Giving Air Support to the Troops : Radio: The U.S. military is broadcasting news, sports and features, but no religion, to soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia.

United States soldiers in Saudi Arabia may not be getting their MTV, but due to some quick maneuvers by the Armed Forces Radio Television Service, they are now receiving radio newscasts from home.

“We are up and running with five transmitters in the area,” said Col. Richard Fuller, deputy commander for operations at the AFRTS broadcast center in Sun Valley. The center oversees the radio and television programming that goes out to U.S. military personnel via satellite around the world.

Before the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, AFRTS had no broadcast facilities in the Middle East and transmissions from its closest transmitter, in Turkey, could not be picked up in Saudi Arabia. (AFRTS uses the standard broadcast bands, which do not carry nearly as far as shortwave.) During the first month of troop movements into Saudi Arabia, military personnel had to go without the news- and sports-laden programming on AFRTS.

“Obviously, there were other things that had to come first, like military equipment, food, housing and basic services,” Fuller said. “But our people moved as fast as we could to get on the air with what our military personnel wanted.

“They wanted to know what was going on in the world, especially in the gulf. And they wanted sports.”

The first AFRTS transmitter in Saudi Arabia went on the air Sept. 12. That gave at least some of the troops in the area access to AFRTS’ roster that is packed with newscasts from almost every major U.S. source, including ABC, CBS, NBC, National Public Radio, the Mutual Broadcasting System and the radio divisions of the Associated Press and United Press International wire services.

On weekdays, the top of the hour typically begins with from one to six newscasts, plus news features and commentary.

“We take them right from the source, exactly as they are heard here except that we don’t run the commercials,” Fuller said. “There is no censorship whatsoever.”

Second only to the amount of news on the AFRTS broadcast roster is sports, with updates and features from a variety of sources. Additionally, the schedule is regularly preempted to present live broadcasts of sporting events.

Rounding out the schedule are business, health and science features, and short programs produced by the various service branches.

Five AFRTS transmitters are operational, giving almost all the U.S. troops in the area access to the programming.

Getting the transmitters on the air was more a diplomatic than a logistics problem, said Col. Joe Cook, deputy assistant director of AFRTS. “The primary concern was that we were doing everything in coordination with the Saudi Arabian government,” said Cook, speaking from AFRTS headquarters in Washington. “They wanted to know what would be broadcast and how it would be done.

“There is nothing really unusual about that. If a foreign government came here and said it wanted to set up transmitters to broadcast in our country, we’d want to know what was going on too.” The Saudis control the power allotment for the transmitters and the frequencies on which they broadcast, Cook said.

Saudi government officials had no problem with the vast majority of the AFRTS broadcast schedule. “They were concerned that we stick to news and sports and since that is our mission, too, it was no problem,” Cook said. But the Saudis did not want any programs of a religious nature broadcast in their primarily Islamic country.

Before AFRTS went on the air there, three shows were removed from its roster, including two short, weekly programs of religious news. The third was the twice-weekly, half-hour “Focus on the Family,” a program produced by a conservative Christian organization based in Pomona.

“Focus on the Family,” which is broadcast daily over 1,500 stations in the United States, had been on AFRTS since 1983 in edited form. “We had always given AFRTS a special version that was devoid of religious content,” said Mike Trout, senior vice president of the Christian media empire named after the program, which features organization founder James Dobson discussing family issues. “The root of what we believe and the content of the show is found in the Bible,” Trout said, “but some of the programs do not have an overt religious content. We go through these programs and further cut out any comment that is religious, such as the mention of a Scripture passage.

“These are the programs we provide AFRTS,” he said, adding that he is hopeful the program will soon be reinstated in the schedule.

Robert Castle, the civilian chief of AFRTS’ radio division, sympathizes with Trout. “We had always considered the show to be more about family counseling than about religion,” Castle said. “But orders came from on high that all programs with even an appearance of an association with religion should be taken off the broadcast schedule. We wanted to be very careful, understandably, not to risk offending the Saudis.”

“Focus on the Family” continues to be sent to AFRTS studios at military facilities worldwide as part of a non-broadcast feed. The personnel at these local outlets can tape the show and weave it into the regular AFRTS schedule at their discretion.

In coming weeks, the troops in Saudi Arabia will have their own mobile studio facilities, which will allow AFRTS radio entertainment programs, produced at the Sun Valley facility and sent out in a non-broadcast feed or by mail, to be inserted into the schedule. And if all goes smoothly, the troops will be able to see news and entertainment programs from the AFRTS TV service too.

“With luck in the next month, there is a chance we can have some limited television in the area,” Cook said. “We have been working with the Saudis to establish some low-wattage, directional television that would be only for the troops in isolated areas. That way, it would not interfere with Saudi TV.”