Radio: OWI Bear Hug

OWI pressure on the 14 short-wave stations in the U.S. was fast becoming a bear hug last week. At the war’s start, the Nazis had 68 short-wave stations; the Axis-in-Europe now controls an estimated 100. Great Britain has about 50. The U.S. has 14—privately owned, loosely synchronized, a poor match all around for the close teamwork of radio Berlin-Rome-Tokyo. If the overseas branch of the OWI intended to jump with both feet into the global propaganda war, it had to do something about short-wave stations and do it quickly.

So the OWI made plans: it would lease the lion’s share of the 14 short-wave stations’ time for the war’s duration; it would build 22 new transmitters, sell them to licensees after the war. The War Communications Board has already nodded approval and final action now awaits only WPB and Army & Navy clearance on materials needed to build the new transmitters.

Whatever the owners of the 14 shortwave stations might think of the plans, they didn’t say it out loud. But the OWI had plausible reasons for hogging shortwave time. A number of stations, beamed to Axis and neutral nations, are said to have innocently hired foreign-language announcers who had slyly angled scripts into Axis meanings. Also, private operators like to beam their stations to the most thickly populated areas, while the OWI wants to spread a worldwide blanket evenly. Emergency funds should cover leasing of the 14 existing stations. Another need: Official propaganda directives. But OWI brains are seething with a ferment of heady plans.