4. The Armed Forces Radio Service was created to provide entertainment and news
In the Great Britain of the 1940s, radio was entirely dominated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC, known as the “Beeb” to much of its audience, soon had competition. In 1943 the United States Army, using equipment obtained from the BBC began transmission of programs which included prerecorded shows from the United States. News, weather, and sports programs originated with the BBC. The British also imposed power restrictions on the new Armed Forces Radio Service stations, fearful of losing much of their audience to the brash American broadcasts. The Americans were limited to where they could broadcast from, and the BBC required a minimum of their content aired daily. AFRS broadcasts were also banned from London as a point of origination. Nonetheless, the AFRS gained a British audience, including in London where those with better receivers enjoyed the American broadcasts.
Among the programs they enjoyed was Command Performance, recorded in Hollywood’s Vine Street Playhouse and sent overseas via shortwave. The “command” in Command Performance came from the audience, who could request a performer, as well as the content of the act to be performed. The program was not broadcast domestically in the United States. Nonetheless. TIME Magazine called it “the best wartime program in America”. Only once, on Christmas Eve, 1942, was the program broadcast within the continental United States. But shortwave radio owners could intercept it, and it developed what in a later day would be called a cult following. Almost all of the performers who appeared on the program volunteered their time and enjoyed considerably less censorship of language and scenario than they would have encountered on radio programs for domestic consumption.