Old-time radio

Before television, radio was the dominant home entertainment medium.

Old-Time Radio (OTR) and the Golden Age of Radio refer to a period of radio programming in the United States lasting from the proliferation of radio broadcasting in the early 1920s until television's replacement of radio as the primary home entertainment medium in the 1950s. During this period, when radio was dominant and the airwaves were filled with a variety of radio formats and genres, people regularly tuned in to their favorite radio programs. In fact, according to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners.^{[citation needed]}

Boy learning how to build his own radio circa 1922.

Origins

The broadcasts of live drama, comedy, music and news that characterize the Golden Age of Radio had a precedent in the Théâtrophone, commercially introduced in Paris in 1890 and available as late as 1932. It allowed subscribers to eavesdrop on live stage performances and hear news reports by means of a network of telephone lines. The development of radio eliminated the wires and subscription charges from this concept.

On Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden is said to have broadcast the first radio program, consisting of some violin playing and passages from the Bible. While Fessenden's role as an inventor and early radio experimenter is not in dispute, several contemporary radio researchers have questioned whether the Christmas Eve broadcast took place, or whether the date was in fact several weeks earlier. The first apparent published reference to the event was made in 1928 by H.P. Davis, Vice President of Westinghouse, in a lecture given at Harvard University. In 1932 Fessenden cited the Chistmas Eve 1906 broadcast event in a letter he wrote to Vice President S.M. Kinter of Westinghouse. Fessenden's wife Helen recounts the broadcast in her book Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows published in 1940, eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Halper and Sterling's article "Seeking the Truth About Fessenden"^[1] and also in James O'Neal's essays.^{[2] [3]} An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Cambridge University educated Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay entitled "Fessenden's 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast."

It was not until after the Titanic catastrophe in 1912 that radio for mass communication came into vogue, inspired first by the work of amateur (or "ham") radio operators. Radio was especially important during World War I as it was vital for air and naval operations. World War I brought about major developments in radio, superseding the Morse code of the wireless telegraph with the vocal communication of the wireless telephone, through advancements in vacuum tube technology and the introduction of the transceiver.

After the war, numerous radio stations were born in the United States and set the standard for later radio programs. The first radio news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920 on the station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan; owned by the Detroit News, the station covered local election results. This was followed in 1920 with the first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA, being established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first regular entertainment programs were broadcast in 1922, and on March 10, Variety carried the front page headline: "Radio Sweeping Country: 1,000,000 Sets in Use."^[4] A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923 on the Los Angeles station KHJ.

Types of programs

During the Golden Age of Radio, radio featured genres and formats popular in other forms of American entertainment—adventure, comedy, drama, horror, mystery, musical variety, romance, thrillers—along with classical music concerts, big band remotes, farm reports, news and commentary, panel discussions, quiz shows (beginning with Professor Quiz), sidewalk interviews (on Vox Pop), broadcasts, talent shows and weather forecasts.

Rehearsal for the World War II radio show You Can't Do Business with Hitler with John Flynn and Virginia Moore. This series of programs, broadcast at least once weekly by more than 790 radio stations in America, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI).

In the late 1920s, the sponsored musical feature was the most popular program format. Commercial messages were regarded as intrusive, so these shows usually displayed the sponsor's name in the title, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Acousticon Hour, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, The Flit Soldiers, The Fox Fur Trappers, The Goodrich Zippers, The Ingram Shavers, The Ipana Troubadors, The Planters Pickers, The Silvertown Cord Orchestra (featuring the Silver Masked Tenor), The Sylvania Foresters, The Yeast Foamers, King Biscuit Time (with Sonny Boy Williamson), The Health and Happiness Radio Show (with Hank Williams) and the Light Crust Doughboys (with Bob Wills and Milton Brown). During the 1930s and 1940s, the leading orchestras were heard often through big band remotes, and NBC's Monitor continued such remotes well into the 1950s by broadcasting live music from New York City jazz clubs to rural America.

Classical music programs on the air included The Voice of Firestone and The Bell Telephone Hour. Texaco sponsored the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts; the broadcasts, now sponsored by the Toll Brothers, continue to this day around the world, and are one of the few examples of live classical music still broadcast on radio. One of the most notable of all classical music radio programs of the Golden Age of Radio featured the celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which had been created especially for him. At that time, nearly all classical musicians and critics considered Toscanini the greatest living maestro. Popular songwriters were also featured on radio, such as George Gershwin, who in addition to appearing as a guest, also had his own program in 1934. The New York Philharmonic also had weekly concerts on radio. There was no dedicated classical music radio station like NPR at that time, so classical music programs had to share the network they were broadcast on with more popular ones, much as in the days of television before the creation of NET and PBS.

Country music also enjoyed popularity. National Barn Dance, begun on Chicago's WLS in 1924, was picked up by NBC Radio in 1933. In 1925, WSM Barn Dance went on the air from Nashville. It was renamed the Grand Ole Opry in 1927 and NBC carried portions from 1944 to 1956. NBC also aired The Red Foley Show from 1951–1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961.

Top comedy talents surfed the airwaves for many years: Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Jimmy Durante, Phil Harris, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. More laughter was generated on such shows as Abbott and Costello, Amos 'n' Andy, Burns and Allen, Easy Aces, Ethel and Albert, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Goldbergs, The Great Gildersleeve, The Halls of Ivy (which featured screen star Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume), Meet Corliss Archer, Meet Millie, and Our Miss Brooks.

Radio comedy ran the gamut from the small town humor of Lum and Abner, Herb Shriner and Minnie Pearl to the dialect characterizations of Mel Blanc and the caustic sarcasm of Henry Morgan. Gags galore were delivered weekly on Stop Me If You've Heard This One and Can You Top This?, [1] panel programs devoted to the art of telling jokes. Quiz shows were lampooned on It Pays to Be Ignorant, and other memorable parodies were presented by such satirists as Spike Jones, Stoopnagle and Budd, Stan Freberg and Bob and Ray. British comedy reached American shores in a major assault when NBC carried The Goon Show in the mid-1950s.

Radio-related World War II propaganda poster

Some shows originated as stage productions: Clifford Goldsmith's play What a Life was reworked into NBC's popular, long-running The Aldrich Family (1939–1953) with the familiar catchphrases "Henry! Henry Aldrich!," followed by Henry's answer, "Coming, Mother!" Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, You Can't Take It with You (1936), became a weekly situation comedy heard on Mutual (1944) with Everett Sloane and later on NBC (1951) with Walter Brennan.

Other shows were adapted from comic strips, such as Blondie, Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, The Gumps, Li'l Abner, Little Orphan Annie, Popeye the Sailor, Red Ryder, Reg'lar Fellers, Terry and the Pirates and Tillie the Toiler. Bob Montana's redheaded teen of comic strips and comic books was heard on radio's Archie Andrews from 1943 to 1953. The Timid Soul was a 1941–1942 comedy based on cartoonist H. T. Webster's famed Casper Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s.

The first soap opera, Clara, Lu, and Em was introduced in 1930 on Chicago's WGN. When daytime serials began in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. The line-up of late afternoon adventure serials included Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, The Cisco Kid, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, Captain Midnight, and The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters. Badges, rings, decoding devices and other radio premiums offered on these adventure shows were often allied with a sponsor's product, requiring the young listeners to mail in a box top from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase.

Outstanding radio dramas were presented on such programs as 26 by Corwin, NBC Short Story, Arch Oboler's Plays, Quiet, Please, and CBS Radio Workshop. Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air and Campbell Playhouse were considered by many critics to be the finest radio drama anthologies ever presented. They usually starred Welles in the leading role, along with celebrity guest stars such as Margaret Sullavan or Helen Hayes, in adaptations from literature, Broadway, and/or films. They included such titles as Liliom, Oliver Twist (a title now feared lost), A Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It was on Mercury Theatre that Welles presented his celebrated-but-infamous adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, formatted to sound like a breaking news program. Theatre Guild on the Air presented adaptations of classical and Broadway plays. Their Shakespeare adaptations included a one-hour Macbeth starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, and a ninety-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.^[5] Many of these programs still survive.

During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in films, repeated their characterizations on radio on The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which featured both original stories and episodes directly adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. None of the episodes in which Rathbone and Bruce starred on the radio program were filmed with the two actors as Holmes and Watson, so radio became the only medium in which audiences were able to experience Rathbone and Bruce appearing in some of the more famous Holmes stories, such as "The Speckled Band". There were also several dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes stories on radio without Rathbone and Bruce.

During the latter part of his career, celebrated actor John Barrymore starred in a radio program, Streamlined Shakespeare, which featured him in a series of one-hour adaptations of Shakespeare plays, many of which Barrymore never appeared in either on stage or in films, such as Twelfth Night (in which he played both Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch), and Macbeth.

Lux Radio Theater and The Screen Guild Theater presented adaptations of Hollywood movies, performed before a live audience, usually with cast members from the original films. Suspense, Escape, The Mysterious Traveler and Inner Sanctum Mysteries were popular thriller anthology series. Leading writers who created original material for radio included Norman Corwin, Carlton E. Morse, David Goodis, Archibald MacLeish, Arthur Miller, Arch Oboler, Wyllis Cooper, Rod Serling, Jay Bennett, and Irwin Shaw.

Broadcast production methods

The RCA 44BX microphone had two live faces and two dead ones. Thus actors could face each other and react. An actor could give the effect of leaving the room by simply moving his head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together, and pages were dropped to the carpeted floor after use. Sometimes when reassembling a script to use it for the next time zone, some pages would be out of order or missing entirely.

History of professional radio recordings in the United States

Radio stations

In the beginning of the Golden Age, American radio network programs were almost exclusively broadcast live, as the national networks prohibited the airing of recorded programs until the late 1940s because of the inferior sound quality of phonograph discs, the only practical recording medium. As a result, prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. However, "reference recordings" were made of many programs as they were being broadcast, for review by the sponsor and for the network's own archival purposes. With the development of high-fidelity magnetic wire and tape recording in the years following World War II, the networks became more open to airing recorded programs and the prerecording of shows became more common.

Local stations, however, had always been free to use recordings and sometimes made substantial use of prerecorded syndicated programs distributed on pressed (as opposed to individually recorded) transcription discs.

Recording was done using a cutting lathe and acetate discs. Programs were normally recorded at 33 1/3 rpm on 16 inch discs, the standard format used for such "electrical transcriptions" from the early 1930s through the 1950s. Sometimes, the groove was cut starting at the inside of the disc and running to the outside. This was useful when the program to be recorded was longer than 15 minutes so required more than one disc side. By recording the first side outside in, the second inside out, and so on, the sound quality at the disc change-over points would match and result in a more seamless playback. An inside start also had the advantage that the thread of material cut from the disc's surface, which had to be kept out of the path of the cutting stylus, was naturally thrown toward the center of the disc so was automatically out of the way. When cutting an outside start disc, a brush could be used to keep it out of the way by sweeping it toward the middle of the disc. Well-equipped recording lathes used the vacuum from a water aspirator to pick it up as it was cut and deposit it in a water-filled bottle. In addition to convenience, this served a safety purpose, as the cellulose nitrate thread was highly flammable and a loose accumulation of it combusted violently if ignited.

Most recordings of radio broadcasts were made at a radio network's studios, or at the facilities of a network-owned or affiliated station, which might have four or more lathes. A small local station often had none. Two lathes were required to capture a program longer than 15 minutes without losing parts of it while discs were flipped over or changed, along with a trained technician to operate them and monitor the recording while it was being made. However, some surviving recordings were produced by local stations.^[6][7]

When a substantial number of copies of an electrical transcription were required, as for the distribution of a syndicated program, they were produced by the same process used to make ordinary records. A master recording was cut, then electroplated to produce a stamper from which pressings in vinyl (or, in the case of transcription discs pressed before about 1935, shellac) were molded in a record press.

Armed Forces Radio Service

Frank Sinatra is interviewed on Armed Forces Radio Service during World War II.

The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) had its origins in the U.S. War Department's quest to improve troop morale. This quest began with short-wave broadcasts of educational and information programs to troops in 1940. In 1941, the War Department began issuing "Buddy Kits" (B-Kits) to departing troops, which comprised radios, 78 RPM records, and electrical transcription disks of radio shows. However, with the entrance of the United States into World War II, the War Department decided that it needed to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings.

This began with the broadcasting of its own original variety programs. Command Performance was the first of these, produced for the first time on March 1, 1942. On May 26, 1942, the Armed Forces Radio Service was formally established. Originally, its programming comprised network radio shows with the commercials removed. However, it soon began producing original programming, such as Mail Call, G.I. Journal, Jubilee and G.I. Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week.

After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. In addition, it also provided programming for future wars that the United States was involved in. It survives today as a component of the American Forces Network (AFN).

All of the shows aired by the AFRS during the Golden Age were recorded as electrical transcription disks, vinyl copies of which were shipped to stations overseas to be broadcast to the troops. People in the United States rarely ever heard programming from the AFRS,^[8] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s.

Home radio recordings in the United States

There was some home recording of radio broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s. Examples from as early as 1930 have been documented. During these years, home recordings were made with disc recorders, most of which were only capable of storing about four minutes of a radio program on each side of a twelve-inch 78 rpm record. Most home recordings were made on even shorter-playing ten-inch or smaller discs. Some home disc recorders offered the option of the 33 1/3 rpm speed used for electrical transcriptions, allowing a recording more than twice as long to be made, although with reduced audio quality. Office dictation equipment was sometimes pressed into service for making recordings of radio broadcasts, but the audio quality of these devices was poor and the resulting recordings were in odd formats which had be played back on similar equipment. As a result of the expense of recorders and the limitations of the recording media, home recording of broadcasts was not common during this period and it was usually limited to brief excerpts.

The lack of suitable home recording equipment was somewhat relieved in 1947 with the availability of magnetic wire recorders for domestic use. These were capable of recording an hour-long broadcast on a single small spool of wire, and if a high-quality radio's audio output was recorded directly, rather than by holding a microphone up to its speaker, the recorded sound quality was very good. However, because the wire cost money and, like magnetic tape, could be repeatedly re-used to make new recordings, only a few complete broadcasts appear to have survived on this medium. In fact, there was little home recording of complete radio programs until the early 1950s, when increasingly affordable reel-to-reel tape recorders for home use were introduced to the market.^[9][10]

Recording media

Electrical transcription disks

The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disk.

Before about 1950, when radio networks and local stations wanted to preserve a live broadcast, they did so by means of special phonograph records known as "electrical transcriptions" (ETs), made by cutting a sound-modulated groove into a blank disk. At first, in the early 1930s, the blanks varied in both size and composition, but most often they were simply bare aluminum and the groove was indented rather than cut. Typically, these very early recordings were not made by the network or radio station, but by a private recording service contracted by the broadcast sponsor or one of the performers. The bare aluminum disks were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 RPM, which meant that several disk sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based disks coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 33 1/3 RPM, had been adopted by the networks and individual radio stations as the standard medium for recording broadcasts. The making of such recordings, at least for some purposes, then became routine. Some disks were recorded using a "hill and dale" vertically modulated groove, rather than the "lateral" side-to-side modulation found on the records being made for home use at that time. The large slow-speed disks could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two disks. The lacquer was softer than shellac or vinyl and wore more rapidly, allowing only a few playbacks with the heavy pickups and steel needles then in use before deterioration became audible.

During World War II, aluminium became a necessary material for the war effort. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer, as aluminium was hard to come by. As a result, glass became the most common material used for disks between the years 1942 and 1945^[11] but they were inevitably extremely fragile.

Magnetic wire recording

In the late 1940s, wire recorders became a readily obtainable means of recording radio programs. On a per-minute basis, it was less expensive to record a broadcast on wire than on disks. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch disks could be recorded intact on a single spool of wire less than three inches in diameter and about half an inch thick. The audio fidelity of a good wire recording was comparable to acetate disks and by comparison the wire was practically indestructible, but it was soon rendered obsolete by the more manageable and easily edited medium of magnetic tape.

Reel-to-reel tape recording

Bing Crosby became the first major proponent of magnetic tape recording for radio, and he was the first to use it on network radio, after he did a demonstration program in 1947.^[10][12] Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription disks and magnetic wire. Disks could only be edited by copying parts of them to a new disk, and the copying entailed a loss of audio quality. Wire could be divided up and the ends spliced together by knotting, but wire was difficult to handle and the crude splices were too noticeable. Tape could be edited by cutting it with a blade and neatly joining ends together with adhesive tape. By early 1949, the transition from live performances preserved on disks to performances prerecorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs.^[13][14] However, for the physical distribution of prerecorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 33 1/3 rpm vinyl pressings, less expensive to produce in quantities of identical copies than tapes, continued to be standard throughout the 1950s.

Availability of recordings

The great majority of pre-World War II live radio broadcasts, many never recorded at all, have not been preserved, and the earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording of the broadcast was made and survives. A good number of prerecorded syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies of those were originally distributed far and wide. Recordings of live network broadcasts from the World War II years were preserved in the form of pressed vinyl copies issued by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) and survive in relative abundance. Syndicated programs from World War II and later years have nearly all survived. However, after about 1950, when the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, the survival rate of recordings of such broadcasts declines precipitously because the tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used. Airchecks (off-the-air recordings) of complete shows made by, or at the behest of, individuals for their own private use sometimes help to fill in such gaps. The contents of privately made recordings of live broadcasts from the first half of the 1930s can be of particular interest, as little live material from that period survives. Unfortunately, the sound quality of very early private recordings is often very poor, although in some cases this is largely due to the use of an incorrect playback stylus, which can also badly damage some unusual types of discs.

Most of the Golden Age programs in circulation among collectors – whether on analog tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s – originated from 16-inch transcription discs. In many cases, the circulating recordings are several generations of analog reel-to-reel and cassette tape copies down the line from the original discs, being the product of tape-trading among collectors during the decades before lossless digital duplication was possible. The muffled sound, dropouts, sudden changes in sound quality, unsteady pitch and other defects heard all too often are almost always accumulated tape copy defects. The audio quality of the source discs, when they have survived unscathed and are accessed and dubbed anew, is usually found to be reasonably clear and undistorted, sometimes startlingly good, although like all phonograph records they are vulnerable to wear and the effects of scuffs, scratches and ground-in dust. Many shows from the 1940s have survived only in edited AFRS versions, although some exist in both the original and AFRS forms.

Legacy

Some old-time radio shows continued on the air, although in ever-dwindling numbers, throughout the 1950s even after their television equivalents had conquered the general public. One factor which helped to kill them off entirely was the evolution of popular music (including the development of rock and roll), which led to the birth of the top 40 radio format. A top 40 show could be produced in a small studio in a local station with minimal staff. This displaced full-service network radio and hastened the end of virtually all scripted radio drama by 1962. Full-service stations that did not adopt either top 40 or the mellower beautiful music or MOR formats eventually developed all-news radio in the mid-1960s.

Scripted radio comedy and drama in the vein of old-time radio has a limited presence on U.S. radio. There are several radio theatre series still in production in the United States, usually airing on Sunday nights. These include original series such as Imagination Theatre and a radio adaptation of The Twilight Zone TV series, as well as rerun compilations such as the popular daily series When Radio Was and USA Radio Network's Golden Age of Radio Theatre. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in — among other countries — Australia, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.

Vintage shows and new audio productions in America are accessible more widely from recordings or by satellite and web broadcasters, rather than over conventional AM and FM radio. The National Audio Theatre Festival is a national organization and yearly conference keeping the audio arts - especially audio drama - alive, and continues to involve long-time voice actors and OTR veterans in its ranks. Its predecessor, the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop, was first hosted by Jim Jordan, of "Fibber McGee and Molly" fame, and Norman Corwin continues to advise the organization.

One of the longest running radio programs celebrating this era is The Golden Days of Radio, which was hosted on the Armed Forces Radio Service for more than 20 years and overall for more than 50 years by Frank Bresee, who also played "Little Beaver" on the Red Ryder program as a child actor.

One of the very few still-running shows from the earlier era of radio is a Christian program entitled Unshackled! The weekly half hour show, produced in Chicago, Illinois by Pacific Garden Mission, has been continuously broadcast since 1950. The shows are created using techniques from the 1950s (including home-made sound effects) and are broadcast across the U.S. and around the world by thousands of radio stations.

Today, radio performers of the past appear at conventions which feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events is the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey each October will have its final convention in 2011 after 36 years. Others include REPS in Seattle (June), SPERDVAC in California, the Cincinnati OTR & Nostalgia Convention (April), and the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention (September).

Radio dramas from the golden age are sometimes recreated as live stage performances at such events. One such group, led by director Daniel Smith, has been performing re-creations of old-time radio dramas at Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts since the year 2000.^[15][16]

The 40th anniversary of what is widely considered the end of the old time radio era (the final broadcasts of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense on September 30, 1962) was marked with a commentary on NPR's All Things Considered.^[17]

A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genre of news or music: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), the CBS World News Roundup (1938), King Biscuit Time (1941) and the Renfro Valley Gatherin' (1943). Of those, all but the Opry maintain their original short-form length of 30 minutes or less. News and Comment (1951), a series created by Paul Harvey, continues in spirit with commentaries by Doug Limerick and The Huckabee Report, as does the Wheeling Jamboree, the current version of which is a successor to a program founded in 1933.

Museums

• American Museum of Radio and Electricity
• Museum of Broadcast Communications
• The Paley Center for Media

See also

Radio portal

• List of old-time radio programs
• List of old-time radio people
• List of U.S. radio programs
• List of radio soaps
• Antique radio
• Audio theater
• Chuck Schaden
• Music radio
• Radio comedy
• Radio drama
• Soap opera
• When Radio Was
• Radio Days (Woody Allen film dramatizing old-time radio)

Notes

1. ^ "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden" Radio World Online. February 14, 2007
2. ^ "Fessenden: World's First Broadcaster?--A Radio History Buff Finds That Evidence for the Famous Brant Rock Broadcast Is Lacking" Radio World Online. October 25, 2006
3. ^ "Fessenden — The Next Chapter" Radio World Online. December 23, 2008
4. ^ Sayles, Ron. Old-Time Radio Digest, Volume 2009, number 51.
5. ^ http://ia340911.us.archive.org/1/items/TheaterGuildontheAir/Tgoa_51-03-04_ep065-Hamlet.mp3
6. ^ some surviving local recordings
7. ^ Fybush, Scott. "Frequently-Asked Question". The [e-mail]. http://www.bostonradio.org/faq.html. Retrieved 2007-05-16. 
8. ^ "Armed Forces Radio Services broadcasts". Bing Crosby Internet Museum. Archived from the original on 2007-02-21. http://web.archive.org/web/20070221191200/http://community.mcckc.edu/crosby/AFRS.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-16. 
9. ^ The History of Magnetic Tape
10. ^ ^{a b} Bensman, Marvin R.. "A History of Radio Program Collecting". Radio Archive of the University of Memphis. https://umdrive.memphis.edu/mbensman/public/collectingarticle.html. Retrieved 2007-05-18. 
11. ^ Beaupre, Walter J.. "Music Electrically Transcribed!". The Vintage Radio Place. http://www.otrsite.com/articles/artwb006.html. Retrieved 2007-11-05. 
12. ^ "ABC Spends 100G in Shift From Wax to Tape Repeats", Billboard, Feb. 21, 1948, p. 6.
13. ^ "NBC Drops All Wax Bans", Billboard, Jan. 29, 1949, p. 5.
14. ^ "Webs' Tape Measure Grows", Billboard, Nov. 5, 1949, p. 5.
15. ^ Spiegel, Jan Ellen (2007-09-09). "We Interrupt This Play for a News Bulletin on the War". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/09peoplect.html?ex=1190001600&en=c2a8d60db4ac9e04&ei=5070. Retrieved 2007-09-09. 
16. ^ "Radio Dramas". Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. Fairfield University. http://www.fairfield.edu/x15712.html. Retrieved 2008-04-18. ^{[dead link]}
17. ^ Chimes, Art. "Last Radio Drama". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1150876. Retrieved 2010-01-22. 

References

• Blue, Howard (2002). Words at War: World War II Era Radio and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist. Lanham, Maryland:Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4413-3
• Dunning, John (1998). On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507678-8. 

Further reading

• It's That Time Again, Volume 4, edited by Jim Harmon. Albany, BearManor Media, 2009. ISBN 1-59393-118-2.

External links

• Old Time Radio on-line archive at Archive.org
• Old-time radio at the Open Directory Project