Vietnam broadcast helped homesick troops — and inspired Robin Williams

nypost.com:

immortalized by Robin Williams in the 1987 film of the same name, wasn’t a creation of Hollywood. It was inspired by the true story of DJ and Air Force Sgt.

Adrian Cronauer, who hosted a morning radio show on the American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) in Saigon during the Vietnam War.Cronauer, who died in 2018, originated the phrase, but there were at least 17 other military DJs who hosted that the radio network’s morning program — “The Dawnbuster” — between 1965 and 1973, including “Wheel of Fortune” legend Pat Sajak.“Whether the catchphrase was required or not, I can’t really say,” said Rick Fredericksen, a onetime newsman at AFVN Saigon and the co-author, along with fellow AFVN alum Marc Phillip Yablonka, of the new book “Hot Mics and TV Lights: The American Forces Vietnam Network” (Double Dagger Books).“It was just a well-established and catchy phrase to start a morning show,” he told The Post. “Imagine the troops groaning when they were greeted with ‘Goooood morning, Vietnam.’ ”The legacy of AFVN is far bigger than what was captured in one Hollywood movie.

The original station was founded in 1962 by Chief Petty Officer Bryant Arbuckle, often called the “Father of Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam,” who ran the operation alone for three months before being granted a small staff.It soon expanded “into a sprawling network of nationwide radio and television stations,” the book notes.

Its mission wasn’t just to entertain but to give the more 500,000 enlisted listeners a reason to feel hopeful.Before he died, Cronauer told the authors he thought the radio station’s mission was to be an “antidote to homesickness.” And the best way to do that, according to the now 77-year-old Sajak, was to “program it like a stateside radio.