 The Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme headquarters was at Broadcasting House in London. | |
| Country | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Broadcasting House, London, England |
| Programming | |
| Language(s) | English |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | BBC |
| History | |
| Launch date | 7 June 1944 |
| Closed | 28 July 1945 |
| Replaced by | BBC Light Programme |
The BBC Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme was a national radio station during World War II in the mid-1940s.
Upon the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the BBC had merged its two nationwide radio stations – the National Programme and the Regional Programme (which were begun broadcasting on 9 March 1930) – into a single BBC Home Service. On 7 January 1940, this was supplemented by a station aimed at the British Armed Forces serving at home (until Dunkirk in France and Belgium), the BBC Forces Programme.
With the arrival of troops from United States and Canada in the run-up to Normandy landings (also known as 'D-Day'), the Forces Programme was replaced by a service more tailored to new audience as the General Forces Programme, which also broadcast on shortwave for service people in the Asian theatre of operations. When Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of occupied Europe began, it was felt by the Allied governments that a joint service of entertainment, news and information for the fighting troops would be a better use of resources than providing separate services from American Forces Network and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation stations.
This combined station, called the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme was fully operated by the BBC on behalf of the Allied forces, began broadcasting on 7 June 1944 (shortly after 'D-Day') with 514 metres (583 kHz) providing a service dominated by cabaret and swing music.
The station closed soon after Victory in Europe Day on 28 July 1945 when the British Forces Network, AFN and CBC had established their own services in the areas each force was occupying. The following day, BBC Light Programme began.
The British Armed Forces are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, support international peacekeeping efforts and provide humanitarian aid.
The final battles of the European theatre of World War II continued after the definitive surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German leader Adolf Hitler's suicide and handing over of power to Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz on the last day of April 1945, Soviet troops conquered Berlin and accepted surrender of the Dönitz-led government. The last battles were fought on the Eastern Front which ended in the total surrender of all of Nazi Germany’s remaining armed forces such as in the Courland Pocket in western Latvia from Army Group Courland in the Baltics surrendering on 10 May 1945 and in Czechoslovakia during the Prague offensive on 11 May 1945.
The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas, and is headquartered at Fort Meade in Maryland. AFN comprises two subordinate overseas commands and one directorate in the continental United States. Overseas, AFN Europe is headquartered at Sembach Kaserne in Germany and consists of 15 subordinate stations in the countries of Bahrain, Belgium, Cuba, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. AFN Pacific is headquartered at Yokota Air Base in Japan and consists of nine stations in Diego Garcia, Japan, and South Korea. Stations under AFN Europe and AFN Pacific broadcast live local radio shows 12 hours a day Monday through Friday, with the exception of U.S. federal holidays. Stateside, AFN's broadcast operations, which include global radio and television satellite feeds, emanate from the AFN Broadcast Center/Defense Media Center at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California.
The British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) provides radio and television programmes for His Majesty's Armed Forces, and their dependents worldwide. Editorial control is independent of the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces themselves. It was established by the British War Office in 1943. In 1944, it was managed by Gale Pedrick.
Österreichischer Rundfunk is an Austrian national public broadcaster. Funded from a combination of television licence fee revenue and limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media. Austria was the last country in continental Europe after Albania to allow nationwide private television broadcasting, although commercial TV channels from neighbouring Germany have been present in Austria on pay-TV and via terrestrial overspill since the 1980s.
The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4.
Maurice Anthony Coneys Gorham was an Irish journalist and broadcasting executive. After being educated in England at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire and later Balliol College, Oxford, he began working as a journalist on the London local newspaper Westminster Guardian and Weekly Westminster after he graduated in 1923.
Canadian Forces Radio and Television (CFRT), Radiotélévision des Forces canadiennes (RTFC) in French, was a television and radio network system broadcast by satellite to those members of the Canadian Forces ground forces who served overseas in places such as the Middle East, Africa and Europe and, due to popular demand, the service began broadcasting to His Majesty's Canadian Ships in April 2002. The network was not available domestically within Canada.
Radio 1212 or Sender 11212 or Nachtsender 1212 was a black propaganda radio station operated from 1944 to 1945 by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the US Office of War Information (OWI) under the direction of CBS radio chief William S. Paley, who was based in London. Nachtsender 1212 broadcast from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg using the former commercial radio facilities known as Radio Luxembourg, which had been occupied and then liberated from German control during World War II.
The BBC Regional Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing a number of earlier BBC local stations between 1922 and 1924 – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the BBC Home Service, two days before the outbreak of World War II.
The BBC National Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing the earlier BBC's experimental station 5XX – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the BBC Home Service, two days before the outbreak of World War II.
The BBC Forces Programme was a national radio station which operated from 7 January 1940 until 26 February 1944.
The BBC General Forces Programme was a national radio station operating from 27 February 1944 until 31 December 1946.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL.
This is a timeline of events that occurred during 1944 in World War II.
AFN Bremerhaven was originally an "Armed Forces Radio and Television Service" (AFRTS) station.. The Bremerhaven affiliate station was located in northern Germany. At the time, it was part of the "American Forces Network - Europe." AFN Bremerhaven began broadcasting in 1945, originally as AFN Bremen.
The June 6, 1944, order of the day was issued by Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Allied forces on the eve of D-Day, the first day of the invasion of Normandy. The message was intended to impress upon the troops the importance of their mission which Eisenhower called a "Great Crusade". Eisenhower had been drafting the order since February 1944 and recorded a spoken version on May 28, that was broadcast on British and American radio on D-Day.
The "People of Western Europe" speech was made by Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the run-up to the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Addressed to the people of occupied Europe it informed them of the start of the invasion and advised them on the actions Eisenhower wanted them to take. It also addressed the Allies' plans for post-liberation government.
This is a list of events from British radio in 1944.
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