Radio Martí Turns 30 – But Is Anyone In Cuba Listening?
Radio Martí Turns 30 – But Is Anyone In Cuba Listening?
11:40 pm Tue May 19, 2015
By Wilson Sayre
Anchors broadcasting news from Radio Marti's studios.
Credit Charles Trainor / Miami Herald
May 20, 1985: Ronald Reagan was president. Madonna was topping the charts. And Radio Martí went on the air.
The Miami-based, federally-funded station began beaming Spanish-language news and entertainment into communist Cuba 30 years ago today. It was a sort of tropical version of Radio Free Europe – a Cold War effort to transmit information beyond the control of the island's totalitarian Castro regime.
But three decades later – and especially as the U.S. and Cuba now normalize relations – do enough of the 11 million people on that island tune in to Radio Martí and TV Martí to justify their current, combined $27 million budget?
It's a question few people in Washington or Miami were asking when the pro-democracy project was launched.
Most Cuban exiles had long since given up on the prospect of military intervention to rid Cuba of the Castros. Still, they insisted the U.S. government do something. And thanks to their voting clout, the feds responded with a compromise both the Beltway and South Florida could live with, a U.S.-run news operation targeted to Cubans.
. . .
But three decades later – and especially as the U.S. and Cuba now normalize relations – do enough of the 11 million people on that island tune in to Radio Martí and TV Martí to justify their current, combined $27 million budget?
More:
http://wlrn.org/post/radio-mart-turns-30-anyone-cuba-listening
= new reply since forum marked as read
Priorities people! Come on!
