A planned project to air U.S.-sponsored broadcast TV news across Pakistan has been cancelled, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) had anticipated hiring a privately contracted broadcaster to work in tandem with the Voice of America (VOA) to produce a 30-50-minute show in the Urdu language that would have been aired five days a week; BBG, however, in an amendment to Solicitation #BBG50-Q-11-0033 explained the cancellation in one sentence:
This solicitation has been canceled due to a change in the agency requirements.
The BBG/VOA offered no further explanation.
The U.S. Agency for International (USAID) in 2008 had sought to embark upon a similar broadcasting endeavor in Pakistan, but it remains unclear whether the agency ever fully pursued that plan. As reported by the Monitor's predecessor site The Peacock Report (TPR), USAID envisioned "a multi-language delivery of U.S. government messages in urban as well as rural areas of Pakistan... in English, Urdu, Pashtu, Punjabi, and other regonal languages... in newspapers, magazines, and billboards as well as radio and television broadcasts..."
Though a recent search of the FedBizOpps database did not produce any evidence that USAID actually awarded contracts to carry out that ambitious initiative, neither did a search reveal a cancellation of that project. (See "U.S. Information Blitz to Unfold in Pakistan"; TPR, June 5, 2008).
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