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**Dan McDonald** · 05-09-2007, 06:25 AM

Hi DJ -

I think the records were made for radio broadcasts around the world. I have some commercial releases of live shows that were broadcast during the 50s where they'd take a "real" network program, edit out the commercials (usually pretty badly), and play it over the air in Germany or wherever. It seems as if the government purchased the rights from the networks, or perhaps the networks gave the shows to them as a tax deduction... Anyway, there is a company that sells these commercially. I don't know how much money they actually make on any one - they have thousands and thousands of old movies, videos, tv shows and radio shows. The company is called 'video yesteryear' and 'radio yesteryear' or sometimes 'old time radio.' I bought a lot of things from them 10-15 years ago, before I started restoring things. Most notably, a live rock 'n roll show with major names and a few hundred screaming teenagers.

The guy's name is Michael Rophone (or something like that).

Box C
Sandy Hook, CT 06482
Phone 1-800-243-0987

I have tried to find a web presence for them multiple times, but never have. I just found them listed in a list of companies selling silent films, with a website, but that site doesn't work. Anyway, if they're still in business, they will tell you what they're worth (to them anyway). I have a "Mickey Mouse Club" video that was sent to TV stations in the 1960s. He offered to buy it from me or trade it for x number of videos, even though he couldn't offer it for public sale because of copyright issues.

**Audyossey** · 05-09-2007, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by DJBohn

...They turned out to be all pre-"Bay of Pigs" Armed Forces Radio records from about 1958 to 1963 - 136 in all....

...Many of the commercial records are 1 sided while most of the collection are 33.3 RPM but a few are 78's. I also noticed some of the records made mention to start the play at the outside of the record.

From the content, it sounds like what you have is recruiting programming from a regular U.S. station. Commercials and commercials masquerading as programs were frequently distributed in the formats you describe, particularly before cart machines became the de facto standard. I don't remember Armed Forces Radio itself ever broadcasting this type of stuff to us overseas. It would have been preaching to the choir. But the AFR production channels could have been used as a convenient method for getting this material to discs.

Some professional broadcast transcriptions played from the inside-out the way CDs do. One reason this happened is that cheapo cutting lathes, like those commonly found in radio stations prior to magnetic tape, didn't have vacuum systems to suck up the residue that trails out behind the stylus as it cuts through the acetate. With inside-out, the residue gathers relatively harmlessly in the center out of the way. With outside-in, it would be in the way of the approaching cutter and require a lot of attention from the operator to keep it from munging up the works. It's also claimed that there's more leeway to record loud dynamics at the outside of a record than at the inside, and a lot of musical material tends to start soft and end loud. So because transcriptions could be supplied in either format, some broadcast transcriptions were labeled accordingly.

As for the legal notice, I wouldn't worry about it. The case of the government-produced series of V-Disc records is instructive. They were supposed to be destroyed after the wars, but many were scavenged by soldiers and sailors. In addition the Smithsonian kept a complete library of them and commercial releases of some great and unique material are now available in spite of the legal disclaimers.

Originally posted by Dan

...I have some commercial releases of live shows that were broadcast during the 50s where they'd take a "real" network program, edit out the commercials (usually pretty badly), and play it over the air in Germany or wherever. It seems as if the government purchased the rights from the networks,...

Armed Forces Radio, and later Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, distributed network radio and television programming to the troops overseas. If a program was prerecorded, it was usually formatted by the producers to allow commercials to be seamlessly inserted. With live shows, that wasn't always possible. In those days the sponsors often owned and produced the shows and the commercial message, or part of it, was frequently integrated into the program content in one way or another making it difficult to make a clean deletion. But for us overseas, this programming was very welcome indeed.

AFRTS also distributed popular music to its radio stations. There's are scenes in Good Morning Vietnam where you see the disc jockey playing standard commercial 45s and LPs. That would never have happened in Saigon. That stuff was distributed on AFRTS transcriptions. They used to be 16-inch, 33 RPM records with 3-mil grooves, but in the 1950s they switched to standard microgroove LPs. Some discs would have the hit songs of the day, usually about eight on each side. Others would have condensed versions of albums.

The government's contract with the record industry required them to base the content of these discs on the industry's official record sales "hit" lists. In return, the music was royalty-free. But for years the conservative tastes of the military ruled the roost and, by the time of Vietnam, there was a definite shortage of the "racier" music popular in black communities. I arrived in Vietnam not too long after the "Good Morning Vietnam" period. AFRTS in Saigon, known by then as "AFVN"—"Armed Forces Vietnam Network," had recently moved into brand new digs. My first job was to help hang lights in the TV studio.

After a few weeks I was assigned "upcountry" to a new TV station in Tuy Hoa. These detachments were bare bones operations. We had no videotape and our total staff was 11 people. The Air Force had little interest in having a TV station on the base. What they wanted was more diverse radio programming. In order to get the Air Force's cooperation, our Officer in Charge agreed to put in a pirate radio station. There were a number of these in Nam. I don't know how the others got into business, but for us it was an under-the-table deal with AFVN Saigon. We got a low-power transmitter and some studio equipment from them. It was probably the same stuff that the hero of the movie had been using. We set all this stuff up in a huge ammunition box next to the trailer that housed the TV transmitter and master control. Part of the deal was that we couldn't operate the radio station. We could use our spare time to supervise it or play disc jockey and our engineers could provide technical support. But the heart of the staff was volunteers from the Air Base, many of them with radio experience as it happened.

Most of the records for this station came from private collections contributed by the troops. After a time we got a new senior NCO who was Navy and had no experience with Armed Forces Radio and TV. At the request of one of the guys, he sent letters to the record companies asking for repertoire that wasn't available on the AFRTS transcriptions and commenting on the problem of relying on private collections to fill in the gaps. That's when the shit hit the fan. The recording industry was put on notice that the government was not living up to its end of their contract. Our new Officer in Charge was called to Saigon. He was shown copies of the letters on official stationery. "How can this be?" they demanded. "There is no radio station in Tuy Hoa, is there lieutenant?" He was a Captain.

"No sir," he stammered.

The upshot was that the Captain kept his rank and AFRTS thereafter honored the terms of its contract with the industry.

HB

**Dan McDonald** · 05-09-2007, 12:01 PM

Originally posted by Audyossey

In those days the sponsors often owned and produced the shows and the commercial message, or part of it, was frequently integrated into the program content in one way or another making it difficult to make a clean deletion.

The one I have that it's most noticeable is a Rock 'n Roll show sponsored by Camel. Every few words it's Camel this or Camel that. They try to edit it, so a lot of times it comes out __mel or Cam__ Rock 'n Roll Dance Party.

Dan

**Geebster** · 05-09-2007, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by Dan McDonald

The one I have that it's most noticeable is a Rock 'n Roll show sponsored by Camel. Every few words it's Camel this or Camel that. They try to edit it, so a lot of times it comes out __mel or Cam__ Rock 'n Roll Dance Party.

Dan

Ha. That brings back memories. We used to air some of the musical performance on the radio station where I MC'd the original broadcast from the "Thunder on the Ohio" boat race shows. Those shows were nearly always sponsored by Budweiser, so along the with all of the musical performances, you would hear " Bu " this and "Zer" that along side of the music, because while we had permission to air the music, we didn't want to give Budweiser any free advertising; so they attempted to cut the Budweiser ads out.

GB

**Audyossey** · 05-09-2007, 03:52 PM

Originally posted by Dan McDonald

The one I have that it's most noticeable is a Rock 'n Roll show sponsored by Camel. Every few words it's Camel this or Camel that. They try to edit it, so a lot of times it comes out __mel or Cam__ Rock 'n Roll Dance Party.

I must admit I've never heard anything that bad myself. I suppose it's the temper of the times. These days the tendency seems to be to leave those references in. Sometimes, in nonbroadcast media, they try to fit the actual commercials in. Of course, in many cases the products no longer exist. I suppose even Camels have filters these days.

At the very least you have to transfer those finds of yours to CDs before dumping the originals. You might want to check the Phonograph Ring. There are a number of sites that deal in selling and trading esoteric recorded materials. You might be able to find out what they're worth. I would suspect they're worth something to somebody.

HB

**DJBohn** · 05-09-2007, 09:43 PM

Thanks for the info everyone. I do intend on transfering what I can prior to selling them. Time is very limited as of late so I may have to burn some non restored transfers to be completed at a later time. I needed an excuse to use up some cheap SpinDiscs anyway. At their price, I could do all the records at 24/96. Dumb thing with them is you can't tell which end is up - hope they don't fall apart when I mark them with a felt pen so I can be sure...

**Audyossey** · 05-19-2007, 10:01 AM

Originally posted by Dan McDonald

...Anyway, there is a company that sells these commercially. I don't know how much money they actually make on any one - they have thousands and thousands of old movies, videos, tv shows and radio shows. The company is called 'video yesteryear' and 'radio yesteryear' or sometimes 'old time radio.'

I've seen the Radio Yesteryear stuff on occasion (on CD) and I remember ads for Video Yesteryear. Tower used to have a store that spanned two or three floors and stocked everything. Long time ago now.

But for someone interested in the old radio shows, try http://www.otr.net/ (Old Time Radio Network Library). They claim to have over 12,000 shows available for download.

HB

**Doug** · 05-21-2007, 10:30 PM

Are these "Armed Forces Radio Network records" the equivalent to the "BBC world services" records etc?

(not sure what is wrong with the font here!)

anyway, I have some LPs on the BBC during WWII, but have never seen anything similar or heard anything as such that is an American equivalent.
They contain speaches, songs from the favourite war time singers etc - more or less a recollection of the BBC in war time etc.

Was there a significant radio station in America and have there been any CD/LP collections of this nature released in the past?

**Dan McDonald** · 05-22-2007, 06:38 AM

Hey Doug -

The ones I know of and have copies of are basically recycled network radio program - NBC, CBS, ABC shows, with the sponsors snipped out. I'm not sure what DJ has, bu tthey sound like promos of some sort.

**Audyossey** · 05-22-2007, 09:34 PM

Originally posted by Doug

Are these "Armed Forces Radio Network records" the equivalent to the "BBC world services" records etc?

Not sure about the BBC World Services and where it fits in. I believe it was still operating when I was in Vietnam. It was (is?) a shortwave service, I believe. All the powers in World War II had such services including Germany and Japan. Radio Free Europe operated well into the Cold War, if not beyond.

There's more about the Armed Forces Radio Service in my post #3 above. Unlike the shortwave services, its focus was US troops overseas. The stations were standard AM radio services, not shortwave. The program transcriptions brought the troops the same content they would have heard at home sans commercials. Inasmuch as network radio had become solely a news service by the time of 'Nam, there were no "shows" being distributed on transcriptions, although there were a few old ones left over in the library in Saigon. The last show I know of being distributed was the old NBC Monitor, which was kind of the radio equivalent of the daily "news" magazine shows on television. I believe what was distributed were the internal feature pieces from Monitor. These were not timely and could be used individually as inserts in disk jockey programming. I put together a couple of cassettes of the Bob and Ray bits from that series, but they had been transferred to reel-to-reel by that time. I don't know whether the transcriptions were still available. I do know that everything I have is available on CD.

Roughly twenty years earlier, during the Korean War era, there were still a few radio shows alive. I remember listening regularly to the radio version of Gunsmoke when we lived in Taiwan (on AFRTS), and there was a fifteen- or thirty-minute Bing Crosby show that had nothing in common with the justly famous Kraft Music Hall series of World War II. I suspect it was a series distributed to stations on commercial transcriptions to be used as filler by local stations. They could probably have made a little money off of it. Crosby still had cache to catch sponsors on local radio at that time. Rock and roll had come on strong by then, but classic pop music was still a viable format in radio.

Programming of this type continues to be produced. Back in the sixties an FM station in Seattle used to broadcast a 15-minute "sustaining" radio show from Radio Netherlands highlighting their pop music. I've run into it fairly recently as well. This type of programming would be aimed at promoting a country's musical culture to people of other nations.

There was actually a program aimed at teenagers on the AFRTS outlet in Saigon where kids brought in some of their records and played them on the air. I appeared on it once. There were several of us in the studio, and there was some conversation with the host and among ourselves. I don't remember about what.

(not sure what is wrong with the font here!)

You clicked the "B" (boldface) button and all your text was enclosed between bold tags.

...They contain speaches, songs from the favourite war time singers etc - more or less a recollection of the BBC in war time etc.

Was there a significant radio station in America and have there been any CD/LP collections of this nature released in the past?

Most of the AFRTS content would have been indistinguishable from the original network transcriptions from which the commercial broadcasts generally originated. There are excellent CD collections of the Glenn Miller Army Air Corps band. This material was originally broadcast out of Britain, whether by an American entity such as Radio Free Europe or the BBC I don't remember off hand. There are occasional patriotic announcements and a few songs are sung in German. I seem to remember that Miller even tries his hand at a little German. That was a full-bore orchestra that played not only the material normally associated with Miller but lush arrangements with strings arranged by André Kostelanetz. Miller still belonged to the generation that enjoyed staged variety shows in theaters that spanned a wide range of repertoire and styles. But the Miller broadcasts would not have been part of the AFRTS programming. My guess is that it would have been contractually prohibited because on the home front it would have competed directly with his commercial recordings.

I've heard excerpts from the Bob Hope serviceman shows from that time and later. How that material was originally handled, I don't know. There were certainly a number of them that were meant to be heard on the "home front" as well as overseas. Hope did that all his life and shows from his tours overseas were seen over here on TV as commercial fare.

Material from radio, such as the Kraft Music Hall, was also excerpted on V-Discs during World War II. (Again, see Post #3.) I have a couple of discs where Crosby did condensed versions of a couple of his movies, narrating the story and singing the featured songs. I'm pretty sure Bob Hope was also excerpted. Also much of the original material on those discs was recorded in the network radio studios before or after radio shows. So far as I know nothing on V-Discs was lifted directly off of commercial home records.

We have a station here in Boston which broadcasts two "orgies" every year. They interrupt normal programming for a month at a time and present everything that a certain composer wrote or everything that a certain performer recorded or the music of a certain period or style in time blocks that can run for a few hours to several days at a time. They're doing some sort of techno-pop orgy at this very moment. They've done World War II more than once, drawing on the type of material you've described. America and Great Britain are usually featured about equally with smatterings of other countries in there as well. For instance, Germany, which banned jazz, had jazz bands that they used for propaganda broadcasts during the war.

I have an old set of LPs that covers newsworthy material and speeches before and after World War II. Much of this content was probably preserved at local radio stations. My first "job" after graduating college was collecting together some of Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts from London as a gift to him. (He was dying of cancer.) That material resides at the University of Washington and came from the local CBS station. They had recorded it on acetates as it arrived live from New York during the war. It was then used for their own news shows or as the equivalent of "tape delay" of the original newscasts. By the time I made the compilations, it had been transferred to tape. We still had an acetate recorder at the station. It might have been belonged to that CBS outlet, although at one time our University station had done its own live programming. One of the classrooms had once been used for live radio shows. There was still an empty announce booth-control room and heavy, motorized curtains at the back of the lecture platform. The Communications School was in the attached building next door and, for all I know, there may still have been a cable running between that classroom and our main radio control room. Anyway, that's one of the ways aural history has been preserved in this country. Material from the UW collection shows up occasionally as part of historical programs. It's all cataloged and documented for public use.

So it's out there. Try a search on Amazon or similar. You'll probably find it.

HB

**DJBohn** · 05-26-2007, 08:46 PM

Anyone who wishes to see some of what I got in that box, I have 30 LP's of the military radio programs transfered over and are up for auction at eBay. Here is the link to them:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MESE:IT&ih=011

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Armed Forces Radio Network records

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