Comments on VOA broadcasting history.

• Author: Fearing, Jim
• Position: Voice of America

Walter Roberts article, "The Voice of America-Origins and Recollections II" recounts new information surrounding the February 1942 beginnings of the New York phase of U.S. international broadcasting.

One missing piece is the role of The Crosley Corporation of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Of the national engineering and broadcasting concerns like RCA, GE, Westinghouse and CBS; Crosley was the only one with experience in high power broadcasting, having operated its flagship station, WLW, at one million watts since the 1930's. WLW was the largest commercial station that ever existed in the United States to this day.

In May of 1940, Crosley inaugurated broadcasts from a shortwave station with the call letters of WLWO. WLWO was licensed as a commercial short wave station to broadcast into South America in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. But WLWO had some unusual characteristics that made its true nature something different than commercial radio. It had a 75,000-watt transmitter, 50 percent above its licensed limit and the largest shortwave transmitter operating in the nation at the time ...

At the National VOA Museum of Broadcasting* in Cincinnati, we have seen postcards from happy listeners from South America. However, WLWO also received postcards from Portugal as early as the end of 1940 and Switzerland in November 1941, reinforcing (the notion) that WLWO had a series of antenna trained on Europe from 1940 on. (T) here are also postcards from England in early 1941.

(T) he most interesting feature of WLWO was that it had no advertising staff at all. This fact was confirmed in an interview with former Crosley staffer Blanche Underwood ... Yet WLWO carried advertising.

Robert Pirsein's Ph.D. dissertation, also referenced by Mr. Roberts, recounts how the financing of stations like WLWO worked. Money came from Nelson Rockefeller's CIAA (Office of the Co-coordinator of Inter-American Affairs). Money also came via President Roosevelt. In meetings with heads of industry, FDR would suggest to them that as a part of their contribution to the coming war effort they should buy advertising on WLWO and the other stations also involved. So WLWO broadcast advertisements for domestic American products. The post cards from listeners in Europe and South America talk about the advertisements, and note that the products are not sold in the countries the broadcasts were heard in. By August 1941 money also came from the COI, forerunner of the OSS. WLWO's employees were...