Radio and TV Martí changing formats, losing staff

Radio and TV Martí will lay off 20 percent of their workforce in a shake-up aimed at retooling the struggling anti-Castro stations in the face of a steep federal budget cut.

In its funding request to Congress, the agency that oversees the Miami-based Radio and TV Martí submitted a budget that allocates $2.4 million less on the controversial broadcasts.

The U.S.-funded broadcasts, aimed at breaking the information blockade on the island, will change formats in response to the proposed budget cut. Radio Martí will go to an all news format, and TV Martí will have a five-minute news update every half hour, with other shows in between.

The goal: a smaller staff producing news that's faster and sharper, in a desperate attempt to gain audiences for widely criticized programs that opponents say are overfunded and underwatched.

''We will need to cut 35 jobs, 10 of them already vacant,'' Pedro Roig, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, said Tuesday from Prague, where he was attending an agency board meeting. ``We believe we will be able to meet the challenge and be more flexible. For television, when the news is on, we find people's attention span is down. What people want is something shorter, faster, crisper -- a different dynamic than what we were offering.''

Employees got the news at a meeting last week but were left baffled as to how the stations plan to fill air time, several employees said.

Radio and TV Martí, which employ a combined 160 people, have long been accused of being federal boondoggles that employ people with politically influential friends.

Critics say hardly anyone listens to Radio Martí, and virtually no one watches TV Martí. The Cuban government constantly jams the signals, and many people have said the programming is dull.

Official figures on the number of viewers and listeners on the island of 11.2 million is not known, but U.S. officials have previously said that there are an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 satellite dishes on rooftops that would allow for access to the broadcasts.

Last year, fewer than 1 percent of 1,200 people surveyed over the telephone said they had listened to Radio Martí in the past week, according to the study released