"Le Pick-Up Americain"

Like a man hopefully shooting arrows into the empty air, the wartime "Voice of America" beamed 2,500 broadcasts a week into the heart of Europe and Asia. Nobody knew, or could prove, whether it did any good or not. But the idea was to encourage resistance forces and combat Axis propaganda. When the war ended, the "Voice" died to a whisper. It was cut down by a budget-minded Congress to a scanty $8,000,000 a year (less than the U.S. spent last year on its wildlife care), and most of its overseas programs were farmed out to private networks.

Last summer the weakened Voice was nearly stilled altogether when outraged Congressmen discovered that an NBC scriptwriter had been wisecracking about their home states (e.g., "New England was founded by hypocrisy, and Texas . . . by sin"). When the smoke cleared away, NBC and CBS had canceled their Government contracts. The Voice got a new appropriation of nearly $12 million and was made one of the chores of able Career Diplomat George Allen, new Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.

Last week the Voice, finally on its own, was concentrating on a new job very much like its wartime duty: trying to encourage anti-Communist resistance forces and combat Soviet propaganda. Getting started again had taken time. Because of strict loyalty checks, the Voice had spent six months clearing its new employees with the FBI. Because it cannot buy service from the Associated Press or the United Press, the Voice sometimes gets scooped by foreign newspapers as well as by the Soviet radio.

In the field of entertainment, the Voice does an impressive job. It alternates the New York Philharmonic with jam sessions, offers foreign listeners forums, cultural roundups, discussions of U.S. science, literature, ballet, and dramatizations of various aspects of U.S. life (e.g., installment buying). To date, no U.S. comedians or soap operas have been broadcast to overseas listeners.

The State Department feels that the Voice is making headway abroad, in spite of handicaps. George Allen says: "Luckily, the Moscow press and radio give us an almost exact gauge of the effectiveness of our programs . . . Radio Moscow's efforts to answer the message of Democracy, carried by the Voice, have grown into a hysterical scream during recent weeks, and 18 Soviet stations have been identified as trying to jam us. We are clearly stinging the Kremlin."

From four world capitals, TIME correspondents last week reported on the effectiveness of the Voice:

In France, the Voice's programs are listed in all radio magazines, including the Communist Radio Revue which, at the same time, editorially warns against listening to "le pick-up Americain." France is the only European country except Greece that relays a Voice program on its own medium wave band. The Voice's local director, Simon Copans, also runs three weekly disc-jockey shows specializing in American music.

In Poland, where people are justifiably cynical about their own press and radio, the Voice has many avid listeners. On the whole, Poles think that it does a good job, especially since it began using BBC relay facilities and came through more clearly. Said one Pole: "The BBC is so diplomatic, so careful, we don't learn much from it. The 'Voice of America' comes right out with everything." The Polish government has made no effort of any kind to prevent people from listening. Said a Polish minister complacently: "We are not worried. Let the Voice drone on. It tells so many lies, and about things the people of Poland know, that in a year or two everybody will stop listening."

In Great Britain, virtually nobody--except radio fanatics--listens to the Voice. Britons, unlike other Europeans, have no particular reason to turn away from the BBC's excellent and generally impartial newscasts.

In China, news and commentary in English seem to inspire the greatest interest. Music surges and blurs and is generally unsatisfactory. Local rebroadcasts reach the largest audience and are distributed to radio stations throughout the nation. The discouraging fact is that the potential audience in China for direct broadcasts is limited to the wealthy few (only .0003% of the population) who own short-wave sets.

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