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WEBY, a talk radio station in northwest Florida is broadcasting a new 10-hour documentary about a long forgotten and historic radio outlet that few of us on this side of the world could ever have heard: AFVN, the American Forces Vietnam Network. Most here are familiar with it thanks to the Robin Williams flick, "Good Morning Vietnam."
But this documentary isn't fictionalized. It presents the actual never-before heard-in North America original airchecks of a radio station that broadcast Top 40 classics and a little bit of home to troops fighting in that unfortunate war. It's scheduled to air commercial free beginning October 26th to the 30th from 4-6 pm daily, with the entire 10 hours replayed on U.S. Veterans Day (our Remembrance Day) from 8 am - 6pm.
Here's a small sample featuring a name everyone will know. But I'm guessing none of us have ever heard this now famous game show host sounding quite like this:
Morning wake-up with Army spec. Pat Sajak
Adrian Cronauer, the real life DJ Williams played in the movie, and Dick "Chickenman" Orkin are among some of the others interviewed in the special. I'm not sure yet whether the station plans to provide a complete stream of it once it's finished but it can be heard live over the web. The 11-minute preview featured here makes it sound like it might be worth listening to for fans of long lost radio history.
Marine vet brings Armed Forces Vietnam radio to American airwaves
AFVN doc companion page
Last edited by RadioActive (October 25, 2015 10:40 pm)
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Thanks for this. I'll be listening and hopefully grabbing the stream. This is pretty historic stuff.
By the way, keep in mind that Milton Fla. is in the Florida Panhandle so they are in the Central time zone.
Last edited by Peter the K (October 26, 2015 1:25 am)
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Didn't realize Florida had two time zones. Which means it airs from 5-7 pm here if that's the case.
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Just got off the phone with a WEBY rep, and there's good news and bad news. There's no geoblocking on their stream so Canadians without a VPN can listen without any problems. But because they play a lot of classic 60s tunes in the documentary, they apparently won't be archiving any of the 10 hours on their site. So if you don't hear it live, you won't be able to catch it later (with the exception of the marathon rebroadcast on Nov. 11.)
However the guy did say, in an offhanded kind of way, that if someone decided to record the stream and post it somewhere, there wasn't much they could do about it. Maybe someone who visits this board with the software to record streams might be interested in taking that on and putting it up somewhere.
I get the impression that WEBY is a small listener supported station, and doesn't have the resources to pay for the rights that might be incurred. All the more remarkable that an outlet like that would take on such a big project in the first place.
1330 WEBY website
Last edited by RadioActive (October 26, 2015 9:40 am)
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For anyone who might be interested:
I grabbed the series last week. Haven't had a chance to listen to all of it, but what I heard was very interesting.
If anyone here is interested in grabbing them, you can find them here. The stream is only 22khz and there are a couple of streaming hiccups here and there but it does the job.
I'll leave them up for a few weeks or until someone asks me to take it down.
Cheers,
--Peter
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Peter the K wrote:
For anyone who might be interested:
I grabbed the series last week. Haven't had a chance to listen to all of it, but what I heard was very interesting.
If anyone here is interested in grabbing them, you can find them here. The stream is only 22khz and there are a couple of streaming hiccups here and there but it does the job.
I'll leave them up for a few weeks or until someone asks me to take it down.
Cheers,
--Peter
Thanks Peter. Looking forward to hearing it.
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Thanks from me, too, P the K, since I wasn't able to catch the whole thing live. Quality is just fine. My favourite part so far is the PSA warning troops not to go into battle stoned on pot or something stronger. That's immediately followed by Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix (around the 10 min. mark of part one). Now THAT won't tempt anyone to smoke up before putting their lives on the line!