International Media & Broadcasting

Transmitting stock prices and news between London and Paris faster than any postal service could, the agency built the model of rapid cross-border news distribution that international wire services and broadcasters later scaled to the whole world.

International broadcasting began in a limited form during the First World War, when German and British stations transmitted press communiqués by Morse code. With Germany's undersea cables severed, the wireless station at Nauen became the country's sole long-distance link. This established radio as a medium capable of reaching across national boundaries.

The US Navy radio station at New Brunswick sent the Fourteen Points to the German station at Nauen by wireless. Nauen in turn broadcast news of Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication on 10 November 1918. These exchanges are cited among the earliest instances of purposeful international transmission, including a Morse telegram from President Wilson to the Kaiser in mid-1918.

Using parabolic reflector antennae and a 25 kW installation at Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall, Marconi's assistant Franklin achieved night-time transmissions on 97 metres to the yacht Elettra off Cape Verde in June and July 1923. Shortwave proved capable of intercontinental reach, the technical foundation of international broadcasting.

Broadcasting in South Asia began in 1925 in Ceylon with Radio Ceylon, now the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, the oldest such service in the region. It marked the extension of radio capability beyond Europe and North America.

High-speed shortwave telegraphy circuits were installed from London to Australia, India, South Africa and Canada from 1926. The chain linked the metropole to its colonies and demonstrated the strategic value of long-distance wireless for imperial communication.

Shortwave transmissions from Nauen to the United States, Central and South America and the Far East began in 1926, with a second station at Zeesen added in 1931. In January 1932 the German Reichspost took control of Nauen and expanded its shortwave and longwave capacity.

After shortwave experiments from Eindhoven beginning in 1925, PCJJ began international broadcasting on 11 March 1927, with programmes in Dutch for the Dutch West and East Indies and in German, Spanish and English for the wider world. Its Happy Station show, launched in 1928, became the world's longest-running shortwave programme, continuing until 1995 under Radio Netherlands.

Marconi's first long-distance shortwave broadcasts commemorated Armistice Day in 1927, carrying programming from the BBC-run 2LO station and being picked up worldwide. Impressed, the BBC rented the Chelmsford shortwave transmitting station, callsign G5SW, to Marconi.

Use of directional antennas for international broadcasting began in the mid-1930s and became prominent by the 1950s. Combined with rising transmitter power, from 200 kW in the early 1960s to 500 kW in the 1980s and up to 1200 kW from twinned transmitters, this greatly extended reliable reach.

Established originally to serve party communications, the agency grew after 1949 into the state's principal vehicle for domestic and international news distribution, later expanding a global network of bureaux supplying content to foreign broadcasters.

Vatican Radio began broadcasting on 12 February 1931, among the earliest notable international services. It gave a non-state religious actor a global voice via shortwave.

Jones started broadcasting on Christmas Day 1931 from the Christian missionary station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador. It demonstrated that private and religious organisations could achieve international reach independently of governments.

The BBC inaugurated the BBC Empire Service on 19 December 1932, with transmissions initially aimed at Australia and New Zealand and broadcasting in English to audiences across the British Empire. It became the model for imperial broadcasting linking colonies to the metropole, and later expanded into dozens of other languages as the BBC World Service, one of the most widely trusted sources of international news through the twentieth century.

After Hitler took power in 1933, shortwave broadcasting under the Auslandsrundfunk was treated as central to Nazi propaganda. Hours rose from two a day to eighteen, eventually twelve languages broadcast around the clock, with a 100 kW transmitter complex at Zeesen. Targeted programming reached the US from 1933, South Africa, South America and East Asia from 1934, and South Asia and Central America from 1938.

In 1936 the International Radio Union recognised Vatican Radio as a 'special case', exempting it from geographical restrictions. On 25 December 1937 a Telefunken 25 kW transmitter and two directional antennas were added, allowing broadcasts over ten frequencies.

During the Spanish Civil War the Nationalists received a powerful Telefunken transmitter from Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes. Until 1943 Radio Nacional de España collaborated with the Axis to retransmit Spanish-language news from official German and Italian stations.

The BBC started its monitoring service at Caversham, Reading in 1936, now BBC Monitoring. Systematic listening to foreign broadcasts became a capability in its own right, feeding intelligence and news.

German propaganda organised under Goebbels played a key role in the annexation of Austria and the Munich Crisis of 1938. It was an early demonstration of international broadcasting used as an instrument of coercive statecraft.

In 1938 the BBC began international broadcasting in German, French and Italian, its first foreign-language services. This marked the shift from imperial connection to contesting audiences in rival states.

During the Second World War the British established Radio SEAC in Colombo, Ceylon, broadcasting to Allied forces across the region from their headquarters there. It illustrated the military uses of international broadcasting.

Created during the Second World War to broadcast news and American perspectives to occupied Europe and beyond, it became the flagship of postwar US international broadcasting, reaching audiences across the world in dozens of languages.

The Cold War drove a large expansion in international broadcasting and jamming as Communist and non-Communist blocs sought to influence each other's populations. Prominent services included the Voice of America, BBC World Service and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the West, Radio Moscow in the USSR and Radio Peking in China. The Sino-Soviet border dispute added transmitters and novel techniques such as playing tapes backwards.

Funded initially through channels later disclosed to be covert, the station broadcast news and commentary intended to reach audiences behind the Iron Curtain despite jamming, becoming a Cold War model for reaching audiences under hostile governments.

Awaara and other early Hindi-language films found enormous popularity well beyond India, particularly in the Soviet Union, establishing a pattern of Indian cinema reaching mass audiences abroad decades before the term Bollywood came into use.

The award brought sustained Western critical and commercial attention to Japanese cinema for the first time, opening international distribution channels that later carried anime and other Japanese cultural exports to global audiences.

Deutsche Welle began regular shortwave broadcasts from Cologne studios on 3 May 1953. Its Jülich transmitter site opened in 1956 with eleven 100 kW Telefunken transmitters, and the Wertachtal site, authorised in 1972, started with four 500 kW transmitters; by 1989 there were fifteen, four relaying the Voice of America.

Voice of America staff were placed on administrative leave and grant funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia was cut, prompting legal challenges and warnings the reduction would leave an opening for Chinese and Russian state broadcasters.

When TikTok briefly went dark for US users, many downloaded the Chinese app instead, giving a normally domestically focused platform an unexpected surge of English-speaking users and a rare moment of organic cross-border reach into the American market.

A law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok's US operations or face a ban took effect on 19 January, taking the app offline for about a day before the incoming administration moved to delay enforcement while a divestiture arrangement was negotiated.

The film's success, and the global chart performance of its soundtrack, extended a decade-long pattern of Korean music, drama and film franchises achieving mainstream reach far beyond markets with large Korean-speaking diaspora audiences.

Streaming platforms including Netflix and Crunchyroll reported sustained growth in anime viewership across North America, Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia, cementing the format's position as one of Japan's most successful cultural exports.

Bans imposed by the ruling juntas after accusing the broadcasters of biased coverage remained in force, part of a wider rupture with France that also saw Russian-linked media gain a larger footprint in the region.

The closure, which included the seizure of broadcasting equipment, was justified by the government on national security grounds and renewed repeatedly through the period; Al Jazeera and press-freedom organisations characterised it as an attack on independent journalism.

Both platforms reduced investment in African original productions as part of broader global cost-cutting, a pull-back that Nigerian producers said threatened gains Nollywood had made in international streaming distribution over the preceding several years.

Regional-language cinema alongside Hindi-language releases found growing distribution through streaming platforms and cinema chains catering to South Asian diaspora communities, extending India's media reach beyond its traditional strongholds.

CGTN and Xinhua continued agreements providing free or low-cost news content and training to broadcasters across Africa, extending a distribution model that has given Chinese state media a broader footprint on the continent than most Western outlets.

Radio Moscow's successor, the Voice of Russia, was dissolved in 2014 and replaced by Sputnik, a multimedia news platform that does not broadcast on shortwave. It exemplified the transition of state international broadcasting into digital multimedia form.

Swiss Radio International left shortwave to exist as Swissinfo, Radio Canada International ended shortwave in 2012 to become an online podcast and multilingual website service, and Radio Netherlands ceased broadcasting in 2012, becoming the NGO RNW Media. The shift redefined international reach as digital rather than transmitter-based.

In 2002 the Cuban government jammed the Voice of America's Radio Martí, while China jammed Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, Radio Taiwan International and Falun Gong broadcasts. In October 2002 Iraq shifted two stations' frequencies to block Radio Sawa. Reception denial remains a counter to media reach.

In 2001 the BBC World Service ended shortwave transmissions to North America, and other broadcasters such as YLE Radio Finland dropped certain foreign-language programmes. It signalled the retreat of shortwave in wealthy, well-connected markets.

State media outlets from authoritarian countries have increased their budgets since the early 2000s, while many public international broadcasters courting foreign audiences saw budgets shrink in the early 2020s, Deutsche Welle excepted. Authoritarian states also bought social media advertising and covertly co-opted influencers to extend reach.

The Arabic-language channel broke the near-monopoly held by state broadcasters across the Middle East, and its English-language expansion in 2006 gave a Gulf state international news reach comparable to established Western broadcasters for the first time.

Some international broadcasters became available via digital audio broadcasting in Europe in the 1990s and via in-band FM DAB systems in the US in the 2000s. New standards such as Digital Radio Mondiale were introduced, along with distributing programmes over the web as podcasts.

In the early 1990s many international and domestic 24-hour news and information channels launched amid post-Cold War prosperity. A second burst of global news channels came in the late 2000s as developing countries sought to catch up in this arena.

At the end of the Cold War many services reduced broadcast hours and foreign languages or reoriented their language provision. Radio Canada International, for example, broadcast in nine languages in 1984 but only five by 2005, and some shortwave broadcasters ceased operations entirely. Attention shifted towards television and news websites.

Continuous rolling news coverage became a global format, and CNN's international feed reached audiences and governments worldwide during crises including the 1991 Gulf War, giving one broadcaster outsized influence over how international events were framed.

The BBC World Service considered establishing a global television news channel as early as 1975–76 but abandoned the idea for internal reasons, leaving CNN to become the first such service. The defunct BBC World Service Antigua Relay Station was built in 1976. International broadcasting via 24-hour TV news channels then originated in North America in the early 1980s.

Despite Albania's isolation, Radio Tirana became one of the world's most prolific international broadcasters in the later decades of the Cold War, ranking among the top five by programme hours produced. It showed that reach could be pursued by small and isolated states.

Radio RSA was set up in 1966 to promote South Africa's international image and blunt criticism of apartheid. It continued after 1992, when the post-apartheid government renamed it Channel Africa.

Commercial satellite relay made simultaneous live broadcasting between continents possible for the first time, laying the technical foundation for the international news and sports broadcasting reach that followed over subsequent decades.

In the 1960s, when the BBC carried no rock and roll, RTL broadcast the Beatles and similar acts into Britain from abroad. It was a commercial rather than state use of cross-border broadcasting to capture a domestic audience.

The Nauen site began transmitting Radio DDR, later Radio Berlin International, on 15 October 1959. RBI's broadcasts ceased shortly before German reunification on 3 October 1990, when Deutsche Welle took over its transmitters and frequencies.