Discovering AFTV

This is the cover of an edition of the German-published monthly guide to American Forces Television programming originating at AFTV-22, which served Bitburg, Spangdahlem and Hahn air bases and any other troops in our section of Germany. That's singer Patti Page on the cover. The content was similar to what we were used to seeing in TV Guide back in the States.

I had vaguely heard of the American Forces Network before I got to Germany. But I was surprised to see that in addition to the AFN radio service, provided in those days by the Army, the Air Force provided television for us troops -- Armed Forces Television, or AFTV. (AFTV was renamed American Forces Television a year or so later because of a perceived "host-nation sensibility," but the initialism remained the same.)

AFN, the radio station with its headquarters in Frankfurt, was as slick and well-produced as radio back home. It was all-things-to-all-people radio, a style that had died out in the States about a decade earlier. There was a live morning news and deejay block, a canned classical music show following that, a noon news block, and a live-deejay popular music show during afternoon drive time. But we all listened.

AFTV was another matter.

I first watched AFTV in the hospital barracks dayroom on my second day in Germany. AFTV-22 in Spangdahlem (about 15 minutes away from Bitburg) was broadcast in black-and-white with cheap equipment and a level of talent and professionalism that you'd expect to find, in those days, in a very small community in the States. It wouldn't be terribly unfair to call AFTV-22 amateurish. Every time I watched it, I wanted to put to work what I had learned at WTVR TV and fix it.

AFTV provided most of the same popular network shows that were airing on CBS, ABC and NBC TV in the States. Back in Los Angeles, the American Forces Radio and Television Service would dub the network shows to film and then send them out on what was known as a "bicycle" network: They'd be flown to Germany, aired in Ramstein, then shipped to Spangdahlem for broadcast, then shipped to Berlin or wherever for airing there. Often, the film had been broken and spliced quite a few times when it got to the end of the line. And because the films were being physically transported from station to station, the shows would air a few months late in our corner of Germany.

AFTV-22 out of Spangdahlem also produced live newscasts and a few live specialty programs -- a kid's show, a morning "woman's" show and a weekly prime-time variety show on Friday nights. The camera work was clunky, the directing was ham-fisted, and the on-camera talent was almost inept.

But we watched, because it was all we had. When a film of a week-old football game was airing on AFTV-22, the dayroom was jammed with viewers. (The Air Force went to special lengths to see that film of major sports events was rushed to us.)

It took me about 6 months to learn that there was a possibility, just a possibility, that I might get a part-time job working weekends at the Spangdahlem TV station.