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

Radio Marti still going on its three shortwave frequencies late Saturday evening. There are reports that a handful of programs are being repeated over and over.

Also hearing VOA English to Africa via the Botswana relay. Missed the TOH newscast but also seeing a report that it was news from a week ago, so apparently whatever was left still sitting in the Sunday playlist. Appears a few programs that were produced before the lockout and loaded into the playout automation are airing, with music otherwise filling the holes.

To answer a question I saw posted earlier, the Radio Marti shortwave output is a simulcast of 1180 AM. Their TOHID always refers to “1180 AM with our shortwave frequencies.” The specific SW frequencies aren’t given as they change throughout the 24 hour broadcast day.
 
Nothing new is getting posted to USAGM Direct, which is basically the USAGM's own wire service with a library of all USAGM audio and video content. The website isn't quite working as intended, either.

https://direct.usagm.gov/

No new VOA TOH audio newscast in English has been posted since 1800 UTC on March 15.
 
TheBigA said:
That's also a problem with diary Nielsen. It's based on recall. So I question the metric.
Click to expand...
Untl the most recent decades, radio ratings in Latin America have been in-person coincidental. Because labor is so inexpensive, they can do tens of thousands of interviews each month and release monthly surveys in significant markets.

Only recently, survey companies have begun "recent recall" with aided recall of listening in a recent period of between 3 and 24 hours.

Other than Puerto Rico, Latin America never used diaries, in part due to low literacy rates and part due to dreadful postal systems.

in most of the developing world, ratings are based on the personal interview. Some may cover the last 24 hours, some may use "aided recall" with dial cards or randomized station names, some may even require the listener to turn up the volume of their radio so the interviewer can match it with a signal on a portable radio they have.
 
TheBigA said:
If you live in a country with an autocratic government, are you going to tell an interviewer that you listen to VOA?
Click to expand...
How many nations like that are there, and why would people there even have a short wave radio?

I have worked in nations with totalitarian governments, such as Pinochet's Chile and "Cara de Piña's" Panama and there was no issue with listening to whatever one wanted. The fear of those governments was what local media would cover, not what little news about their country that the Beebe or the VOA or the like might say.

You are using "American thinking" to analyze behaviours in foreign nations. This is a case where, unless one has considerable "on site" experience in those nations it is impossible to analyze. And that is the problem with much of the VOA programming; despite having native speakers for many tongues, the content that is dictated from those with little international experience is simply not relevant.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The fear of those governments was what local media would cover, not what little news about their country that the Beebe or the VOA or the like might say.
Click to expand...

You say broadcast radio has 90% reach. VOA says they reach 365 million people.

But it doesn't matter, because congress has funded VOA, the law covers what it does, and the president has no authority to shut it down.
 
DavidEduardo said:
You are using "American thinking" to analyze behaviours in foreign nations. This is a case where, unless one has considerable "on site" experience in those nations it is impossible to analyze.
Click to expand...

Tell me all the international experience Kari Lake and Brent Bozell have. None. These decisions are not being made based on what you're talking about.
 
Starting to look like straight-up authoritarian media censorship. The sudden shutdown of VOA was reportedly triggered by Trump's displeasure at a question posed to him by a VOA reporter. Clip of it is in the comments to this post:

bsky.app

Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social)

Had strong sense at least the timing of Trump's illegal shuttering of Voice of America was triggered by his annoyance at a question from a VOA journo. Source flags to me that the EO was so hastily put together they literally forgot to complete the last sentence...
bsky.app bsky.app
 
TheBigA said:
Tell me all the international experience Kari Lake and Brent Bozell have. None. These decisions are not being made based on what you're talking about.
Click to expand...
We are talking about ratings methodology, not Lake and Bozell. My point is that there is no measured listening to VOA across the 18 countries in Latin America I have worked in in programming and management.

The new VOA heads don't have to understand ratings methodology in Burkina Faso or Thailand or Bolivia. What they need to know is that shortwave died decades ago, nearly all international broadcasters are gone, and few people have short wave radios.

Asking for a report from the USIS head at each U.S. Embassy or Delegation can answer that question, although in most places where the USIS head was not actually a CIA operative, that agency was jokingly called USLESS. Another example of an agency that needs to be closed or thoroughly reorganized.
 
TheBigA said:
You say broadcast radio has 90% reach. VOA says they reach 365 million people.
Click to expand...
There is all kinds of measurement of broadcast radio's reach in the U.S., starting with Nielsen but including studies like the ones done by Edison Research.

There is absolutely no evidence or proof that the VOA reaches anyone.
TheBigA said:
But it doesn't matter, because congress has funded VOA, the law covers what it does, and the president has no authority to shut it down.
Click to expand...
And the funding can be removed, as it should be. A bunch of shortwave transmitters, a few distant MW ones and some leased time on bad stations in a few countries is not useful.
 
DavidEduardo said:
As I have told this board on a number of occasions, during all my work in radio in Latin America and nations like Pakistan, I never saw any evidence of listening to the VOA. Even in the 60's (when I turned in a licence I had for a shortwave simulcast with a MW station I bought), I saw little shortwave listening and none to the VOA.

Examinations of the raw data (forms, questionnaires, etc.) for ratings never showed any VOA listening... even below the "made the book" cutoff.

But if nobody listens? I did the official evaluations of Radio Martí several times in its first two decades on the air, and there was no evidence that anyone actually listened due to the existence of local Cuban stations on the same frequency. And assuming that more than an infinitesimally small number of shortwave radios are still used by people around the world is a very incorrect assumption.
Click to expand...
If it weren't for the fact that commercial broadcasting is a business here in the US, and that it funds adequate research on radio and other media listening and consumption, evidence of listening to a lot of even highly rated radio stations here would be nonexistent as well. Nobody carries around their transistor radios listening to songs on KHJ or KJR anymore. Nobody has radio station stickers on their cars anymore. Heck, I haven't heard a radio station blaring out of a car stereo since the 1990's.

I never heard anybody mention any of the top music stations in my own metro. They all use online streaming services.

Yet despite the fact that in day to day life it is difficult to see evidence of people listening to top rated stations, we know that happens because of the extensive research -- something which is simply not done in third world countries.

Obviously, in rural Africa and Asia there are no Neilsens. The jury's out concerning SW listening, or MW listening over country borders.

Compared to the cost of some other items in the US budget, I don't think USAGM is breaking the American bank.

Even looking at the online numbers on VOA's website, the number of visits per language group is rather small, and given that internet access in rural parts of the third world is spotty to non-existent, who knows if anyone listens to the SW broadcasts. But like I said, the cost to produce it is probably much less than an aircraft carrier, which -- in the day of drone swarms -- is probably little more than a moving target, a very expensive sitting duck.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The new VOA heads don't have to understand ratings methodology in Burkina Faso or Thailand or Bolivia. What they need to know is that shortwave died decades ago, nearly all international broadcasters are gone, and few people have short wave radios.
Click to expand...

The administration has explained very clearly why they shut down VOA, and the reason has nothing to do with ratings or shortwave.

DavidEduardo said:
And the funding can be removed, as it should be. A bunch of shortwave transmitters, a few distant MW ones and some leased time on bad stations in a few countries is not useful.
Click to expand...

The shutdown was not about transmitters. It was about people. Read the EO and the memo to staff. No mention of transmitters.
 
gr8oldies said:
Marti specifically comes off as a big FU to the Miami Cuban community, which are staunch Republican backers, and even to Marco Rubio.
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A lot of the older Cubans are still PO'ed at the Democrats because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. David, any insight as to why Latins tend to favor a "strong leader" even if that leader turns out to be a totalitarian despot.
 
TheBigA said:
The administration has explained very clearly why they shut down VOA, and the reason has nothing to do with ratings or shortwave.



The shutdown was not about transmitters. It was about people. Read the EO and the memo to staff. No mention of transmitters.
Click to expand...
It was about one person.
 
bigdonho said:
David, any insight as to why Latins tend to favor a "strong leader" even if that leader turns out to be a totalitarian despot.
Click to expand...
Much of that is tied into the predominant religious culture, whether it be devout Catholicism or Evangelical Protestantism. Both have authoritarian and hierarchical structures led by charismatic leaders. Much of that construct is emulated and reflected in local governments and politics.

The U.S., which for most of its history was dominated by a bland mishmash of smaller, decentralized and independent mainstream Protestant denominations, tended to avoid that dynamic…until the past few decades.

I will defer to David E. and his experience in the region for a more concise analysis.
 
TheBigA said:
You say broadcast radio has 90% reach. VOA says they reach 365 million people.

But it doesn't matter, because congress has funded VOA, the law covers what it does, and the president has no authority to shut it down.
Click to expand...
So....who's collecting the key cards and credentials, and locking the doors? Some DOGE hacker?
 


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