Russian-Berlin Radio Propaganda Is Wasted Effort

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 61, 7 March 1949, Page 7

Russian-Berlin Radio Propaganda Is Wasted Effort

Russian-controlled radio propagandists in Berlin are today “talking largely into a vacuum,” according to Colonel Gordon Textor, director of .American Military Government’s information services division, who has concluded an official survey of radio listening in the blockaded western sectors of the German capital.

The survey showed that eight out of every 10 radio listeners tune in most frequently to RIAS, the United States sponsored broadcasting station. What is more, they name RIAS as their favourite station in Berlin. »

This unusually large percentage of listeners compares favourably with the results of polls in September, 1947, and February, 1948. The initial sounding put the RIAS audience at 38 per cent, while the survey five months later showed that it had grown to 57 per cent. The curtailment of electric power necessitated by the Soviet blockade of the city has been a factor in reducing over-all Berlin radio listeners. Within a few days of the imposition of the blockade,- however, thousands of Germans in the American sector were congregating in front of pavement-receiving sets installed by the United States-spon-sored radio outlet, which now broadcasts on a round-the-clock schedule.

A, significant disclosure by the military government survey was that in the past year the Soviet Ger-man-language station, Radio Berlin, which in September, 1947, included about one half of the entire listening group, has lost more than two-thirds of its adherents.

In August, when the blockade had been in effect two months, barely one in six radio listeners in western Berlin listed the Soviet-spon-sored broadcasts as “most frequently heard,” and only one in 20 stated that the Russian-controlled station was his favourite.