On Sat, 08 May 2004 09:23 am -0600 UTC, Jay posted:
%MM

I drifted away from sw listening for a few months and upon my return seem
to have discovered that I can no longer receive any of my old VOA
frequencies. I used to be able to listen to their Caribbean and Central
America feeds like locals, and during the day I got other feeds, generally
pretty well. Now I can't find them at all.

What are the details of what has happened at VOA and are there any
transmissions still receivable in the Northeast USA?

Jay

From April/2004 Monitoring Times:
John Figliozzi writes on p 44 (summary in my words):

He called it "death by 1000 cuts".
VOA's already reduced to 19 hrs/day will soon be cut to 14. Smith-Mundt Act
(I'm not familiar with this) which means the changes are done out of public
view. The board of governors (mixture of commercial broadcasters and
political appointees) prefer spending $ on obscure commercial-sounding
propaganda outlets instead (Radio Free Asia, R. Farda, R. Sawa etc [I don't
know what the etc might be]). Other languages are also being cut. He
wondered if the funding cuts for VOA is b/c their charter maeans gov't
can't interfere and funding other outlets is subject to no such
constraints. He suggests writing to gov't representatives.

---
I'm guessing these cuts have occurred and continue. I don't generally
pursue VOA but have noticed I don't come across it as much when going after
other stations.
--
-UA