Decoration Day 2008

Saturday, May 24, 2008 by SDRadio.

Memorial Day was formerly known as Decoration Day; and for many years observed on May 30, regardless of the day of the week.

This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.

(U.S. Navy Photo: USS Midway CV 41, being towed to San Diego.)

Armed Forces Radio and TV

AFRTS was started in WWII, and soon the low-powered AM stations were heard around the world. As the Korea and Cold War set in, the stations became permanent outlets in Europe, Korea, Japan, Guam and other locations.

(Photo: COMMAND PERFORMANCE, CIRCA 1944. Armed Forces Radio Show, CBS Studio, Hollywood. L-R; Jane Russell, Bob Hope; BG: Major Meredith Willson, AFRS Musical Conductor, AFRS Band. Official DoD Archive Photo.)

On long deployments, AFRTS become a way to keep in touch with the States. Programming sent in was kept up with vast military secrets — as soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines didn’t want to know the endings to the programs.

Radio programming was a mixture of country, rock, big band, talk, and sporting events. From Charlie Tuna to baseball action, AFRTS AM stations was the link in the field, galley, and ships at sea to home.

Today, with satellite broadcast, AFRTS has expanded on most fronts at military posts and bases world wide. Ships at sea are receiving multiple channels of radio and television underway.

In the current war theater, military trained broadcasters continue the AFN tradition of going where the troops are. Known as, Freedom Radio the station began broadcasting in December 2003 on the FM band . The first song on the air was Freedom by Paul McCartney. Freedom Radio is broadcasting on multiple FM channels from as far south as Basra to as far north as Mosul.

U.S. Navy ships receive programming through the “Direct To Sailor” (TV-DTS) method.

The AFN television channel is basically designed to look like a major network affiliate station in the U.S. AFN TV News offers continuous and comprehensive stateside news coverage and analysis. It not only offers news from the major networks and military news sources but viewers also see a variety of new information and analysis programs not currently aired by AFN.

Sports enthusiasts get a wall-to-wall service with the most up-to-the-minute scores, highlights, and late breaking sports news. AFN Sports also features expanded sports analysis programs and more service academy events as they become available. Encore presentations of big events will also be rebroadcast to time shift for fans unable to catch the live airings.

The DTS radio service consists of two CD-quality music channels with rotating blocks of U.S.-produced satellite programming in the Rock, Top-40, Oldies, Country, and Urban musical formats along with hourly news and sports information. The third radio service is a full-time news, information and sports service consisting of a representative mix of the most popular radio services from all of the major U.S. radio networks.

The TV-DTS data channel provides sailors and Marines with U.S., DoD and Navy print products. These include: a daily New York Times Fax; a daily Stripes (eight page version of daily Stars and Stripes newspaper); the DoD “Early Bird”; the Navy News Service; and, Navy internal information periodicals.

Thank you for making SDRadio part of your broadcast day!! See YOU on the radio and here later this broadcast week. SDRadio coverage resumes on Tuesday, May 27 — and updates as they happen.

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