The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

prevalent during World War II and the first two decades of the Cold War. Radio Moscow and Radio Tirana were typical examples. But despite rather awesome transmis- sion systems, neither of these networks ever attracted sig- nificant audiences because they lacked an essential ingre- dient, credibility. 2) Youth-oriented or entertainment radio. From 1985 to 1996, VOA Europe exemplified this approach before being abolished as part of a number of budget reductions. Since 2001, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has created new, predominantly pop-music formats to attract younger audiences in Arabic and Persian. These programs are heavy on entertainment, light on news. 3) Fact-based, news and information radio. The pri- mary examples over the years have been the BBC and VOA, which have amassed the largest global audiences and between them, currently reach a quarter of a billion listeners a week. They reflect and offer incisive, objective, on the scene reportage and analysis of events in their own countries as well as the world and regions to which they broadcast. History suggests that the third category of broadcasting — that is, “full service” programming — is likely to con- tinue to be the most successful model for the 21st centu- ry. This fact-based broadcasting, especially if it includes call-ins with experts in many fields, fosters dialogue with the new generation of reformers described earlier. It also inevitably expands the essential marketplace of ideas in an increasingly curious and increasingly digital world of fer- ment and change. The new non-government Arab TV networks illustrate how differing viewpoints can begin to make a difference. As veteran Dutch international broadcaster Jonathan Marks once put it: “We must share information, not shout it.” The challenges to U.S. publicly-funded international broadcasting and the IBB have become vastly more com- plex, technically as well as substantively. VOA and its growing array of sister networks are playing catchup, com- peting in a zillion-channel world to reach shortwave and medium-wave (AM) listeners via satellite. At the same time, they must move far beyond traditional shortwave delivery systems, entering already crowded and increas- ingly competitive television markets, and finding ways to fully exploit the potential of the Internet. And they must do all this on a planet where about half the people have yet to make their first telephone call. Furthermore, IBB navigators, working with the VOA director, are confronting the enormous geopolitical changes of the post-Cold War era. In particular, as noted, broadcasting to the Arab and Islamic worlds has become a high priority. An “Architectural Monstrosity” IBB Director Seth Cropsey and his staff are respond- ing to all these challenges from the helm of an unwieldy organizational structure that is devilishly difficult to man- age. International broadcasting veteran Mark Hopkins once called it “an architectural monstrosity.” Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review , he commented that, “White House and congressional tinkerers have attached a wing here, a porch there, a shaky cupola on top, and some dormers jutting from the roof.” Today, the International Broadcasting Bureau supports VOA and Radio Marti, including their television net- works. It provides engineering services for all U.S. gov- ernment-funded overseas broadcast entities (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radios Sawa and Farda, as well as VOA and the Martis). Its Office of Performance Review evaluates programming content at the Voice and the Martis. In addition to providing engineering support to all the networks, IBB reports to a U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors that is increasingly inclined to micromanage day-to-day operations and technical enhancements in the networks it oversees. The BBG, in fact, conceived of and pressed for the new networks, Radios Sawa (Arabic) and Farda (Persian), and the Middle East Television network (Arabic). Both METN and an Urdu language station to Pakistan, Radio Aap Ki Dunyaa (Your World Radio), are scheduled to launch in 2004. The contrast between the organizational structures of the Loomis and the Cropsey eras is stark. Yet the IBB has defied claims by some that federal bureaucracies are plodding and unresponsive to change. In just eight days last summer, IBB engineers, working closely with VOA’s Persian Service, expanded VOA Persian-language TV programs from two to seven days a week at the height of student demonstrations in Iran. Those programs, including call-in segments, are F O C U S J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 Alan L. Heil Jr, a retired deputy director of VOA, is author of Voice of America: A History (Columbia University Press, 2003).