Origin

      The inception of the Broadcasting Board of Governors came with the International Broadcasting Act (Public Law 103-236), which President Bill Clinton signed on 30 April 1994. The new law established an International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) within the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). The IBB was designed to administer the formerly separate Voice of America, Worldnet TV and film services, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (operating Radio and TV Marti), and a supporting Office of Engineering and Technical Services. The formation of the IBB was intended to generate economic savings through greater administrative efficiency. The same act created a president-appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), also within the U.S. Information Agency, to exercise jurisdiction over all U.S. government international broadcasting efforts, radio and television. The BBG held its first organizational meeting in early September 1995.

The BBG was designed to oversee IBB operations (such as appointing its director) as well as to supervise the two separate international radio organizations receiving federal funding: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and the new Radio Free Asia (RFA), authorized in the same legislation. RFE/RL had been supervised by the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) for the previous two decades. The IBB was dissolved and plans were made to privatize all aspects of both RFE and RL by the turn of the century (though that did not, in the end, take place).

Operations

    The final organizational step came three years later (21 October 1998), when President Clinton approved the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act (Public Law 105-277), said by many observers to be the single most important legislation affecting U. S. government international broadcasting in nearly a half century. Under its provisions the USIA was dissolved and the BBG became a fully independent federal agency operation on 1 October 1999. The BBG's eight bipartisan members are appointed by the president (and confirmed by the Senate) and the secretary of state serves as a ninth ex officio member. Early in 2002 the BBG created a wholly new radio service to serve the Middle East, Radio Sawa.

     The BBG is intended to act as a "firewall" to protect the professional independence and integrity of the several broadcast services from the political process. It is also authorized to evaluate the mission, operation, and quality of each of the broadcasting activities; to allocate funds among the various broadcast services; to ensure compliance with broadcasting standards (especially with regard to news and public affairs); to determine addition and deletion of language services; and to submit annual reports on its activities (and those of the individual broadcast services) to the president and Congress.