Comments on VOA broadcasting history.

Comments on VOA broadcasting history. Walter Roberts article, "The Voice of America-Origins andRecollections II" recounts new information surrounding the February1942 beginnings of the New York phase of U.S. internationalbroadcasting. One missing piece is the role of The Crosley Corporation ofCincinnati, Ohio. Of the national engineering and broadcasting concerns like RCA See RCA connector and video/TV history. , GE,Westinghouse and CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. ; Crosley was the only one with experience in highpower broadcasting, having operated its flagship station, WLW WLW Weblogic Workshop (Adam Bosworth)WLW Ware Liefde WachtWLW Wei, Lin, Weissfeld (Reliability Model)WLW Women Library WorkersWLW Wild Life Warriors (World of Warcraft guild), at onemillion watts since the 1930's. WLW was the largest commercialstation that ever existed in the United States to this day. In May of 1940, Crosley inaugurated broadcasts from a shortwave short��wave?adj.1. Having a wavelength of approximately 10 to 200 meters.2. Capable of receiving or transmitting at wavelengths of approximately 10 to 200 meters: a shortwave radio. station with the call letters of WLWO. WLWO was licensed as a commercialshort wave station to broadcast into South America in English,Portuguese, and Spanish. But WLWO had some unusual characteristics thatmade its true nature something different than commercial radio. It had a75,000-watt transmitter, 50 percent above its licensed limit and thelargest shortwave transmitter operating in the nation at the time ... At the National VOA Museum of Broadcasting Museum of Broadcasting:see Museum of Television and Radio. * in Cincinnati, we haveseen postcards from happy listeners from South America. However, WLWOalso received postcards from Portugal as early as the end of 1940 andSwitzerland in November 1941, reinforcing (the notion) that WLWO had aseries of antenna trained on Europe from 1940 on. (T) here are alsopostcards from England in early 1941. (T) he most interesting feature of WLWO was that it had noadvertising staff at all. This fact was confirmed in an interview withformer Crosley staffer Blanche Underwood ... Yet WLWO carriedadvertising. Robert Pirsein's Ph.D. dissertation, also referenced by Mr.Roberts, recounts how the financing of stations like WLWO worked. Moneycame from Nelson Rockefeller's CIAA CIAAabbr.Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (Office of the Co-coordinatorof Inter-American Affairs). Money also came via President Roosevelt. Inmeetings with heads of industry, FDR would suggest to them that as apart of their contribution to the coming war effort they should buyadvertising on WLWO and the other stations also involved. So WLWObroadcast advertisements for domestic American products. The post cardsfrom listeners in Europe and South America talk about theadvertisements, and note that the products are not sold in the countriesthe broadcasts were heard in. By August 1941 money also came from theCOI, forerunner of the OSS Oss(ôs), city (1994 pop. 62,141), North Brabant prov., S Netherlands; chartered 1399. It is a significant industrial center. Manufactures include meat products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment, and metalware. . WLWO's employees were instructed totell people, if asked, that they worked at WLW, period. The'O' was never admitted to in public. WLWO's commercialstatus was a cover story; it was entirely supported by the U.S.government, one way or another. To answer the question about who made the first broadcast of theVoice of America, one might begin by defining what the Voice of Americawas in 1942. The answer usually given is that the Voice of America wasthe informal name of the radio operation of the Office of WarInformation Overseas Branch (OWIOB), located in New York. However,Executive Order 9182 established the Office of War Information on June13, 1942. So up until June 13, 1942, what was the Voice of America? Ifwe take the June 13, 1942 date as the formal beginning of the OWIOB, butwe know broadcasts were made before that, when did the broadcasts begin?Researching that turns up conflicting citations; some of which may beintentional disinformation due to the needs of fighting a war anddealing with a sometimes-hostile Congress. However, most citations notethat the CIAA and the COI began broadcasting in 1941. Evidence inCincinnati demonstrates clearly the broadcasts in Spanish, Portuguese,and English began in 1940 via WLWO. At some point the CIAA and the COIbegan using intelligence supplied by the British Security Coordination The British Security Coordination was a cover organization set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorization of Winston Churchill. (a division of MI6 located in New York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. ), and WLWO also began tobroadcast in German, French and Italian. Again, those languages werebroadcast from Cincinnati via WLWO on fixed antenna built specificallyto cover Europe beginning in August of 1941. Another missing piece in the article is the role of VOA broadcasterRobert Bauer. The only German language writer and broadcaster WLWO everhad was Bauer. He began broadcasting into Germany from Cincinnati inAugust 1941. By the time the Office of War Information was established,he had already been broadcasting on behalf of the United States intoGermany for eleven months, six of which were from Cincinnati. So thenotion of who made the first VOA broadcast into Germany on behalf of theUnited States would seem to be answered: it was Robert Bauer, and hemade that broadcast from Cincinnati in August of 1941. Mr. Fearing is principal with Fearing and Hagenauer Architects,Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio and a former president of the West Chester Twp.(Ohio) Historical Society. Editor's Note: The U.S. Government decommissioned its VOARelay Station at Bethany, Ohio in 1995 and awarded the site to WestChester Township in 2000. Photos, post cards, memoranda, notes andscripts from WLWO were found inside the VOA building when renovationsbegan shortly thereafter. The building is now home of the National VOAMuseum of Broadcasting. Dr. Walter Roberts Replies: The objective of my article was to clarify the birth date of theVoice of America (VOA) in view of newly found documents in the NationalArchives and of recently discovered VOA recordings in the Library ofCongress. We now know that the U.S. Government, at the highest level,decided after Pearl Harbor that it would undertake broadcastinginternationally. The United States agency in charge was the Coordinatorof Information (COI) and the COI's Foreign Information Service(FIS FISn abbr (BRIT) (= Family Income Supplement) → ayuda estatal familiar ) initiated, on February 1, 1942, broadcasts in German, French andItalian. Since the U. S. Government did not own short-wave transmitters,the broadcasts were transmitted by radiotelephone to London and relayedby the British Broadcasting Corporation (company) British Broadcasting Corporation - (BBC) The non-commercial UK organisation that commissions, produces and broadcasts television and radio programmes.The BBC commissioned the "BBC Micro" from Acorn Computers for use in a television series about using computers. (BBC BBCin full British Broadcasting Corp.Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. ). These broadcasts wereintroduced as Voice of America, a term coined by Robert Sherwood. Headof FIS, in January 1942. Commercial companies, such as NBC, Westinghouse, General Electric,Crosley and others owned shortwave transmitters. Indeed, several ofthese companies started as early as the nineteen thirties to broadcastin foreign languages. In 1938, NBC, Westinghouse and General Electricpooled their resources and established two networks - one for Europe andone for Latin America. The "RCA Review" of July 1938 citesNBC's outlet in Bound Brook, N.J.(W3XL) as relaying five dailybroadcasts in German and lists the air times of these transmissions.According to Mr. Fearing's letter, the Crosley Corporationinaugurated its short-wave transmitter (WLWO) in 1940 and added Germanbroadcasts in 1941, three years after NBC, Westinghouse and GE hadcoordinated their German and other foreign language broadcasts. When, in February 1942, VOA needed to supplement its BBC relaytransmissions with direct short-wave broadcasts, it had to leaseprivately owned transmitters to relay the New York produced programs.Crosley not only had the most powerful American short-wave transmitterin Bethany, Ohio, but its owner Powel Crosley, Jr. was a verycooperative lease negotiator. By the end of 1942 all American short-wavetransmitters were leased to the US Government as a wartime measure. Asmentioned in my previous article in American Diplomacy on the Voice ofAmerica **, VOA built one of its own transmitters (200kw) in Bethanywhere the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting is located. **http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2009/1012/fsl/roberts_voice.html http://www).unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2011/0104/fsl/fsl_robertsvoa.html Comment by Jim Fearing: