The long and interesting story of Adventist radio broadcasting in the countries of Southern Asia goes way back to the very early era of experimental radio broadcasting. Back in the year 1925, the Adventist missionary from New Zealand, Elder Reuben E. Hare, made the first historic radio broadcast in Southern Asia on behalf of the Adventist denomination. At 6:00 pm on September 25, he presented a sermon over the Walter Rogers commercial mediumwave radio broadcasting station, 2AX in Bombay.The first Adventist broadcast on international shortwave was made by Elder L. B. Losey in 1937 over the radio broadcasting station VU7MC, operated by the Travancore government in Mysore, India. This was actually a series of radio broadcasts on behalf of Spicer College, which was located near Bangalore at the time.
International radio broadcasting on shortwave was introduced on a regular basis in 1950 with the usage of the large old half hour disc recordings of Dr. H. M. S. Richards and the Voice of Prophecy. This initial radio broadcast was aired on Sunday April 30, at 9:00 am from the old Emisora Goa on coastal India.
Later in the same year, a contract was taken out with Radio Ceylon, in Colombo Sri Lanka for additional regular broadcasts of the Voice of Prophecy. Your Radio Doctor with the Australian Dr Clifford Anderson followed three years later, and soon afterwards, programming in regional languages was introduced.
It was at this stage that the enlarged international radio broadcasting ministry of the Adventist denomination in Southern Asia was organized as AWR-Asia (later AWR-Southern Asia). Subsidiary radio programming was also on the air from local and shortwave stations located in Afghanistan, Burma, Maldive Islands, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
It was at this stage that SLBC Colombo asked for a DX program. This was launched as Radio Monitors International on Sunday June 1, 1975. This program is still on the air today as Wavescan, 35 years later.
At the height of its international radio outreach from the shortwave facilities of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, AWR-Southern Asia was on the air in more than 10 languages, in services that were beamed to Southern Asia, the Far East, Africa, Middle East, Europe and North America. A large mail response came in from more than 100 countries worldwide.
When KSDA was inaugurated on Guam in 1987, they took the title AWR-Asia, and the Poona-Pune programming was transferred from Colombo to Guam.
(AWR Wavescan NWS 76 via Adrian Peterson)