Life is very seldom fair - An AFN update

[nhradiochild]

I noticed that AFN is plugging their satellite afternoon show on the cable system (of which we don't carry). Funny thing is, it's the general consensus here by most of the jocks and management that they consider me to be better than the AFN satellite flunkie (I take their word for it, I've never heard the man). The really funny thing is, he's a civilian, and seems to be considered a misnomer by those of the enlisted realm who normally occupy such positions. It has been expressed that those in upper-level management prefer to promote their civilians over their bread-and-butter crop (maybe to soothe the civvies ego, who could up and leave I suppose) perhaps because they have the ability to stick around and establish an audience, whereas the military counterparts are routinely subjected to deployments and such (especially seeings how Air Force rotations are only 6 months). All the same, it's funny yet sad that I can be considered such a hot commodity but am stuck in the MOS that the Army (and I, reluctantly) signed me up for.

On the bright side, the guys (specifically one that did the interviews) set me up to have a personalized liner recorded by the "away team" of the St. Louis Rams cheerleaders, and that's really special to me. He added his own personal flair by sandwiching it with the musical interlude known as "Pimp Juice". Crazy guy. Even by multiple females' accounts these chicks were hotter than most visiting cheerleaders , yet (much to my wife's chagrin, I imagine :) I did not meet them in person. Am I a loser for staying at the station to recondition the show for tape-delay version for those that can't listen to it live, rather than go and see the cheerleaders perform (which happened after my shift and which I had the time to check out but didn't)? :-[

 

[louiemanno]

That sucks NH… radio needs people like you. And you comrades deserve to get their radio from a soldier. Thanks again for your service to our country.

Louie

 

[nhradiochild]

Well thanks for your support, Louie. I'd love to share with you some of my shows and bits (MP3s recorded at "FM quality") if you don't mind shooting me your address.

In the meantime, I had this response for this topic which was messaged to me, but I don't see any reason not to share. I'll just exclude the man's name for potential privacy concerns. It's very intriguing.

Hi NH Radiochild:

While I can understand your circumstance, AFN seems to be in a much better situation for having local military broadcasters on whenever possible.
When I was with AFN Europe, there was a local morning program on each station, and an afternoon drive local show too. There was a Saturday morning show as well.

If you've not had a look at your fellow broadcasters over at British Forces Radio(BFN), take a few minutes and see who they have on-the-air.

www.bfbs.com -or- http://www.ssvc.com/bfbs/radio/index.htm

It's all civilians...all the time. (Maybe they have some local shows that have military-types, I don't know for sure, but it appears the staff is all civilian.) Hang in there, you seem to be devoted to the biz and that will work in your favor.

 

[nhradiochild]

Continuing my legacy for assuming the best of everything, I expect that perhaps Great Britain feels no need to put soldiers' in harm's way for the sake of entertainment, when all can be handled very tidily by a satellite service with maybe a news bureau transplant or 2 "outside the wire". Not to mention that those enrolling (I should ask the local guy here if it is strictly voluntary for them) would be best suited for combat as their military cannot be the size of the Americans'.

In fact, thinking more and more about it, I'm curious as to why AFN hasn't already done the same. ???

On a side note, there was some talk about how the Army transferred much of their broadcast responsibilities to the Air Force, though I wasn't paying close attention to this conversation so I can't be sure of specifics or accuracy.