History

The history of U.S. international media spans nearly 75 years, starting with the creation of the Voice of America (VOA) during World War II. U.S. civilian broadcasting was born in February 1942 when American writer and journalist William Harlan Hale initiated VOA’s first radio show. 

Today, VOA is one of five U.S. civilian broadcast networks that fall under the purview of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The others are Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which went on the air on July 4, 1950 with a broadcast to communist Czechoslovakia from a studio in New York City; the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) with its Radio and TV Martí, which started broadcasting in 1985 and 1990, respectively; Radio Free Asia (RFA), which was founded on March 12, 1996; and the Arabic-language stations Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which were launched in 2004.