Washington, D.C., February 6, 2006- The key proposed for the Broadcast Board of Governors fiscal year 2007 budget for U.S. international broadcasting is to increase the spending by 7.5 % to US$671.9 million. The increases go primarily to Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Voice of America (VOA). At the same time non-war on terror related language services would see reductions and/or eliminations.
In recent years, the Bush Administration and Congress have wiped out the 40 percent cut in spending for international broadcasting during the 1990s following the end of the Cold War.
For fiscal year 2007, the budget proposal calls for a 13% increase for Middle East Broadcasting Networks and a 5.3% increase for Voice of America.
In work in progress, BBG continues to expand service to Iran with a daily four-hour prime time VOA Persian television lineup and enhancing the Radio Farda website; to increase Al Hurra Middle East TV news to run 24/7, up from 16 hours daily; to add customized local news content and coverage for Radio Sawa, and add a one-hour television program for Afghanistan in both Dari and Pashto, and enhance radio and TV to Afghanistan including adding additional FM and medium wave transmitter capability.
Reflecting recent moves at the BBC to focus on the Arab/Islamic world, US Government broadcasts sees losses in other areas in 2007, such as VOA flagship English shortwave programming - News Now radio. At least, VOA English to Africa, Special English and the VOA's English website www.voanews.com are to be maintained.
But also out are VOA broadcasts in Croatian, Turkish, Thai, Greek and Georgian. VOA radio broadcasts in Albanian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Serbian, Russian and Hindi would end while television programming in these languages would continue. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty will continue radio programming in Russian and Georgian while eliminating radio programming in Macedonian.
Ed comment - It constantly amazes me that while using radio and TV is one of the least expensive means to promote national objectives around the world, politicians in the west continue to argue over broadcast budgets. Why compromises have to be made with legislators who are too short sighted to understand the role of the government media in international relations is beyond my reasoning. In this context, the loss of VOA New Radio Now is totally incomprehensible. The programming does more than any other on VOA Radio to show what real America is all about, in English the second most widely spoken language on earth. There is a strong mantra in programming management: "If it works,don't mess with it". Doesn't VOA reach 120 million listeners a week? So why mess with it?
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