Robert E. Lang, First Director of Radio Free Europe
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ELY, Vt. — Robert Edward Lang, the first director of Radio Free Europe and a former vice president of both CBS News and ABC News, has died. He was 70.
Lang, who died Tuesday of cancer, joined the Free Europe Committee in 1948 as a consultant investigating the feasibility of radio broadcasting into Iron Curtain countries. Radio Free Europe went on the air in 1949 with a staff of 1,800 and 22 transmitters broadcasting to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania.
Lang resigned to accept a job with CBS, where he became vice president of CBS News. Several years later he left CBS for rival ABC and served as vice president of the news division.
In 1963, Lang moved first to Portugal, then to England, and worked as creative director for Time-Life Films, where he produced such series as “The World We Live In.”
He then founded CXL Communications Inc., to market the Extel Teleprinter, which is used by major news agencies worldwide.
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