The Voice of Vietnam’s Way to Celebrate
Both listeners among the German and Japanese-speaking audience seem to feel that the Voice of Vietnam hasn’t paid much attention to the foreign-language services’ respective anniversaries (the German programs first aired on March 1, 2006, and the Japanese programs first went on air on April 29, 1963).
Apparently, the [German-language department’s] anniversary wasn’t greatly solemnized and a public-relations opportunity was therefore wasted internally and externally,
Germany’s "Radio-Kurier" noted in its April edition this year. The paper added that the anniversary did get a mention in the decentralized German letterbox program.
The International Shortwave Report (国際短波放送情報), a Japanese blog, seems to see it the same way, if Google Translate is correct:
Yesterday marked the 63rd anniversary of the station’s Japanese-language broadcast, but no news or special programs related to this were aired; it was a regular programming schedule.
The perspectives from in- and outside the "Voice" probably differ.
The station, then only North Vietnam’s foreign radio station, was founded on September 7, 1945, and seems to have seen itself as a multi-language unit since, rather than as a combination of standalone-language departments. In its own words, in September 2016,
[t]he Voice of Vietnam’s world service (VOV5) broadcasts in twelve languages: English, French, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, German, Thai, Lao, Cambodian, Indonesian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Since the first broadcast on September 7, 1945, VOV5 has made giant leaps forward, meeting the information needs of foreigners and overseas Vietnamese.
The same VoV article quotes an overseas Vietnamese, a Chinese, and a French listener – each of them is quoted to celebrate the complete organization’s anniversary.
So last year marked the Voice of Vietnam’s 80th anniversary in the first place. No department was or is supposed to tower over the rest of the organization. Besides, while the moderation styles sometimes differ widely between the departments, the message is defined by the Communist Party’s propaganda office. It has been the same for every language service anyway, and reportedly, the authorities’ control over news outlets will only tighten further.
Chinese listeners won’t complain: VoV’s Chinese service opened along with the complete radio station, even if only in Cantonese at first. Standard Chinese programs followed "shortly afterwards" (VoV didn’t even care to name an exact date, and apparently, noone took offense).
#broadcasting #foreignRadio #Germany #Japan #propaganda #Vietnam
Shortwave Listening
