A Sunday half hour from the Voice of America, advertised in the Philippines in 1951

Everybody's Listening is an English poster for "America Calling the Philippines," a Sunday Voice of America program at 5:30 p.m. on 920 kilocycles. It is filed with the State Department and U.S. Information Agency posters distributed in Asia, catalog date 25 May 1951 (NAID 5730146).

The poster

A cartoon procession crosses the sheet toward a radio set: a woman in traditional dress, a man with a pipe, a woman carrying books, a farmer under a wide hat, a girl. A man kneels at the set, already tuned in. The words do two jobs. They name the broadcaster, and they give the time and the frequency.

EVERYBODY'S LISTENING to AMERICA calling the PHILIPPINES

the special program of The VOICE of AMERICA

EVERY SUNDAY 5:30 TO 6:00 P.M. / REGULAR BROADCAST BAND / 920 KILOCYCLES

FATHER! MOTHER! BOYS! GIRLS! / ENTERTAINING! EDUCATIONAL! INFORMATIVE!

Who made it

The National Archives holds the sheet in Record Group 306, in the series of propaganda posters distributed in Asia. The maker line names the U.S. Information Agency and, as its predecessor, the State Department's International Information and Educational Exchange Program. FRAME classes the source as openly sourced. The station's name is the headline, so there is nothing to work out.

How to read it

FRAME tags bandwagon and plain folks. "Everybody's listening" is a claim no poster can back, and the procession of ordinary people is drawn to make a listener feel late. That is advertising grammar, the same grammar a soap or a local station would use.

The more important thing on the sheet is the label. A listener who tuned to 920 on a Sunday evening knew that the voice was America's, because the poster said so in its largest type. That is what an overt information program looks like: the speaker is named, the hour is printed, and a listener who disliked it could turn the dial. Compare the stations the CIA funded behind a private committee in the same years, told in the Crusade for Freedom study. Those broadcasts used honest names on the air, but Americans asked to pay for them were not told who really did.