Main Page | Month Archive | Email Updates | RSS Feed | Print Version

The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

STIRRINGS TO EXTEND TV AND RADIO MARTI’S LIVE DIGITAL BROADCASTS
JAN 29, 2007 - 3:28PM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author

Miami, Fla. -- Worldcasting's suggestion in an earlier posting that TV and Radio Marti programs be produced for all of Latin America -- not only for Cuba in a post-Fidel Castro world -- is receiving guarded reaction in Washington, DC. At the U.S. government's Office of Cuba Broadcasting studios here in Miami, where the Martis are headquartered, senior news executives politely refuse to comment on our idea that their broadcast portfolio be expanded throughout the Southern hemisphere. They direct us to Washington, DC and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the U.S. government's non-military broadcast services -- including the Martis -- after budget approval from Congress. Worldcasting has learned that while at least one of the BBG's nine members endorses our concept of broadening TV and Radio Marti programs to include lands beyond Cuba, we were reminded that Voice of America already has a broadcast service for Latin America. While this is so, VOA's Latin American service operates with a meager annual budget of $4.6 million, which "includes a popular Creole service to Haiti," says the BBG, compared to the $37.5 million budgeted annually for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Another difference is that the two international broadcast services are built on different models. The model for VOA's Latin American service was fashioned in the 1990s. Its concept was, and is, that programs are produced mainly for placement on "affiliate" stations in friendly countries, rather than going directly to listeners and viewers in nations abroad with oppressed democracies, and where broadcasts by indigenous state-run systems would not be available for the transmission of U.S. government programs. "Although shortwave is used, most of the listening audience comes from affiliates," Worldcasting is informed by BBG spokesperson Larry Hart. Joshua Fouts, VOA Deputy Chief-of-Staff in the 1990s said, "We worked on syndicating VOA to local FM affiliates throughout the country by giving them satellite transponders to pick up VOA's programming." Fouts, now the director of the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy, continued: "The Latin American service was still strong in Spanish and Creole, but on the decline in Portuguese to Brazil, which, though it still had state run evening news every night at 6, was considered a maturing democracy." Today the placement of programs on affiliate stations remains the norm for VOA's Latin American broadcast service. "The (VOA) radio programs have a wide audience on affiliates downloaded from satellite," contends the BBG’s Larry Hart. "The ability to expand TV rests on funding, not desire." Today's challenge is reaching audiences in areas where state leaders are not friendly toward the U.S. and do not promote democratic values. Such areas include Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez, a Fidel Castro disciple, has seized control of his nation's oil industry and says he intends to nationalize his country's electricity and telecommunications industries. The new president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, a follower of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, likewise plans to assert himself into the country's private sector. The new president of Nicaragua, left-leaning Daniel Ortega,…... FULL TEXT
 
Read Comments (3) | Add Your Own

Read Comments:

Guy Farmer on January 30, 2007 @ 10:31 pm:
Al: We were doing large-scale local radio placement of VOA material in Venezuela in the 170s and in Colombia in the 1980s, so that type of placement was underway by USIS posts in Latin America long before the 1990s. Best Regards,

Alan Simpson on January 31, 2007 @ 9:01 am:
We blast the Arabs for their propaganda TV and ridicule everyone from Chavez to Al Qaeda for poluting the airwaves with their propaganda then go and join them with Marti. It's time to stop being a spoilt sulking little brat that had it's ass kicked in the Bay of Pigs and grow up!

The vast majority of people in Cuba would love to enjoy the economic fruits of their prosperous neighbor, and watching "Deal or No Deal" and normal Network TV makes them want it even more. Watching the right wing loonies pumping propaganda at them makes them think the US is no better than their government.

Marti has been a huge, expensive failure designed to pander to Batista refugees with a stranglehold on Florida. Pack up the whole lot and send them over to Iraq. Marti and Fidel are long overdue for the scrap heap.

Wilhelmena on January 31, 2007 @ 2:42 pm:
sounds like a good idea to me, particularly in view of chavez' take overs.

Add a Comment:

Your Name:
Your Email:
Comment:
Please enter the word you see in the image below:

NOTE: Comments are moderated by CPD and will typically be posted if they are relevant and respectful.