VOICE OF AMERICA
Museum chronicles the vital role of news in the World War II era
WEST CHESTER, Ohio — Imagine, if you will, a voice so strong that it shakes the very foundations of global tyranny.
In the early days of World War II, a group of Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, actor and director John Houseman and Cincinnati entrepreneur Powell Crosley Jr. imagined such a voice, one that could counter Nazi propaganda in Hitler’s own backyard.
They named it The Voice of America. Today, the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting, 8070 Tylersville Road, occupies the site from which the service beamed its message around the world for 50 years beginning in 1944, recounting its history and remembering the people, especially Crosley, who made it possible.
Although the Voice of America is still around, it was Hitler’s canny use of radio as a propaganda weapon that first spurred the American government to create its own world-wide broadcast news service.
Those broadcasts originally rode 1.5 million watts of power across the globe, originating from six state-of-the art transmitters, each the size of three city buses.
Not by accident, Bethany Station, as the broadcast site was known, was located on 640 acres adjacent to the site from which Crosley broadcast his own commercial WLW radio station.
At the time, WLW broadcast with 500,000 watts of power, the most ever licensed. And Crosley, who also operated a commercial shortwave broadcast station, had access and knowledge of the engineers, technicians and equipment that could give the Voice of America the global reach it needed.
Hitler knew well about Bethany Station, referring on more than one occasion to the “Cincinnati liars” who broadcast the news he’d rather not be heard. Today the museum celebrates the epithet with “Cincinnati liars” T-shirts in the gift shop, and nearby Grainworks Brewing Co. offers a Cincinnati Liars Lager.
Voice of America programs originated in Washington, D.C., and were sent by telephone line (and later by satellite) to Bethany and other relay stations, where directional antennas would aim the signal at the part of the world targeted for the specific programs. Houseman, the first director of the Voice of America, insisted that the service resist the temptation to become a propaganda service itself and to maintain credibility by telling the straight story.
After World War II, the Voice of America continued broadcasting news, English language lessons and American-style entertainment around the
world, especially to places such as the Soviet Union, where oppressive governments limited information to their own citizens.
But with advancing technology, Bethany Station became obsolete. It was mothballed in 1994 and reopened in recent years as the not-for-profit museum.
Visitors can see the original control room and much of the original equipment, listen to archived and current
Voice of America programming, and learn about the lives touched around the globe by listeners seeking, sometimes at the risk of imprisonment or death, real news and real voices from the outside world.
Many such listeners have visited the museum, said executive director John Dominic, himself a former station manager of a Cincinnati television station.
“People who remember listening to (the Voice of America) where it was
banned come here with tears in their eyes,” Dominic said.
“The lengths they would go to to listen is amazing.”
Other exhibits focus on the development of radio technology and the early days of American broadcast entertainment.
The museum also pays tribute to the memory and imagination of Crosley, a ground-breaking visionary of technology and an expert marketer.
Crosley resembled a brilliant mix of Thomas Edison and P.T. Barnum, Dominic said.
Crosley’s businesses included automaking, an airline, and kitchen and electronic appliances including, of course, radios.
One failed Crosley venture was the very first electronic newspaper, delivered by radio signals overnight to an early version of a fax machine in subscribers’ homes or offices.
WLW was also a hotbed of development for mid-20th century broadcast talent, helping launch the careers of many famous entertainers including singer Rosemary Clooney, comedian Red Skelton and — that’s a signpost up ahead! — Rod Serling, who went on to produce and host “The Twilight Zone” television anthology.
Steve Stephens is a freelance travel writer and photographer. Email him at sjstephensjr@gmail.com.