Voice of America adds Hokkien programs (1951), a USIS Taipei poster

A Chinese-language poster signed by USIS Taipei, dated 16 April 1951 in the National Archives file, announces added Voice of America programs in Southern Min (Hokkien), daily from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., with four shortwave frequencies and one mediumwave (NAID 5730145).

A schedule with a queue

The archive describes a cartoon line of men, women and a child in varied dress walking toward a radio, where a seated man is already listening. The poster also gives the facts a listener would need: the language, the time, the frequencies, and what the new programs carry.

美國之音 增播

閩南語節目

每日

廣播時間

下午六時

至六時半

短波 中波

兆週率 千週率

11.89 920

11.79

11.73

9.515

最新增

播節目！

國際新聞！

時事述評！

新聞註解！

美國新聞處

台北襄陽路

[English, from the archive's translation:] Voice of America, additional broadcasts: Southern Min (Hokkien) language programs. Daily broadcast time: 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Shortwave (megacycles): 11.89, 11.79, 11.73, 9.515. Mediumwave (kilocycles): 920. The newest added programs! International news! Commentary on current affairs! News explained! American Information Service (USIS), Xiangyang Road, Taipei.

Signed in Taipei

The poster carries its sender's name and street: the U.S. Information Service on Xiangyang Road in Taipei. The record credits USIS Taipei for the U.S. Information Agency's predecessor, the State Department information program, in its Asia posters series. Unlike the Stop! Criminal! poster in the same National Archives file, this one is classed as openly sourced: "the speaker is who they say they are." The audience is a foreign public, the theme media and information, and the purpose "Reassure."

Reading it

The archive tags bandwagon and plain folks. The queue of ordinary people, all walking toward the set, implies that everyone tunes in. That is the selling. The product is a broadcast schedule.

A government radio service is still a government speaking. What makes this poster an honest piece of it is that the listener is told exactly who is talking and when, and can switch off. The programs it lists are news, commentary and explanation of the news; the poster does not say what line they took, and the record has no recordings.

The following month the same information program advertised a Sunday Voice of America show for the Philippines on 920 kilocycles, the mediumwave figure printed here too: Everybody's Listening, catalog date 25 May 1951. The U.S. Information Agency hub discusses that sheet and the agency's other posters abroad.