 

[TheBigA]

Any cuts in shortwave output will be the result of Elon Musk’s budget cutting, not Brent Bozell’s ideology. Musk likely regards SW as antiquated and ineffective, thus a target for elimination.

Maybe. He says a lot of things. A week ago he said "shut it down." If so, why would the president want to hire Kari Lake. As I said a week ago, it's obvious Musk hasn't talked to the white house about their plans. The president knows more about media than Musk. He knows the power of media and controlling the message. If Musk shuts down the shortwave transmitters, it won't change what Bozell and Lake will be doing. They're more focused on the message than on the hardware.

Here's another view on the subject from someone who worked at VOA under Michael Pack.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5137560-elon-musk-richard-grenell-rfe-voa-reforms/