Cable Chief Broadens His Audience

Having problems with your broadcast reception? Call the cable guy.

That’s what officials will do today when they summon Marc Nathanson to Washington and swear him in as head of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, Radio Free Asia and other international broadcast services operated by the United States.

Nathanson, of Westwood, is the founder and CEO of Falcon Cable, a Los Angeles-based company that provides cable television service to 1.1 million homes in non-urban areas across the country.

In his role as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors for the United States, he will help provide American-sponsored radio and television service to 100 million listeners abroad.

Nathanson, who was named by President Clinton to the nine-member board in 1995, was appointed by the president last fall to run it. He will be sworn in today by Vice President Al Gore in the White House’s Roosevelt Room.

The three-year appointment comes at a pivotal time for the nation’s international broadcast service.

In the past, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and the other outlets have been operated by the U.S. Information Agency. But Congress voted last year to abolish that organization and transfer its broadcast division to a nonprofit corporation run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

As officials have dealt with the pending Oct. 1 reorganization, some of their overseas broadcasts have prompted controversy--both in this country and abroad.

Authorities in Cuba, Iraq, China, Vietnam and other countries have tried to drown out the American broadcasts by jamming the radio frequencies with their own transmitters. And disputes have arisen among Cuban exiles in this country over the content of shows aired by Miami-based Radio Marti for listeners in Cuba.

Others, meantime, have questioned the need for U.S.-sponsored international broadcasts now that the Cold War is over and privately run CNN beams television news to much of the globe.

Nathanson said it is clear to him that the American broadcasts--which cost taxpayers about $400 million a year--are this country’s most cost-effective form of foreign policy.

But to keep it that way, he said, he is determined that broadcasts that come in 52 languages from Voice of America, nine languages on Radio Free Asia and 25 languages on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty remain accurate and objective.

And as the radio services beam increasingly specialized coverage of events into strife-torn parts of the world, Nathanson wants to ensure that listeners are able to hear a variety of voices and opinions about issues that affect them.

Although other U.S. Information Agency programs are being transferred to the State Department, his board will be what Nathanson calls a “firewall” between American foreign policymakers and newscasters working for Voice of America and the other outlets.

He said journalistic integrity is mandatory if the international broadcasts are to have credibility with local listeners.

Nathanson has already called for improvements in foreign-language broadcasts through the use of “independently verifiable research as to its makeup, tastes and demographics” of targeted countries’ listening audiences.

And he has warned staff members in the radio services to brace themselves for new technologies, “including television, direct satellite, digitalization and the Internet.”

Using his Hollywood connections to help make Voice of America more appealing to younger listeners, he has linked programmers from that service with top-level executives from the Disney Channel, E! Television, Westwood One and Fox Television.

Officials say Nathanson’s background in technology, business and marketing prompted Clinton to name him to the broadcast board. Nathanson’s longtime personal relationship with the president didn’t hurt, however.

The 54-year-old Nathanson said he first met Clinton 10 years ago when Hillary Rodham Clinton was a Little Rock lawyer serving on the board of one of Falcon’s Arkansas cable companies.

As a Democrat active in Los Angeles political circles, Nathanson later staged two fund-raisers at his home for Clinton and donated $50,000 to his reelection campaign.

Nathanson’s ties to Clinton will be beneficial for Voice of America and the other outlets, predicted Tom Korologos, a Washington lobbyist who is one of the four Republican appointees to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

“I like the fact that Marc is very close to the White House,” Korologos said. And his corporate skills are a plus too.

“Marc brings a business attitude to the committee, which is rare around here,” Korologos said.

Nathanson’s background makes him “a very good choice” to head the new independent agency, agreed Geoffrey Cowan, dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles.

“I think Marc combines a real sense of business entrepreneurship with the use of cutting-edge technology and an interest in people around the world,” said Cowan--who served as director of Voice of America between 1994 and 1996.

At his cable company’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters, Nathanson becomes passionate when the subject of the listening audience comes up.

“People say the Berlin Wall is down, that communism has fallen in Russia and Eastern Europe, that we have CNN covering the world, so why do we need organizations like Voice of America?” he said.

Offering an answer, Nathanson picked up a replica of a handmade radio that Nelson Mandela used to listen to Voice of America while imprisoned in South Africa.

“What this says to me is we were his only source of hope. Eighty percent of the world’s population does not have access to balanced news coverage of their own country,” he said.

Targeting radio news and talk shows to places like Iraq, Iran, Cambodia and China (in Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese and Uyghur dialect), the American-run outlets serve listeners who don’t have access to CNN television broadcasts or who do not speak English, he said.

Nathanson said Voice of America was the only source of news to citizens of the tiny African nation of Burkina Faso when government critic Norbet Zongo was murdered. And Radio Free Asia reported on farmers’ protests over taxes in China when official state television and radio did not. On Dec. 27, Chinese dissident Zhang Shanguang was sentenced to 10 years in prison for making comments to Radio Free Asia about the farmers’ grievances.

“We are a lifeline to people who feel very isolated in their own countries,” Nathanson said.

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A Worldwide Voice

Voice of America

Created in 1942 to counter World War II fascism, it now airs global, regional and U.S. news in 52 languages. Broadcasts on shortwave and medium-wave frequencies reach an estimated audience of 86 million each week. Programming is produced in Washington and beamed by satellite to 130 transmitter sites.

WORLDNET

Produces and acquires television programming that is broadcast on about 500 TV networks and stations around the world. Arabic, Farsi, Bosnian, Serbian and Ukrainian languages are used. Viewers in such countries as Iran use home satellite dishes to tune in.

Radio Marti

Broadcasting in Spanish since 1985 to listeners in Cuba, it airs news, features and entertainment shows for an audience estimated at about 2 million. Television programming called TV Marti is beamed during predawn hours from a transmitter attached to a balloon tethered 10,000 feet over the Florida Keys.

Radio Free Europe/

Radio Liberty

Created in 1949, it broadcasts news and current affairs shows in 25 languages to an estimated audience of 20 million from Prague, Czech Republic. Its stations cover an area from Central Asia to the Pacific, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from Russia to the Persian Gulf. Its stated goal is to promote democratic values and free-market economies in targeted countries.

Radio Free Asia

Established in 1994 in the wake of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy crackdown five years earlier, it focuses on local news pertaining to audiences in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Programming is produced in Washington and relayed to 12 transmitters aimed toward Asia.