Broadcasting a Vision of Democracy Into a Void
MIAMI — Tune in to TV Marti, and you can see anything from global news and hard-hitting documentaries to a sitcom with a bearded revolutionary wreaking havoc on a mythical island shaped a lot like Cuba.
But after 16 years and nearly $200 million from U.S. taxpayers, a question nags at its critics and even some who support the pro-democracy mission of the propaganda outlet: Is anyone in Cuba watching?
As TV Marti prepares to buy a $10-million airplane to carry its signal aloft in hope of outflanking the Communist government's routine jamming, there is mounting evidence that fate and Fidel Castro have so far succeeded in keeping the exile-produced broadcasts a nonentity in most Cuban households.
For all but the few Cubans rich and brave enough to acquire a forbidden satellite dish, TV Marti is available only in the form of snow on the jammed UHF channel in Havana. In October, Hurricane Wilma knocked out the station's antenna and transmitter, cutting the signal entirely.
Since then, a lumbering C-130 aircraft borrowed from the Pennsylvania National Guard has transmitted a four-hour segment on the occasional Saturday. But the plane has other demands on its time, including forays to Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The new plane will give us at least 30 hours per week" by making the transmitter a moving target and less susceptible to jamming, Radio/TV Marti director Pedro Roig said. The plane is expected to be flying this spring. Radio Marti's signal is also jammed, but less successfully, and its broadcasts are less problematic for its intended audience because it can be listened to less conspicuously.
But getting the signal into Cuban homes is only part of the problem in conveying the U.S. government's message.
TV Marti pays a private network to relay its signal via satellite for Cubans with access to clandestine dishes, but its homemade programming competes with dozens of other news and entertainment channels for that privileged audience.
"If a Cuban has the choice of seeing old exiles shout at each other or to watch CNN or HBO, what do you think they are going to do?" said John Nichols, head of the Film/Video and Media Studies department at Pennsylvania State University. A scholar of the U.S. government's efforts to broadcast to Cuba, he has concluded that there is "virtually zero viewership of TV Marti."
