| The Radio and Television Production Office (RTPO)
acquires and approves radio and television spot announcements for AFRTS. RTPO
is the only activity within the AFRTS system authorized to release spots for worldwide
distribution. The spot announcements RTPO
provides to AFRTS outlets are divided into two categories. The first includes spots that
are written and produced exclusively for the AFRTS audience by civilian companies under
contract to RTPO. The creative process for these contract spots is
closely supervised by RTPO project officers in full coordination with the
appropriate DoD subject matter experts, the public affairs offices of the military
departments and the military broadcast services. Unlike the spots created by AFRTS outlets
to address local or regional internal information topics for specific audiences, contract
spots are designed to deliver DoD messages to a joint-service audience worldwide.
The second category of RTPO-provided spots
are Public Service Announcements (PSAs). RTPO coordinates with a variety
of stateside sources including Federal, State and local government agencies, as well as
other public and private organizations. The spots are frequently modified for AFRTS use.
RTPO contract spots and PSAs cover 42
general subject areas and more than 200 individual topics. Approximately 400 new contract
spots and 300 new PSAs are added to the RTPO inventory each year. In some
years, these numbers may be significantly increased by the addition of a special series of
spots purchased from a commercial network or production house. Though the working
inventory of RTPO spots varies from month to month, it generally numbers about 8,000 spots
divided almost evenly between radio and television.
In addition to contract spots and PSAs, RTPO
is responsible for acquiring musical "fillers" which are used during longer TV
programming breaks to reduce the repetitiveness of spot announcements and to fill breaks
within and between TV programs.- These productions are brief visual snapshots that are
thematic but have no storyline. They cover a great variety of topics including, geography,
nature and the American scene. |
