VOA Announces Coverage of State of the Union Address

Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2005 – The Voice of America (VOA) will provide extensive multi-media coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address tonight. Reports will be broadcast on radio, television, and the Internet. Several VOA language services will broadcast Bush’s address live.

A sample of VOA’s coverage highlights includes:

· VOA Persian will broadcast a special 90-minute television program that will include simultaneous translation of the President’s address and the Democratic response.

· Worldwide English will broadcast a special radio/TV simulcast covering the address, along with speech context and background, including the history and traditions associated with the address.

· VOA Mandarin and Spanish radio will carry State Department simultaneous translations “live” during their regular broadcast shows. Indonesian, French, Russian, and Portuguese will make use of the State Department translations in their regularly scheduled programs which air shortly after the speech ends.

· VOA Indonesian will broadcast a special television report to Metro TV, one of the top nationwide networks in Indonesia, immediately after the President speaks. Indonesian will also prepare special reports to feed to four other networks in the country.

· VOA Hindi will broadcast a special report immediately after the speech to Aaj Tak, the leading cable TV news channel in India.

· Eight VOA European services will broadcast special television reports to stations in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

· VOA English will broadcast a special television report to ATV in Hong Kong.

· VOA TV to Africa will broadcast special reports to the top national networks in Kenya and Zambia.

· www.VOANews.com, VOA’s Internet site, will provide “live streaming” of the President’s address and background reports in English. All VOA languages services will cover the speech on their websites, in their respective languages.

VOA will broadcast additional coverage from 8:45 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EST (0145-0330 UTC) on the following frequencies:

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 100 million people. Programs are produced in 44 languages, including English.

For more information, contact the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 401-7000, or by e-mail to publicaffairs@voa.gov.