Listen here (Real Player Required) to a hour long BFBS Special first broadcast in 2003 for the sixtieth anniversary of British Forces Broadcasting Service. It’s sad to listen to station after station going off the air as British forces left country after country after World War II. This really a pretty cool program.
About the BFBS
BFBS began in 1943 in Algeria, and continues today to provide service to British Forces around the world. Unlike our Armed Forces Radio and Television Network, BFBS is part of the Services Sound & Vision Corporation, a registered charity set up to entertain and inform British armed forces around the world.
SSVC is kind of like AFRTS, AAFES, the USO, combined into a nonprofit corporation.
SSVC runs:
BFBS Radio
BFBS Radio One - There are three distinct services operating out of headquarters at Chalfont St Peter. The first, BFBS Radio 1, is similar in style to BBC Radio 1; playing new music throughout the day as well as taking regular news summaries.
Radio Two - A mixture of more laid-back music, extended talk sequences as well as re-broadcasting the main news programs and comedy from BBC Radio 4 and sport from BBC Radio Five Live.
BFBS Gurkha Radio with studios in Katmandu, Brunei, and Shorncliffe. BFBS has been broadcasting to the Gurkhas for 60 years.
BFSB Television
Televison One - The Family channel
Television Two - “The lads” channel, special programing for single and unaccompanied personnel in operational areas.
Combined Services Entertainment
CSE provides over 140 live shows every year, entertaining Service personnel based around the world including Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Falkland Islands and Cyprus, as well as HM Ships.
SSVC Retail
SSVC Retail operates shops on major military bases in Germany selling home entertainment equipment and other household white goods at competitive prices.
SSVC Forces Cinemas
SSVC Forces Cinemas provides the latest box office movies to twenty static cinemas in Cyprus, Germany, Falkland Islands, UK and Northern Ireland and a mobile cinema, The Movie Machine, operating in the Balkans. Movies are shown within weeks of UK release.
British Defense Film Library
Managed on behalf of the MoD, BDFL supplies training and recruiting programs to all branches of the Armed Services.
The BFBS is not well known to Americans, but has long been an important part of the British miltiary establishment.
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