Officials at the football field-size newsroom for RFE/ RL, housed in Prague's communist-era Parliament building -- an imposing edifice of black granite circled by heavy concrete barricades and machine-gun-toting guards -- say they simply want to modernize the programming and expand its reach.
The station's primary target is urban, employed, university-educated Russians ages 35 and up. Key changes include more call-in shows, a website overhaul to appeal to the 18-plus crowd, and a shift from longer evening programs on human rights and other issues to shorter, snappier spots aired throughout the day.
Nenad Pejic, RFE/ RL associate director of broadcasting, insists that Russian-language news and programs on human rights will remain a priority and that only the format -- not the content -- would change.
"It's about our survival, not our mission," he said. "Listeners in Moscow tell us our programming is a little old-fashioned, that we still sound like a dissident radio. We're just revamping. We want to be a local radio with a global perspective."
But the proposed overhaul also includes plans to cut staff and "move the center of gravity to Moscow" by dropping on-air references to Prague to give the impression that RFE/ RL is a local Russian station rather than an outsider.
The broadcaster, which gets $75 million a year from Congress, has moved key positions to Moscow and now broadcasts 70 percent of its material from the Russian capital. Critics say that exposes the station known as Radio Svoboda -- Russian for "Liberty" -- to government intimidation and the threat of censorship.
"If anything similar to the current plans of the RFE/ RL management would have been suggested in Soviet times, there would have been no doubt as to the source of inspiration: the KGB," Elena Bonner, the widow of Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov, wrote earlier this month in an open letter to Western media.
