Please do welcome on the news line a return guest to the program.
She is Kim Miller.
Ms.
Miller is founder and president of a group called America's Women.
They are online at americaswomen.org.
Kim Miller, good morning, and thank you for taking the time.
Thank you so much for having me on, Jeff.
Remind people who may have missed the past conversation, which I think we had on the national show, but how did this organization, America's Women, get started?
Well, we started back in 2020 when everything was crazy and we were a group of regular moms, women who went to church often, you know, some of the same churches, some other churches, but we were a Christian group of women who said, we want to awaken more and more women to understand what they can do with what was happening that we have taken our eyes off the ball of our communities.
We were
Stewarding our homes and our families, our businesses, and that's all important.
But if we take our eye off what's happening outside of our house, and really at our school boards, at our city councils, we are going to get what we get.
And it always encroaches upon our lives.
And more women were so wanting to join up.
We just made it easy for women to make a difference locally.
We said, it's all local.
That's where we have the most impact.
So let's share what we can learn.
We all kind of learned it ourselves and we shared what we learned as we went along.
And now I had never thought I was going to be in the political space.
But you know what, Jeff, really, we have to recognize that politics, it's not politics.
It's life and it's, you know, theology has become political.
It's all about how you live and what you value.
And it's all going to be impacted by politics so you better get involved.
Well, to me, it also has to do with people are called to serve in different ways at different times.
And you folks were involved with Arizona women of action.
That's certainly not by its name a passive group.
America's women, the organization that you launched from that certainly engages and encourages people to be involved.
So here we are a week past the election.
Yes, everything has become political.
What's the first thing that folks who are motivated?
In other words, they may have been interested before, but they're really motivated now.
What should these women do in order to effect possible change?
Well, and that's a lot of people are thinking about that.
And what can we learn from what just happened?
First of all,
I really see that this was not a mandate for what the Democrats have been putting out.
It's really a rejection of, I think, a lot of the mess and the corruption.
And it was a rejection of, where's our economy right now?
And what's going on in the war?
We don't feel like we're being listened to.
And that's what we're hearing from looking at the stats.
that more women have shifted over to the Democrats now.
And many people, even in the Hispanic community, 70% of them had leaned now toward the Democrat side, which is a loss for us, a pretty good loss of where we had had.
I don't feel like we've been listening and communicating it.
I think the message was
not made clear that we have to get back to basics and stand up for where people feel it the most, which is local.
So we're going to, what we need to do coming forward is, it was remind people though, it was a mandate, I think just a statement that a lot of people were making, I'm just gonna vote D all the way down because I'm mad, but do you know what, the issues won.
We had states that like,
Washington and colorado and arizona that uh... have very liberal now it's very kind of blue but they voted for keeping men out of women's sports they voted for many other uh... you know getting rid of the the cameras that are you know those flock cameras and things like that and more uh... common sense issues even when they were voting for these democrat lawmakers which people aren't making their they need to connect the dot they understand
I'm glad that we won on the issues and the values.
And that's what America's Women did.
We really made it a messaging campaign that is your family on the ballot.
It's women's dignity.
It's children's innocence as they're being sexualized and propagandized in schools and everywhere.
And it's school choice, parent rights, basic things.
Those are winning issues.
And women can come back and bring people to look at the issues rather than the political party.
And the truth always remains that the conservatives own that space.
The values that matter are values that conservatives should be championing and we need to message it better.
Kim Miller is our guest.
She is the founder and president of America's Women online.
It's americaswomen.org.
She's kind enough to join us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXL.
And that's such an excellent point that you made about
separating candidates from issues because as there's been so much ringing of hands about candidates that lost, but when there was an issue on the ballot.
It was not necessarily consistent with the candidate vote here in Iowa We approved a constitutional amendment requiring a supermajority to raise income taxes Well, that's hardly something on the in the Democrat playbook and yet Democrats did very well at the ballot box So it seems to me it was a matter of we need to change something.
Okay, so now we've changed But changed to what?
And so that suggests to me that an organization like America's women is well poised for the change to what because of the fact that voters said they want to change.
All right.
They've done that.
But if that doesn't prove to be productive change, those same voters are going to be looking for some other kind of change in two years.
That's really where you folks.
I mean, that just seems to be wheelhouse for you folks.
Yes, it is.
We always said it's about the values.
And that's also why we decided we're not just going to be a faith organization, even though that's where our grounding is.
We are open to anyone on those issues.
The values are what brings us together.
Who are we as a nation?
We have to come back to that.
Who are we?
And where are we going?
What is this time?
And what do we need to do and wake people up and realize that we want women to realize?
We've asked them for the vote.
Just you, we did a you plus two campaign.
You commit to vote and you get two friends to commit to vote.
We are still saying that going forward, you need to make not just one vote right now in this year.
We need you to make one commitment that you're saying I will.
Find out what is necessary in my state, my community, to stand for those values of strong families and education that is real and sovereignty of parents and all of that.
Stand up for those things in your community every week.
Just do one small thing and that's what americaswomen.org.
We have a newsletter that comes out every week.
We try to boil down issues.
You know we're helping you we say we make it easy so you can make a difference And we want to get chapters in every state where we can really get more and more local for your state So I hope people hear that and they message me go to americaswomen.org Info at americaswomen.org and you can send us a message and say hey I'm the person in Iowa who wants to start a chapter
We need a handful of women to come together and champion that.
We've got it all already modeled and ready to go.
So we need to work hard and women are the ones who really do it.
And again, there's a very nice weekly call to action page.
You're focused this week, not only on veterans, but also looking ahead to Thanksgiving.
And again, it's
the contribution in the community.
And over the course of months, I will talk to people on this program.
I will then hear from listeners who say, well, that's all really nice.
But what can I do about it?
This is the what can I do about it?
Yep.
That's right.
It has to become a habit.
I always tell people, it's like you brush your teeth, you know, you floss.
Not everybody likes to floss, but you know what?
If you don't floss,
Then you get cavities, you get pain.
It's the same thing with our communities.
If we don't steward our...
elected officials and and also encourage them let them know I'm paying attention what's going on in my state house and senate what bills are coming up oh well I should give my opinion on that they need you would be surprised how few people it takes to sway the mind of a lawmaker because they they assume oh if this person's contacting me there's probably a thousand more behind them who's just not saying anything so our voice is so much more powerful than we imagine
We just need to make it a habit.
One of the statistics that you folks have provided, I find very interesting.
Women have outvoted men in presidential elections since 1980.
That's,
I think,
I wasn't even voting then.
I was close to voting then, but so, I mean, and then two years ago, 8.7 million more women voted than men.
So who better
to lead
the movement because again who's really running the household and I say that in an appropriate not flippant way?
Yes, and I looked at this this recent election It was about eight million more women voted and some of that is because there are more women than men in our in our nation and But they are tending to be more politically engaged and I think men should also be engaged.
This is not just
We're just pro-women and we're again, believe me, I know that the feminist movement has destroyed women.
I don't agree with that.
I want strong women and strong men so we get strong families, which all relates to a strong nation.
So everyone has to do their part and we have to educate women because too often they have leaned Democrat because of the natural compassion that women have, which is powerful, wonderful.
But if they don't combine
the love aspect with the truth aspect.
You need love and truth together, or it's abused.
You cannot help people if you're not going to think, well, what happens if I use my emotion to rule on something, and I think this is unfair, but if the leftist kind of mindset comes in where it's like, oh, it's all for the victims, and you end up destroying.
The trans movement is a great example.
We're destroying children because we don't want to
be unfair and uncompassionate to those who are struggling.
So we're just going to push this on them and that's the problem.
We are getting women informed so that they can be engaged for really shifting culture.
You know, Jeff, ultimately this is a cultural battle.
We have to get people understanding how to connect the dots and so that their votes
because women are out voting.
We want those votes to go the right direction and we can.
I believe absolutely it just takes relationships, getting women talking to women, common sense women talking to other women and helping that common sense thread come
through.
in agriculture in a variety of ways.
How's that going these days?
I know how it's going
here in
Iowa.
How's it going for you folks?
Yes, my husband's family are fourth generation farmers, ranchers in Arizona.
We still have a cattle ranch in Flagstaff, Arizona, but we also had sold the farm.
Anyway, long story, but I won't go there.
And we had to buy, we shifted that over to California.
So we actually grow
pistachios mainly in California, but also other row crop.
We've been doing that for many, many years.
And it's rough.
It is rough.
And the battles in California over the water and the insane policies there, I wish we could uproot our trees and bring them back to Arizona.
But we can't.
But there are some good people.
I love farmers.
They are some of them, you know, no pun intended, but there's fault of the earth.
They really are so Yeah, it's a rough industry to be in and there's always battles between government But yeah there we need to really be supporting the farmers everywhere
When I saw a farm in California, I thought what were you thinking?
Yes, it was just
It happened to be.
The farm ended up going over there, and tassels are a wonderful crop, but yeah.
Can't grow them everywhere.
I get it.
I
get
it.
All right.
It's americaswomen.org.
That's the website.
Link's there.
Nice little subtle support button if you like what you heard and you'd like to contribute broadly, but they'd love to have you get involved.
americaswomen.org.
Kim Miller, thank you for the excellent conversation as always, and keep up the excellent work, please.
Thank you.
And you as well, Jeff.
Iowa needs to hear from you.
Thank you.
You're very kind.
Take good care.
And Kim Miller, the founder and president of America's Women, joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540, KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.
I am pleased to welcome on the news line Richard B. Berman.
Rick Berman is a lawyer, PR executive, former lobbyist, and now the founder and owner of RBB Strategies, that's a consulting firm, and among the work done by that firm, charitiesforvets.org.
That is Mr. Berman's pro bono work these days.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Jeff, thank you for having me on.
I'm sorry for the biographical introductions.
Just a snippet here, a snippet there.
Give us a fuller sense of your background that brought you to being the executive director.
And we've talked about this foundation before, but frankly, I forget.
Do you pronounce the acronym or the monogram RAM in RAM Veterans Foundation?
It's the RAM Veterans Foundation, yes.
And the RAM Veterans Foundation
operates charitiesforvets.org.
That's our website.
And charitiesforvets.org is the one thing that I'm spending most of my time on since I left my own company, and I started RVB Strategies to do consulting work for some people, but most of my time, quite frankly, is a volunteer effort.
on seeing to it that veterans get the money that people intended to give them and the way you do that is you make certain that donors are not making foolish mistakes with their contributions.
And again, sad to say there are so many folks out there, the Naraduels, who are taking advantage of the kind hearts of good people.
Remind us, and this is why, for the audience's benefit, I could not remember if Ram was pronounced that way, because Ram actually stands for a person.
Yeah.
Yeah, Ram are the initials of a fellow named Robert Alexander Mercer.
who died during the invasion of the Nazis in France and He was part of the the US Effort in World War two to try and stop the Nazis And he is the great uncle of one of my partners in in this effort And we were talking about starting this charity and
And we started this in 2022.
And then it was a question of, you know, what were we going to call it?
We knew what we wanted to do.
And I asked her, her name is Rebecca Mercer.
She's a great philanthropist, a great friend.
And I asked her, is anybody in her family had ever been in the military?
And she said, well, her great uncle died in the Second World War.
And his name was Robert Alexander Mercer.
And I said, hey,
I like those initials.
Why don't we just call it the Ram Foundation and Ram Veterans Foundation?
And she said, great.
And that was the easiest part of putting this together.
I imagine so.
That's sort of like, well, it's a great name.
Now what do we do?
Well, charitiesforvets.org.
And again, we've talked about this on the radio in the past, but Veterans Day is high time to remind people about it.
The purpose was to make sure that money goes where it should go.
So how do you do that?
Well, we look at Depending on upon the year we're generally looking at about a hundred charities And we're looking at the hundred largest veteran charities right now.
There's 99 on our website And now those 100 veteran charities collect about three billion dollars a year actually in in excess of three billion dollars a year and What we do is look at look at all those charities we have
a series of standards like how much is your overhead?
How much money are you squirreling away in the bank or investments and not using for what people intended their money to be used for?
A couple of other standards and then we look as to whether or not these charities are measuring up and if you pass all of our tests and you do it with low overhead
then we put them in a highly recommended category and then there's two other categories and the bottom one is not recommended and right now we've got close to 40 charities out of the 99 who are not recommended because they fail one or more of those tests that we have and which by the way
I'll just spend a moment more on this of course there are there are other There are other rating services out there that rate charities We're the only ones that rate only veterans, but there are other ones out there like charity navigator and guide store But what they do is they have standards as well Maybe not the same standards and maybe not as not as tight as ours, but they average
how you're doing.
So you're good in one area, you're bad in another area, and they give you a score somewhat in the middle.
We don't average.
We say, well, these are our tests, and if you fail any one of them, then you just fail.
Because we don't think that just because you're good in one area, that it should mask and make up for a deficiency in another area.
That's why there are so many on our website that are not recommended.
But we got plenty that are highly recommended.
And that's why we're very unusual as an agency rating these veteran charities.
Rick Berman is our guest.
CharitiesforVets.org is the website.
And as I'm looking at it, to reinforce what you just said, you've got 99 on here or thereabouts, 20 are highly recommended.
37 not recommended because they are inefficient, etc.
And there are plenty in there that are recommended with solid accounting principles, etc.
But what you're basically doing and the four tests that you mentioned are right there on the web page.
Transparency is right there.
How much money are they spending on actual programs?
Are they just sitting on piles of cash for no good reason?
Are they transparent in their filings?
As you have put this together over this period of years have you been surprised at how Relatively speaking how fewer in the highly recommended category as opposed to how many are in the flat out not recommended category
Well, I didn't I didn't have any expectation when I started it as to what I was going to find All I knew was that I had looked at all the other charity rating services and I saw
a certain deficiency in them.
And I thought, well, I don't know what it's going to look like when we put a tougher standard together.
But my guess is it's going to look somewhat like what we ended up with.
I mean, for example, when it comes to overhead, I think overhead is a big issue.
You know, if you've given out big salaries to your staff, and if you've got a fancy office building, et cetera,
That's not what donors are giving you money for.
And there's a charity out there that just recently built a $14 million corporate office in a small town in Kentucky.
I never even heard of this place.
Earl Langer, Kentucky, I think is the name of it.
And there are no veteran services that are provided in that corporate office, that home office.
And I think if people knew that when they gave money to an organization like that, it was going to go to something like a building fund, which people shouldn't have to fund fancy offices with their money.
I think when people knew something like that, they'd stop giving to that organization.
And that's what we want to have happen.
We want people not to stop giving, but we want them to give their money
to an organization that is probably serving their purposes better.
It has occurred to me over the course of time that when people start a business, they tend to fail when the focus is on the trappings, right?
We have to get the fancy office and we pay top dollar for all of the furnishings and we have nice cushy salaries and country club memberships, whatever.
And they start with that.
And then they can't make their expenses because they went for the show as opposed to the foundation.
Well, that's one thing.
If you want to do that with your own money and your business and you want to fail, all right, that's up to you.
But these folks are doing it knowing that they're taking money from hardworking Americans designed to go to veterans.
Boy, that's a boy.
That's hard to look in the mirror when you're doing that kind of stuff.
I would think.
Well, you know, I think people give themselves a lot of space to make bad decisions.
That's fair.
But on the other hand, you know, not everybody knows how to manage a business.
I think there are some small charities that are being run by people that probably shouldn't run a 7-Eleven.
but they're handling, you know, a few million dollars a year.
And quite frankly, there are scams.
If you go to our website, if you look at the very top of the website, there's a bar there and it says the problem.
What's the problem?
And if you scroll down on the problem, there's about 15 examples of how people were literally stealing money.
And the names of the organizations
would suggest to you it's a very attractive organization you know a vietnam organization or purple heart foundation and things like that and you think well these guys gotta be good people but they're not they're not
well
to
the point on one of these and again you have examples of waste and abuse on that page that the the tab says the problem
When they start changing their name, that's a pretty good clue, isn't it?
That there's a bit of a scam going on because they're trying to avoid detection?
Yeah, well, obviously they want to raise money, so they need to have a good brand.
You know, there's this brand called Wounded Warriors.
If I told you that there are probably over 50 charities with the name Wounded Warrior,
in their name, you should not be surprised.
Because once people thought, well, that attracts money, then we'll use that.
So it's wounded warriors of, it might be wounded warriors of Iowa, whatever, but they use that name.
And that may or may not be a good charity, mind you.
But you start off with the fact that they're into marketing before they're into delivering program services.
It's really interesting because again now I've gone to the charity ratings tab and you've got it just so nicely listed The print the print is in green for recommended.
Okay, that makes good sense to me and we're seeing some in the 90s But I'm scrolling down here on some of these and there's one in the single digits.
There's another in the single digits not recommended because of
Excessive reserves or the the amount of money that actually goes to people who need it is so low.
It's it's just striking
Yeah, you know, there's an organization called disabled American veterans and they are broken up into four separate Four separate subsets so The it's the same organization, but they file four separate tax returns for example and
They pass money between the four organizations and so on.
One of their organizations has a reserve of 29 years versus their budget needs.
And yet they still raise more money.
They still ask for more money.
So when you give them money, it goes into somebody's bank account someplace.
Despite what the marketing and the you know the emotional pitch was It doesn't get to it doesn't get to the veteran and and that's what we're about I want if people are going to contribute money to a veteran charity I want the money to end up servicing a veteran to need somehow
When you mentioned the fancy offices it reminded me when I was working for a college
And they were going to relocate offices, do whatever.
And I remember the people from the fundraising department saying, we don't want to move to that fancy building.
We don't want all these trappings.
And somebody said, well, why wouldn't you?
And the answer is because if prospective donors come in and our office looks too nice, they're going to say, you folks don't need my money.
And that was so true.
Now, that didn't mean that they stunted to be poppers or anything, but but it's true.
If you if you're trying to ask somebody for money and it looks like you got it falling out your back pocket, nobody's going to give.
And it also then does to your point with charities for vets.org.
Makes you wonder how much money they actually are providing to the people who need it.
And it almost seems it's not.
This, this is just anecdotal and cynical, but it seems like the nicer, the nicer the trappings, the less money gets to people.
Well, it's true that there could be a direct correlation, but you know, I don't, I don't try to pass judgment as much as I say, look, I'm going to report the numbers and we use the same standard for every charity.
So if people are getting a highly recommended, um,
If they're getting a highly recommended grade from us, they're doing it with the same standards that people are failing on when they get not recommended.
So we don't pick winners and losers.
We just let the math dictate where people fall on the scale.
And the good news is I haven't really had anybody object to what we're doing.
I haven't had anybody complain that we're being unfair.
because there's plenty of people who are graded very highly.
And sometimes people say, well, I want to give for this particular purpose.
I want to do something about homelessness, or I want to give some people something.
I want to give money away for helping people transition from the military into private sector.
Well, there's more than one organization doing that.
There's only about seven categories.
of services or programs that veteran charities are engaged in.
And when you assume that there's only about seven, obviously there are multiple charities performing the same service.
And so you can find one that maybe is very efficient with your money and at the same time is doing what you want them to do.
I was going to ask, and I'm sorry for keeping you so long, but I was going to ask if you ever got complaints from folks who wound up in the not recommended category.
It's one thing if somebody calls and says, hey, I think you made a mistake on this, and if that were the case, you'd fix it.
But I just wonder if you ever get some of these folks who complain, or are they content to kind of slink off into the night and hope no one notices?
Well, there's a couple of things that have happened.
There have been a couple of instances where people have called me and they said, why are you grading us so low?
And I said, it's very transparent on the website.
Why?
And I said, but if you would just change this about how you do business, if you cut back on your overhead 5%, the rating would change.
And they'd say, oh, yeah.
OK, that's good.
Good thought.
And so they go ahead and two of them have actually done that.
Then there are people.
who just get angry and they say, look, we don't want you to, we don't want you to rate us.
Just don't review us.
That's not how this
works, is
it?
That's right.
I said, no, no, that doesn't have no, and actually that, that's, that's the story with the better business bureau.
If you go to bed, bed, a business bureau also rates charities, but if you don't want to be rated, they won't rate you.
So.
You know, what good is that?
So everybody everybody has a good rating You know, there are all sorts of situations like that, but sometimes people have called us up And or written to us and said The reason we have so much money in the bank is because we have a building fund and we can't collect enough money every year to
to get the money for the building, but after about three or four years, we will be able to fund it.
And I've said, oh, okay, that's an exception to the rule if you're actually going to be using the money eventually in a relatively short period of time.
And so we'll make an exception.
I'm very open to people showing me that sometimes our standard might work.
you know, with this service to an organization by giving them a bad rating.
And so we'll adjust it accordingly.
And I'll put that explanation on the website to say that we gave them an exception for this period of time.
So again, I tried to handle this thing like if I were on the other side and I would want somebody else to be just as reasonable as I'm trying to be.
Having said that there are some organizations that will never be any better Complaints not withstanding just because they're running the organization poorly
It's great work because again for so many people they say well I have limited means I do want to give I just
Don't know if it's a good place to go, and you should always investigate wherever you intend to give your hard-earned money.
But if you're interested in Veterans Charities in particular, charitiesforvets.org is the website, charitiesforvets.org.
And again, this is the initiative of the Ram Veterans Foundation in honor of PFC Robert Alexander Mercer.
Rick Berman, thank you so much for taking the time and for all of this advocacy that you do.
I appreciate it and take good care, sir.
Jeff, thanks for your opportunity that you gave me to explain it
all.
And Mr. Berman joined us live on the news line on News Talk 1540 KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.
News Talk 1540 KXCL, where Iowa comes to talk, you've probably heard at least mentions of the Armed Forces Broadcast Network.
If you're a veteran, you likely listened to programming.
If you tune into KXCL's Radio's Golden Age program, you've encountered vintage recordings from the Armed Forces Radio Network.
Oklahoma State Professor Stacey Takas looks at the development and history of Armed Forces Broadcasting in a new book, Broadcasting Empire, the American Forces Network and the Post-War Projection of U.S.
Power.
We're joined by Dr. Takas this morning.
Thanks for being with us.
Well, you're welcome.
Thanks for inviting me.
So, who are the people we should know when it comes to the origin story of the armed forces network and broadcasting in the armed forces?
Well, probably the most important person to know is Thomas H.A.
Lewis, who was an advertising executive for Young and Rubicon, which was sort of the biggest advertising agency in the 1940s.
He was tapped to start a radio division within the Morale Services.
division of the army during World War II, a way to deal with questions of morale that had to do with the will to fight.
The idea was that we were in a long battle and we weren't sure if ordinary Americans were sufficiently prepared to stick it out and fight.
And so there was a lot of discussion that we needed to mentally prepare.
mentally and emotionally prepare soldiers for this fight.
And the idea was that popular culture could help do that, do some of that work.
And so, you know, Frank Capra, the famous film director, was brought in to make films that would help with indoctrination.
And Thomas Lewis, who was a famous, at the time in the 1940s, you know, advertising agencies created all the radio programming.
So he was very familiar with radio and he was brought in to kind of
give the same treatment to radio for the troops so that it would be used to indoctrinate and provide information to troops, but it would do it through the vehicle of entertainment.
So if we think back to the 1940s, the World War II era when this network was getting up and running, what would the programming have sounded like?
It would have sounded exactly like, in fact, a better version of any radio network in the United States because it was, you know,
function of the department, it was called the Department of War at the time.
They could get radio networks to give them all of their best programming and then mix and match from the best of all of radio in the United States.
And all of the men who were brought into the service to run the network were radio executives, radio personalities, radio engineers.
And so they had been trained in the commercial radio industry and brought much of the feel of that radio industry into their performance for the Department of War.
So, you know, it would have sounded like the best version of a 1940 radio station in the United States.
You would have heard a little bit of news and information, but primarily you would have heard variety programs and music.
One difference that characterized the American Forces Radio Service was that it used mostly recorded music, which at the time in the United States, the FCC actually discouraged the use of recorded music in part to prop up the networks who had an advantage in creating live programming.
It's only after the war that radio moves to recorded music.
and in part because AFN showed them it was possible.
We're talking with Oklahoma State University Professor Stacey Takas.
Her recent book is Broadcasting Empire.
The American Forces Network and the post-war projection of U.S.
power.
So let's move on from the end of World War II.
There are still Americans all over the world in the post-war years.
This network continues to broadcast.
And at that point, there are a lot of other people listening.
I suppose there probably always were a lot of other people listening besides the American...
that this was intended for, but what's the impact?
The impact is actually hard to actually empirically verify but reports at the time and including reports taken by state broadcasting agencies like the Voice of America and the US Information Service.
They tried to track these audiences and based on those reports.
It varies anywhere between 50 million and 140 million people.
Could eavesdrop on the American forces radio service during the height of the Cold War.
And so that's quite a number of people.
And we were, of course, you know, a raid around the world in over 170 countries.
And so anywhere there was a radio station, there was spillover.
All the programming was in English, of course.
But it was also music.
And so people did listen to the music.
They used the broadcast to try to learn English so that they could work with the troops.
One of the most lucrative jobs you could have would be working for the US military.
And so learning English was your way to access that job.
And the American Forces Radio Service was often a vehicle through which people learned English.
So it wasn't a.
propaganda station, but it did have a kind of soft power effects.
It kind of taught people, A, what commercial radio broadcasting sounded like, because around the world, many broadcasters were state run.
But it also, you know, it brought modern sound around the world and, you know, had a great influence on all kinds of creative production all over the world.
We could trace
you know the popular K-pop right now back to the U.S.
occupation the Korean Peninsula.
So lasting impact certainly we're talking with
Stacey Takas of Oklahoma State University, author of Broadcasting Empire, the American Forces Network and the Postwar Projection of U.S.
Power.
When it comes to the evolution of broadcasting by the 1950s, radio was being supplanted by television.
How did this network respond to that and the needs that it was trying to serve, which were different than commercial
needs?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, TV comes somewhat slowly to most of the military.
The Air Force was really quick to get into television, and that's in part because, you know, they were charged with overseeing the nuclear mission in the early Cold War, and they had bases in these really obscure locations, you know, like the Arctic Circle or, you know, the middle of the desert in Northern Africa.
And those conditions were harsh.
And so they had a lot of morale problems.
And the Air Force quickly learned that they had to find some way to distract the troops in their downtime or they were going to have a lot of discipline problems.
And so they jumped right onto TV production, had RCA kind of give them a quote for a small television system.
And then
Ran an experiment in limestone main to see if it would work and it showed that you know drastic cuts in a wall rates and disciplinary actions Soldiers credited it with you know keeping keeping their families together helping them survive their deployments and these kinds of things and so they've rolled it out really quickly in the Air Force, but the army didn't really get television until the 1970s And in part in response to the war in Vietnam But yeah, it's television
It was over the air the way radio was initially, but not for very long.
It had the same kind of soft power influences radio, but maybe to a lesser extent because American programming was a little foreign to people, the kinds of genres that we have and the stories that we tell were a little off-putting in places, but primarily the function of television was to help.
with these morale issues, right, to help provide a distraction for troops and to keep them in touch with home as well.
One of the slogans of the service for a long time has been a touch of home.
And so, you know, television was perceived to be a really important way in which to maintain those contacts to home for soldiers.
I'm curious about the technical challenges that the network would have encountered because if we're talking about broadcasting in the United States, I could put up a radio tower or a broadcast tower and know that it could stand there for a long time.
An army might be on the move or may not be in the same place for as long.
Also, the technical challenges of
local interference because the FCC is going to regulate what frequencies I can broadcast down in the United States and there may not be an organization like that or may not be a friendly organization like that where these stations were operating.
Those were significant logistical challenges.
Technologically, I think the military did a great job of basically field testing a lot of new technologies.
So they were one of the first to use.
what was called troposcatter, which is basically like spitting signals up into the ether and bouncing them off of the ozone and back down to earth.
They used stratospheric broadcasting, so broadcasting from airplanes.
They were one of the first to use satellite television for program delivery.
At the time that they started doing this, satellites were primarily used for business communications.
There were a few experiments with television, but
it was very, there was a lot of load if you were trying to project programming.
And so the military, it's actually really responsible for the establishment of a global satellite downlink network that, you know, that it used for its truce, but that other countries then could piggyback off of to start their own satellite services.
And so technologically, I think they address these problems quite well.
The tougher problems were those political challenges, right?
So whenever the United States deplies overseas, they have base agreements and in those base agreements is always a right to establish broadcasting for the troops.
Then they frame this as a vital information mission, right?
Should anything happen, we need to be able to get a hold of the troops and this is one way we could do that.
Those agreements are
often contentious and often have clauses that say things like, you know, you have to control spillover.
You can have a radio station, but we don't want it influencing our population.
But that's really hard to do, especially if you're doing over the air broadcasting.
And so, you know, they developed some special directed antennas and things like this to try to contain the signals, but there was always overspill and that overspill often pushed local nations to
to actually develop their own broadcast infrastructure to combat the US military's broadcasts, to provide material that was in the local language for their own population so that they would not become overly influenced by American programming.
In a couple of weeks, it'll be Thanksgiving.
And I know at some point during those big Thanksgiving football broadcasts, the announcers will say, this broadcast is being shown on the Armed Forces Broadcast Network.
And that's probably the most consistent crossover that I'm aware of to the civilian network today.
What kinds of other things besides those football games are people seeing today if they're watching Armed Forces Broadcasting?
Same as with, you know, back in the 1940s, you know, the best programming from all networks, including streaming services now.
The military can still call upon these broadcasters to provide programming at little costs, basically a processing fee to the military and frame it as public service.
And so you'll see credits to the various networks, but basically, you know, if you're watching, they have a 24 hour news channel.
If you're watching the 24 hour news channel, you'll see every major network newscast in a row, like ABC, CBS, NBC, then you'll see maybe an hour from CNN and maybe an hour from Fox News and maybe an hour from MSNBC or whatever.
And same thing with network program, like entertainment programming.
They're sort of,
network agnostic.
You'll see little bumpers and things that identify which network made the show, but by and large is some allange, right?
It's everything that you might access yourself in the United States.
Mixed together into one stream that is, as a single access point, far more robust than any single network in the United States is, right?
It takes the best from every network and mixes it together.
They have now, I think, eight channels.
Like I said, they have two sports channels.
They have a 24-hour news channel.
They have a channel that's devoted to family programming because we still have a lot of families that deploy with the troops overseas, especially in Europe and Asia.
We have a couple of basic broadcast networks.
And yeah, so across the spectrum, there's a lot of variety.
All of that signal is delivered by satellite now.
It's all locked down as well now, so it doesn't have quite the same.
cultural influence that it did during the height of the Cold War.
But it still has that, you know, positive effect on discipline and morale within the military.
Well, on this Veterans Day, Dr. Takas, thank you for being with us to share some insights on the past and present for broadcasting by the American Forces Network.
Okay.
Well, great.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate getting the chance to talk about the book and thanks to all the veterans for their service on this.
Veterans Day.
Dr. Stacy Takas of Oklahoma State University, her recent book is Broadcasting Empire, the American Forces Network and the Post-War Projection of U.S.
Power.
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