The Armed Forces Network - Europe provides radio programming for servicemen and their families in Europe. It has evolved over the years. The programming has changed a lot. During the sixties, AFN only played popular music a couple of hours a day...country music a couple of hours a day...dinner music at dinner time...radio dramas in the evening...classical music in the afternoon (did you know that Carl Haas was very enamoured of Berlios?)...various and sundry other programs and of course, several news spots throughout the day. On the weekends it played something called the "Monitor Beacon"...a sort of omnibus on the radio with a mix of comedy, drama, music, news, interviews and the like. But if you were a young GI with a lust for some serious rock and roll, AFN didn't give you much.
On my first tour in Germany I was introduced to Radio Luxemburg, an English radio broadcast from London that was full time top 40 (albeit British top 40). The only drawback was that London was a long way off and we could only get the channel at night. It would fade in and out also...but it was a welcome relief from the bland airwaves of AFN.
On my second tour, in Mannheim (late sixties), I discovered German FM and a station from Baden-Baden. Southwest Broadcast's third program (SWF-3) had a really good playlist of current and oldie music primarily from the States. It was the station I was listening to when I first heard the Woodstock Album and the "Fish Cheer". That was an eye-opener!! But circumstances were that I didn't have the opportunity to listen to it very much.
On my third tour, while stationed in Stuttgart, I was able to listen to SWF-3 a lot more. I found that every Sunday evening they played tons of oldies on a show called "Pop Shop". Some of the songs they played, I hadn't heard in decades. I got in the habit of keeping a blank tape in the boom box so whenever something I really liked came on the radio, I could just push the record button and I would have it forever. I captured hundreds of good old rock and roll songs on dozens of tapes. Amidst those songs I also captured the station's logo (dum dum da dum da dum de dum de dum dum...Essvayeff drei rawdeo dienst aus Baden-Baden) and traffic reports (...Ahh Acht swischen Leonberg und Flughafen...sechs kilometer stau) and weather (jetzt regnet und spaeter schnee). More than any of the music, the announcer's clear and and precise voice brings back scads of memories. AFN had added more contemporary programming and now included one TV channel.
"Pop Shop" "Radio Club" and all the other shows are gone now. In 1998, SDF and SWF merged and the whole format changed to keep up with the changing audience. Europe went nuts over techno and the demand for old American music just petered out. Broadcast radio is a fading medium anyway. We now have CDs, Sirius/XM, MP3s and who knows what else.
On my last tour, we still had only one TV channel but the programming was much improved and AFN radio had evolved into an almost stateside-like FM station. I still spent a lot of time tuned into the German FM stations.
I love my Rock and Roll from outerspace...not as much as I did before the merger, though; I wish folks would quit fixing stuff that ain't broke. But now and again, I pop in one of those old tapes and catch up on the latest traffic and weather from thirty years ago.