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VOA Tells World About 2004 U.S. Elections


Voice of America broadcasts news of 2004 presidential election in 44 languages to a world audience.

Washington, D.C., Nov. 2, 2004 – In response to unprecedented demand, the Voice of America carried news of the U.S. presidential election to a worldwide audience in 44 languages over radio, television, and the Internet.

“Every four years, the U.S. presidential election is a major news event for us and for our international audience,” said VOA Director David Jackson. “But this year, we had more requests for coverage, particularly on television, than ever before.”

Among the many highlights of election coverage:

  • VOA’s Spanish Branch broadcast a three hour ¨live¨ television/radio simulcast of election coverage with live streaming on the Internet. Parts of this program were carried by more than two dozen television stations throughout Latin America, including national networks in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Uruguay.
    VOA Persian’s News and Views TV program aired a special one-hour election night television broadcast. News and Views also expanded to 90-minutes on Nov. 3, the anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1980.
    VOA Hindi’s seven “live” special election feeds reached an unprecedented number of viewers in India through its affiliation with Aaj Tak, India's leading television news channel.
    VOA’s Indonesian Service produced 14 programs and special feeds for the top three national television networks in Indonesia. VOA affiliate Metro TV alone has 140 million viewers.
    VOA’s Thai Service prepared a three-hour television extravaganza to seven television affiliates. The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok believes the program reached 40 to 50 million viewers.
    Radio Aap Ki Dunyaa, VOA’s Urdu-language radio program, aired a four-hour special election broadcast to Pakistan.
    VOA’s Eurasia Division provided affiliates with 24 television reports in eight languages during the prime morning broadcast time. Among these affiliates were some of the most popular nationwide television and radio networks, with millions of viewers or listeners. VOA’s Serbian television reports alone were used by 34 stations.
    VOA’s Armenian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, and Turkish services all produced special television programs to major television stations in the region.
    VOA’s Worldwide English provided live reports on election night for Headlines Today, one of India’s leading 24/7 English-language news channels. They also delivered several television packages as well as Q/As to two premier television stations in Hong Kong that can be seen in parts of China.
    VOA TV to Africa provided special reports for SABC in South Africa and KBC, the only national TV station in Kenya. In fact, KBC broke off from CNN to carry live a VOA report on the latest developments in English and in Swahili.

These are just a sampling of the election night coverage broadcast by VOA in 44 languages.

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 100 million people. Programs are produced in 44 languages.

For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 401-7000, or e-mail publicaffairs@voa.gov.

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