It is commendable that the Public Diplomacy Council

does not request additional funding for U.S. international broadcasting. Indeed, we believe that if our recommendations are carried out, some savings may be realized.

That's a refreshing change from other Washington-institutional white papers, almost all of which call for more spending on their favored government activities.

The fact is U.S. international broadcasting costs more than British international broadcasting. But the BBC world services have more audiences than all the components of U.S. international broadcasting combined. U.S. international broadcasting does not need a budget increase. It needs to be better organized. For this reason my favorite recommendation of the PDC document is:

The CEO of international broadcasting should immediately formulate a new strategic plan, 2010-2014, that would include a series of target dates for the consolidation of all five broadcast entities into a single international network.

The CEO comes from the recommendation in the previous paragraph, with the subtitle "A fundamental restructuring."

The Broadcasting Board of Governors should be replaced by a new nonpartisan oversight commission that would assume more of an advisory role, leaving daily management in the hands of a commission-appointed professional CEO, the VOA director, and the presidents of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcast Networks (Radio Sawa and Alhurra TV), and Radio-TV Marti to Cuba,

So the "fundamental restructuring" is the abolition of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, reviled by many at VOA and in the old USIA establishment. But the CEO would have to do what the Board has been doing: refereeing among the feudal elements of U.S. international broadcasting, and making tough decisions about what services must be eliminated to free up funds for new administration-mandated services or for popular new technologies. It is likely that the "commission" would have to approve those decisions. After a couple of years, the CEO and commission would be disliked as much as the BBG is now. There would be calls to replace them with something else.

The PDC recommendations seem to favor VOA among the competing elements of U.S. international broadcasting. This might have something to do with the PDC being, largely, a USIA alumnae club. VOA was part of USIA.

It is therefore ironic that the PDC document wrongly describes VOA's output:

The full service official Voice of America is chartered by Public Law 103-415 to present world and U.S. news that is accurate, objective and comprehensive, to reflect America in all its diversity, as well as to present U.S. policies and policy debates. Surrogate broadcast networks, on the other hand, focus on countries or regions they are mandated to reach, serving as alternate free media to areas where information is denied or is deficient.

This implies that VOA does not provide news about the countries to which it broadcasts. But, as anyone who has listened to VOA can attest, it does. VOA must do so, or it wouldn't have an audience. Getting news about one's own country, in countries where that news is deficient, is the primary reason for tuning to international broadcasts. This is why VOA is also, de facto, a "surrogate" broadcaster.

U.S. international broadcasting is organized on the ludicrous premise that people should tune to one station to get news about their own country, and to another station, at another time, on another frequency, to get news about the world and the United States. The audience for international broadcasting will not put up with such nonsense. They will tune to the BBC to get all the news from the convenience of one station.

This is a main reason why BBC has a larger audience even with a smaller budget than U.S. international broadcasting. The PDC recommendations would either perpetuate the myth of the surrogate-official dichotomy of U.S. international broadcasting. Or it would force the myth to become reality, subjecting the audience to an inconvenience it will not tolerate.

The PDC document contains contradictions that suggest that it was written by a committee. The "broad consensus" was indeed broad. Nevertheless, the PDC has developed thoughtful proposals for U.S. international broadcasting. They should be read, discussed, and debated.

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