Voice of America to Concentrate on Mideast

Hart said the board, made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, decided unanimously and "with regret" that the changes were necessary.

The board, which is seeking buyout authority from Congress, would not say how many jobs could be affected or whether layoffs are likely. Budget documents show the number of full-time employees in international broadcasting operations, including Broadcasting to Cuba, dropping by 98, to 2,195 positions.

The proposed changes, which must be approved by Congress, include expanding service to Iran, where daily VOA television programming in Persian would increase from 30 minutes to four hours in prime time and the Radio Farda Web site would be improved. For Afghanistan, there would be additional Pashto radio broadcasts targeting the border region with Pakistan, and the VOA would develop a new one-hour TV program in both Dari and Pashto.

The board would increase to 24 hours a day (up from 16) news broadcasts from Alhurra, a two-year-old Arabic-language satellite television network that reaches viewers in 22 countries in the Middle East. And it would add more local news for Radio Sawa, an Arab-language pop music and news station funded by the United States.

Talk show host Inna Dubinsky, whose daily half-hour call-in radio show for the VOA's Russian language service would fall victim to the cuts, said she and other employees do not understand reducing service to Russia, a country where democracy's grip is tenuous.

"People are very frustrated," said Dubinsky, who said her job was safe because she could shift to VOA television work. "They say it defies any logic of the national security issues that are relevant for the United States at the moment."

Art Chimes, who produces a weekly science program in English for News Now, said that the agency should not retreat from shortwave broadcasts.

"Television is great, and we should be on television," he said. "The Internet is great, and we should definitely be on the Internet. But the rest of the world is not like the United States in terms of their access to this kind of information technology. There are places where there is no substitute for radio."