The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

draft form, but has been held up by the board. The State Depart- ment’s Office of the Inspector General issued a critical report on Aug. 13. The administration’s current budget request eliminates VOA’s flagship English-language broad- casting service for the new fiscal year. Alan J. Heil Jr., a former deputy director of VOA, attacks this economy measure as a disas- trous move that ignores the role of English as a world language. He cites several foreign organizations that are opening English-language services. Moreover, RFE/RL and Radio Free Asia continue to broadcast and publish copious amounts of news in English on their Web sites. The cut occurs despite steadily rising appropriations for broadcasting since 2001, and prompts the question: could greater management efficiency free up resources to continue VOA English? When the new Middle East services were established in 2003, they set up separate studio and associated tech- nical services, contracting hastily under pressing dead- lines. Resentful personnel in the services wing of gov- ernment broadcasting — the International Bureau of Broadcasting, seen as a VOA entity — were probably not eager to make exceptional efforts. Three years on, how- ever, the do-it-yourself approach is showing some wear. While not challenging the concept of independent ser- vices focused on regions and a single Voice of America, the Government Accountability Office challenged their separate arrangements for support services in a 2004 report (GAO-04-7111). It said: “Organizationally, the existence of five separate broadcast entities has led to overlapping language services, duplication of program content, redundant newsgathering and support services, and difficulties coordinating broadcast efforts.” Two Strategic Challenges Broadcasting faces two strategic challenges: how to adapt to the rapidly changing global media environment; and how to connect to the global dialogue sponsored by all the other public diplomacy efforts. New technology abounds. Digital television broad- casting will become mandatory in a few years, posing high investment costs. Digital shortwave broadcasting offers expanded options for short- wave listeners. Meanwhile, young people in the developed world are abandoning terrestrial broadcasts to watch and listen on satellite and, increasingly, on computing devices. Recent studies show more than a billion Internet users. English, Chinese and Japanese dominate the language mix. “In fact, professionals in their 20s and 30s — the demographic that advertisers covet — are just as likely to spend time in front of a computer as in front of a TV set,” said a recent report from China. In the U.S., a bellwether for digital media, 19 percent of young people are listening to Internet radio each week, a number which has increased 50 percent over the past year. All the U.S. government’s foreign broadcasters have a Web presence, and all of them except Alhurra Television stream their programs — offering everyone the ability to listen and watch on a personal computer. That brings broadcast products to the desktop in digital form, where they can be combined as the user sees fit. If you wish to explore the possibilities, go to www.voanews.com (not .gov) and sign up for a Podcast or an RSS news feed. As the various government-sponsored broadcasters move toward complete Internet service, VOA seems to be in the lead. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also hosts a lively multimedia program mix at www.rferl.org. Radio Sawa offers digital versions of its eight playlists, each selected for a subregion of the Middle East through modern audience-sampling techniques. Alhurra Tele- vision so far offers only snippets of streaming video on its Web site, which is essentially a program guide. But the question is: how long can the individual sta- tions continue to upgrade technology without consolidat- ing their IT infrastructure and services? The second problem is that U.S. foreign broadcasts have rarely been plugged into embassies’ public diplo- macy effort, in deference to the so-called “firewall” pro- tecting them from political interference. When VOA was part of USIA, embassies assisted occasionally in market- ing broadcast products. That doesn’t happen very much any more. The newest broadcasters’ business model relies on leasing local AM and FM transmitters. It eschews efforts to get independent local stations to carry F O C U S 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 How long can the individual stations continue to upgrade technology without consolidating their IT infrastructure and services?