From its start in 1942, the VOA has been providing news and information programming to people even in the furthest reaches of the world. Since 1962, the VOA Edward R. Murrow Relay Station at Greenville, NC has been providing high power shortwave broadcasts from two huge transmitter sites.
LBA congratulates our friends at VOA for 70 years of radio service
LBA is proud to be a Greenville neighbor of these facilities. The transmitter sites, Sites A and B, are located some 15 miles (24 km) north and south, respectively of the LBA offices.
VOA Director David Ensor says the international broadcast agency is aggressively moving forward with new programs that ensure it remains an “information lifeline to people in closed societies like Iran.” Ensor said the one-time cold war broadcaster is “as relevant today as it was February 1st, 1942,” the date of the first shortwave radio broadcast to Germany.”
Greenville, NC VOA Site A – 3000 acres (7500 ha) of antennas
Created by the U.S. government in the opening days of World War Two, the Voice of America has evolved into a global multi-media organization, broadcasting balanced and comprehensive news in 43 languages to an estimated weekly audience of 141 million.
The first shortwave radio transmission, spoken in German just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, began with the words “Here speaks a voice from America.” The broadcast went on to promise, “The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth.”
Today, shortwave broadcasting remains a critical means of delivering information and entertainment around the world. A number of private shortwave broadcasters also operate from the United States, and many more around the world. The NASB, National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters, is the trade association for shortwave radio stations in the United States.
Since 1963, LBA Group, Inc., and its LBA Technology and Lawrence Behr Associates units, has supported the medium wave and shortwave broadcast industry with systems, components, and services. See our offerings HERE.
I’ve been out to the VOA site and it is incredible. It is an antenna farm of great magnitude. It’s amazing to me to think that they are still broadcasting after all these years. They are still providing a worthwhile service to parts of the world that live in darkness. I know it’s hard for us to believe there are still places like that today.
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Those of us that were/are stationed in remote parts of the world love to tune our short wave radios to VOA. Thank you for keeping us informed and entertained.
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70 years is impressive but the BBC World Service has just celebrated 80 years!
It’s a shame that the shortwave network is in terminal decline. And after all that work we (Marconi) did at Morocco, Thailand, Botswana, Rhodes and Sri Lanka. Still have fond memories of VOA who indirectly provided me with some wonderful business trips to Tinian and Sri Lanka as well as some less good ones to Kuwait……
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I started my career as a BBC TA at Skelton transmitting station, working with Marconi 100KW SWB-18′s and RCA twin-60KW’s. The EIC was a guy called Keir, a bit of a strange guy.
ln
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I was transmitting VOA in the 80′s from Daventry alongside the BBC World Service. At the time we had SWB18, BD253′s (100kW), BD272′s (250kW) and BD6126′s (300kw).
The SW18′s were decommissioned to make way for the BD6126′s but the two types did co-habit opposite each other for a while.
The highest power we achieved was 500kW which involved paralleling two BD272′s. I can’t recall if VOA was transmitted in that mode though.
ln
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Thanks for all the comments on the post. It’s wonderful to hear these stories! For myself, I was in radio in Greenville in the early 1960′s and was often on the three sites of the Greenville station as they were being built. Of course, we know the present remaining two sites well. LBA has assisted VOA by crafting special replacement RF parts for the aging transmitters, some of which were made in the 1950′s and still in service.
ln
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This article describes the beginnings of the VOA on the West Coast: http://www.theradiohistorian.org/wcsw/wcsw.htm
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