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

[TheBigA]

When I was GM, even at a group I was CEO and a board member of, the budget had to pass the BOD approval... either directly or via a committee that reported to a member of the board.

That's not how it works for government. Congress has total control of the purse. In this case, the president only has veto power, and it can be overridden.

And all three are very mainstream and conventional. All shared what I would call a "NATO" worldview. Different designs for the flag, but the same core values.

The VOA once played on that same field until now. We have ceded our role to them. We now are trying to run a world power the way Cumulus runs radio stations. Not very impressive.

 

[Mediafrog+]

In time, there will probably be viable alternatives that would be free of Musk's interference.
Unless maybe it could be implemented using an existing network of satellites that's not Starlink.

Perhaps this: Project Kuiper

 

[davideduardo]

The VOA once played on that same field until now. We have ceded our role to them. We now are trying to run a world power the way Cumulus runs radio stations. Not very impressive.

How can you cede something that barely exists? As I said before, going back 6 decades I have examined the raw "field data" from ratings in a dozen or so Latin American nations and never saw a VOA mention at all... even back int he 60's and 70's when shortwave was still sort of alive.

 

[TheBigA]

How can you cede something that barely exists? As I said before, going back 6 decades I have examined the raw "field data" from ratings in a dozen or so Latin American nations and never saw a VOA mention at all... even back int he 60's and 70's when shortwave was still sort of alive.

You did something that no one in the government ever did, and was never given as a stipulation for the VOA to exist. The shut down of VOA and defunding of USAGM wasn't based on ratings. You're imposing a commercial radio basis on a government agency. That's not how the decision was based. It was based on political ideology. They said so directly in the executive order that was issued and signed by the president. At no time did he say anything about ratings data. This is all about ideology. The president is saying "I don't like you're coverage, therefore I am shutting you down." That's the same thing he's saying to NPR, to 60 Minutes, and to anyone who says or does anything he doesn't like. That is the basis for how decisions are being made. You need to get used to the new reality, where ratings and data no longer matter. Earlier I compared this government to how Cumulus runs its radio stations, but that was too generous. Even Cumulus doesn't make its bad decisions based on the whim of the CEO. But that was the basis given for the shutdown of VOA. You may invent whatever personal rationale that appeals to you. But it wasn't the reason.

 

[davideduardo]

You did something that no one in the government ever did, and was never given as a stipulation for the VOA to exist. The shut down of VOA and defunding of USAGM wasn't based on ratings. You're imposing a commercial radio basis on a government agency.

No, I am basing logic on a government agency... which may be even worse. Logic says that if you can't even buy shortwave radios at working-class prices in local retail stores in most of the world anymore, there is no place for shortwave radio for any purpose.

What I am saying, based on ratings, is that "nobody is listening" and "nobody has been listening for decades.".

That's not how the decision was based. It was based on political ideology. They said so directly in the executive order that was issued and signed by the president. At no time did he say anything about ratings data. This is all about ideology. The president is saying "I don't like you're coverage, therefore I am shutting you down."

But that is the same thing. Trump and his people are saying that the service is worthless. Their reason is also sound, as the kind of coverage VOA was presenting was very "inside the Beltway" inspired and not valid in the real world.

That's the same thing he's saying to NPR, to 60 Minutes, and to anyone who says or does anything he doesn't like.

There are many people who think that the national government should not be financing media. I'm one of them. But my reasoning has to do with the cost of many things the government does not have to do or need to do. My basis is the national debt, which costs more in interest than we can afford. Others want unnecessary agencies or functions closed for purely political reasons, but often common goals are based on different objectives.

That is the basis for how decisions are being made. You need to get used to the new reality, where ratings and data no longer matter. Earlier I compared this government to how Cumulus runs its radio stations, but that was too generous. Even Cumulus doesn't make its bad decisions based on the whim of the CEO. But that was the basis given for the shutdown of VOA. You may invent whatever personal rationale that appeals to you. But it wasn't the reason.

That does not matter. As I said, common goals are often based on different objectives.

And Cumulus doles run its stations based, principally, on the "whims" of Mary Berner. The day to day decisions, up to and including the closure of "dead" AM stations, are her decision.

I hope we are beyond the idea that the board of directors of a public corporation actually has to approve format changes, the hiring or firing of staff, leasing office space, even selling whole market clusters.

 

[Mediafrog+]

VOA staff may return in the coming days: A Victory Against the Trump Administration: Voice of America May Resume Operations

 

[RadioFan2J3]

In other words, over the monthly household income of over half of the countries of the world, without adding in shipping, import duties, taxes, antennas and a screen and audio system to display the content on. In About half the world, such a system would be about the equivalent of a year's earnings.

Yes, the Exchange price for those AFRTS receivers was indeed well over the average monthly incomes, but perhaps in context, 99% of the world can't walk into an Exchange store and buy one of those receivers and then, they probably aren't going to be authorized users of AFRTS service.

My comparison of the nearly $400 receivers to the $20 receivers was to show the spread of costs for the devices - the low end receivers were manufactured for the mass-market consumers vs those SA/Cisco receivers which were professional level units.

I also found the AFRTS receivers were not really user friendly for the more typical home use of multiple services. They were generally fixed frequency receivers and required going into the programming menu to change to other satellite services on the same satellite. The mass-market low end receivers generally had an on-screen menu to go to the difference services available on a given satellite and easy access to all of those other services, unless encrypted.

I do have to admit, I really never experimented with the AFRTS receivers to see if they could be set up for multiple services on a satellite. Frankly, when I had an AFRTS receiver, it was left on the AFRTS news channel, to drone in the background in my office. But that was me. Maybe, other home viewing habits for the AFRTS audience would be more in line with typical US domestic viewing - channel hopping.

Those $20 receivers? They were in the electronics section of the larger mixed product stores, such as Carrefour and LuLu Hypermart.

 

[RadioFan2J3]

Inexpensive? By American standards, perhaps. But for most of the rest of the world, the cost of that equipment and its installation is huge if not totally prohibitive.

But these costs are one-time costs, not monthly costs. But, I will agree with you, that for those families at the very low end of the income spectrum, they may very well be doing without, but sometimes entertainment is scarce and families make sacrifices to be able to afford some of these luxuries in life.

From a personal point of view, several years ago, we did have DirecTV service but I started to analyze our television viewing habits and realized that the per-hour cost of our television watching is getting out-of-hand and we cancelled. And we never looked back.

Also consider that installation costs are going to be somewhat relative to the prevailing wages in those countries.

And that is just a portion of the cost. In most of the rest of the world, people don't live in single family homes in the suburbs. If you are in Madrid or Milano or Moscow, you have to get access to the roof of the building your flat is in and figure out how to run wires back to your location. The cost is considerable.

And in many newer multiple story apartment buildings, there is already conduit from roof locations to the individual flats and roof walls already have steel support devices tied into the concrete rebar specially for the mounting of satellite dishes..

With that said, people living in apartment buildings with say, 20 or more floors, the rent levels of such apartments are such that those people living in these buildings aren't being paid the average salary in the country.

Unless a person is the first occupant of an apartment (or perhaps more correctly, the first satellite user for the apartment, there may already be a dish on the roof, a working LNB and good cable to the apartment.

Let's take a country nearer the high end: Romania. Average household income is around $600 a month. In Burkina Faso it is under $150 a month. In Egypt is around $300. Average income around the world

For grins and giggles, I pulled up Google Earth and Streetview for a random street in Cairo and saw multiple buildings, apparently apartment buildings with multiple Ku band satellite dishes on both the roofs and for apartments which were on the side of the building where the geostationary satellite arc is visible, satellite dishes on the balcony. But one problem with a lot of Egypt is the lack of Streetview for places outside Cairo.

Simply because there are multiple countries with low average monthly salaries does not mean there isn't any satellite receiving capabilities in many of thse homes. I think there is more than one might think.

To bring this discussion more to the meat of the topic, of all of these homes/residences with free-to-air receivers in use, how many were watching USAGM sourced programming?

No idea.

 

[TheBigA]

Trump and his people are saying that the service is worthless. Their reason is also sound, as the kind of coverage VOA was presenting was very "inside the Beltway" inspired and not valid in the real world.

That's not what they are saying. They are saying it's "leftist propaganda." If you don't agree with the president, you're a radical socialist, and therefore should be fired, and your money cut off. They said nothing about ratings, coverage, delivery, or anything else. It was all about ideology. For that, they put thousands of people on paid leave. Those people are still being paid, facilities are still owned, and no actual changes have been made.

There are many people who think that the national government should not be financing media. I'm one of them. But my reasoning has to do with the cost of many things the government does not have to do or need to do.

That's a political discussion, and not a media discussion. You're just confirming what I'm saying that this decision wasn't made because of ratings, coverage, or outdated technology. It was made for political reasons. The people who made those decisions weren't authorized by the law to take those actions, and that's why the judges have ruled against the government. If the congress passed a law, and appropriated the money, then the money has to be spent. It's not up to a president to make that decision. If they want to change the law, they have the power to do it in congress. They have majorities in both houses. They can take up the various laws and repeal them. But that's not what has happened.

And Cumulus doles run its stations based, principally, on the "whims" of Mary Berner. The day to day decisions, up to and including the closure of "dead" AM stations, are her decision.

That's not true. Under the terms of the bankruptcy agreement, Mary Berner works for the lenders. She does what they tell her to do. If they tell her to cut costs by shutting down AMs, that's what she does. Berner has teams of people who are knowledgeable about formats and technology, and those people advise her based on facts, not her personal taste or political opinion. She personally doesn't agree with the company's talk show hosts. But they attract ratings and money, and they get to say what they want. That wasn't the process used at VOA.

 

[TheBigA]

This is all about ideology. The president is saying "I don't like you're coverage, therefore I am shutting you down."

But that is the same thing. Trump and his people are saying that the service is worthless.

They are not the same thing. We have to be clear about that. When the president uses the power of the government to shut down the press, that is unconstitutional. It's not being based on worth or value. It's based on political ideology. This is King George shutting down Ben Franklin's newspaper because it said bad things about the king. This is Castro shutting down all news coverage in Cuba because it was critical of him. It's not about ratings, coverage, technology, or being "inside the beltway." It is none of those things. It is the president shutting down criticism. Congress actually put safeguards in the system to protect USAGM from such a president. Those safeguards were overridden on purpose because the president's people knew they were there, and why they were there. All this was laid out in Project 2025. Nobody is hiding anything or using industry reasoning to justify their actions. The only thing they've done is bypass congress, but the net result is the government is abridging the freedom of the press. That's unconstitutional. The constitution doesn't give an exception if the president feels the service is worthless.

 

[TheBigA]

According to reports, VOA employees were poised to return to their offices this week, following a judges ruling on Friday. But then an appeals court issued a stay on Saturday. So apparently the return is on hold:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/03/voice-of-america-resume-broadcasting-00325193

Court foils plan to reinstate more than 1,000 Voice of America employees

After an earlier ruling raised hopes of getting VoA back on air, an appeals court sided with the Trump administration

www.theguardian.com

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Georgia music icons R.E.M. release new video of 'Radio Free Europe' for World Press Freedom Day

The updated video is set to a remix of the band's 1981 debut single and celebrates the 75th anniversary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

www.gpb.org

Here is one from REM for their re release of Radio Free Europe in response to where we are today.

 

[Mediafrog+]

According to reports, VOA employees were poised to return to their offices this week, following a judges ruling on Friday. But then an appeals court issued a stay on Saturday. So apparently the return is on hold:

Even if the various USAGM services make it back on the air, what direction will they take? They are all now under an administration that is hostile to their existence. Seems they need a plan to go forward, otherwise they’re just blindly stumbling through chaos.

I still think any resumption of programming will be short lived, especially shortwave distribution.

 

[TheBigA]

They are all now under an administration that is hostile to their existence. Seems they need a plan to go forward, otherwise they’re just blindly stumbling through chaos.

They're all experienced professionals and know what their jobs are.

 

[davideduardo]

They're all experienced professionals and know what their jobs are.

Your statement reads like talking about "experienced blacksmiths" in New York City in Y2K.

They may be experienced, but they are producing something that is obsolete.

 

[TheBigA]

They may be experienced, but they are producing something that is obsolete.

The platform may be obsolete, but the news is the news.

 

[davideduardo]

The platform may be obsolete, but the news is the news.

Again, all they have is an obsolete platform. What they have is like owning a bag of coffee, but having no stove, no water, no pot and no cups.

VOA is... and never was... a "news station" as a lot of the programming was stuff like jazz shows and features about things in the United States.

 

[TheBigA]

VOA is... and never was... a "news station" as a lot of the programming was stuff like jazz shows and features about things in the United States.

And yet the only reason being given for why they were shut down was because of the news. If you re-read the interview with Kari Lake in the OP of this thread, it's all she talks about. It's as though they don't know about the other stuff. Because they don't.

 

[ted chittenden]

Again, all they have is an obsolete platform. What they have is like owning a bag of coffee, but having no stove, no water, no pot and no cups.

VOA is... and never was... a "news station" as a lot of the programming was stuff like jazz shows and features about things in the United States.

Not exactly true. VOA was initially a propaganda arm set up by the Information Agency to challenge the Soviet narrative during the Cold War. It was decided that the best ways to accomplish this goal were:

1) Provide uncensored news about the world in many languages, especially about what the Soviet Union and its satellites were doing; and

2) provide cultural programming about what life was actually like in the United States to counter some of the Soviet narratives.

The second goal included providing shows featuring popular music genres in the U.S. It also included answering listeners' questions about life in the U.S. The answers were usually obtained by interviewing experts in the subject on which the question was being asked. (This, by the way, is how I know that the VOA had listeners, whether or not they showed up in ratings surveys; and I do not accept that the letters, some of which had hard-to-pronounce names on them, were faked.)

I find myself in a torn position here. While I agree with Mediafrog+ that allowing the VOA to come back as it was would only push the current White House to make it more of a propaganda machine; on the other hand, this President *must* be forced to accept that he cannot end the work of Federal and non-Federal agencies on his say-so alone; that is what dictators do. Viktor Orban does it in Hungary; Vladamir Putin does it in Russia; and XI Ziping (I probably misspelled that one) behaves that way in the People's Republic of China.

 

[davideduardo]

Not exactly true. VOA was initially a propaganda arm set up by the Information Agency to challenge the Soviet narrative during the Cold War. It was decided that the best ways to accomplish this goal were:

1) Provide uncensored news about the world in many languages, especially about what the Soviet Union and its satellites were doing; and

2) provide cultural programming about what life was actually like in the United States to counter some of the Soviet narratives.

Yes, and most of the programming done on the VOA... in terms of percentages... has been "magazine features" and things like jazz. News has been the lesser percentage of all offerings.

The second goal included providing shows featuring popular music genres in the U.S. It also included answering listeners' questions about life in the U.S. The answers were usually obtained by interviewing experts in the subject on which the question was being asked. (This, by the way, is how I know that the VOA had listeners, whether or not they showed up in ratings surveys; and I do not accept that the letters, some of which had hard-to-pronounce names on them, were faked.)

I've actually worked for the agency that controls VOA, Radio Martí and other services. And, as someone involved in news and talk programming in Latin America going back to the mid-1960's, I am very familiar with at least the Spanish, Portuguese and English services. I recall on one trip through Central America and northern South America in 1963 when I wanted some good international news coverage while in places like Honduras and Nicaragua, it took hours of listening to find a newscast.

Ratings are a sample of a universe, usually a city. As such, they are stratified and balanced by ages, incomes, gender and other factors. In countries ranging from Argentina and Chile to Mexico and the Dominican Republic, I saw and inspected the raw data in many decades and eras and did not find evidence of VOA listening. That means, in a random probability sample, that the percentage of people listening was infinitely small... too small to be picked up by a well designed sample.

I find myself in a torn position here. While I agree with Mediafrog+ that allowing the VOA to come back as it was would only push the current White House to make it more of a propaganda machine; on the other hand, this President *must* be forced to accept that he cannot end the work of Federal and non-Federal agencies on his say-so alone; that is what dictators do. Viktor Orban does it in Hungary; Vladamir Putin does it in Russia; and XI Ziping (I probably misspelled that one) behaves that way in the People's Republic of China.

The fact that the VOA is a waste of money and does something other than what it was chartered to do makes it unneeded. The VOA was a product of the Cold War, and we can likely agree that we entered a new stage when the Berlin Wall was taken down. Today, China is attempting to dominate the world not via ideology but by trade and the financing of infrastructure in less developed nations, including the control of key metals and rare earths in places like a number of African nations. And by controlling key elements of the economy in some nations, such as the ports serving the Panama Canal, the new port NW of Lima in Peru, the ports of Esmeraldas and Guayaquil in Ecuador, etcetera.

Conceptually and ideologically, the VOA and its associated services are antiquated and obsolete.