Tuning Out on Tio Sam

By Sidney Urquhart

With Cuba an increasingly lonely holdout against the stampede away from communism, what better time for the anti-Castro RADIO MARTI to turn up the volume and hasten Fidel's political demise? Instead, a recent U.S. Information Agency study shows a shrinking audience. Radio Marti employees blame their director, Rolando Bonachea, for the defections. Bonachea has tried to "professionalize" the station's programming by increasing its anticommunist rhetoric. Castro's stations, by contrast, have won listeners back by giving them what they want: rock 'n' roll.

With reporting by Andrea Sachs