Old Time Radio and Me

I think my first exposure to Old Time Radio (OTR) was in the mid 70s.  By OTR I mean the radio programming of the period roughly of the 30s through 1962. One half hour to one hour shows on the air, the "theater of the mind" as it was known. You have probably heard of the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast of October 30th, 1938 that panicked some listeners. This was on one of those such programs, the Mercury Theater On the Air. Anyway, there was a music store in the mall I used to go to that carried albums, 45s, and 8-track tapes. (An online encyclopedia-type site can tell you what these are.) At the store albums were usually $2.97 as I recall with the double albums $3.97. I was in there quite a bit and on one occasion I found few albums with some OTR shows on them. One was The Lone Ranger, another was The Shadow, and the one that really got me interested.....The War of the Worlds.               

I quickly purchased and listened to them and was hooked on OTR from that point on. It would be a good many years before I began to find sources for OTR cassette tapes but I began to collect them. Usually two episodes of a program per cassette like the albums. I didn't specialize in any one program or field of programs......detective, comedy, dramas, space, mysteries.....

As for detective stories my favorites were Dragnet, Richard Diamond, Adventures of Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Broadway is My Beat, Night Beat, and Casey Crime Photographer. All are half hour programs that tell a complete story per episode.

Another favorite (and my favorite by the way) is " the man with the action packed expense account, America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar". These programs ran fifteen minutes five nights a week to later thirty minute complete episodes. Several actors played Johnny Dollar but my favorite was Bob Bailey.







On the comedy side, it was hard to beat Jack Benny, Great Gildersleeve, Life of Riley, The Aldrich Family, Amos and Andy, Duffy's Tavern, Burns and Allen, Our Miss Brooks, and My Favorite Husband.

Cast of Duffy's Tavern

For tales of the unknown, horror, and suspense, I prefer X Minus One, Suspense,  Molle Mystery Theater, Mysterious Traveler, Lights Out Everybody, and The Whistler.  




There are also full plays produced as radio programs. Among the many excellent series are Academy Award Theater, Lux Radio Theater, Campbell Playhouse, Mercury Theater On the Air, and Hollywood Star Playhouse. 

There are many sources now that cater to OTR enthusiasts on the web, not only for downloading free episodes but for purchase as well.  Downloads are usually MP3 format and the purchased ones are on MP3 CDs. Here you might get as many as 100 episodes of the same series on one CD. They only play, however, on your computer or another MP3 CD player. Most new cars and trucks come with MP3 ready players.Some larger series you can even find on only one or two DVDs but you need to listen on a computer or DVD player for these. It does make it handy to have a ton of shows on a relatively few discs by putting them on DVD. I have a couple of sources where I not only download program episodes to my computer then later burn to discs but also purchase CDs from. They are easily found online. A few of the sites I visit also offer "CD samplers" for sale. This is handy because you get to hear many series you might not have thought of trying out as well as samplers geared to different times of the year. For instance, a Christmas sampler I have has about 100 various Christmas shows from many different programs.


Once you find a series you like you'll want to obtain all the episodes of it. Some programs that were on for a long time might have 600-800 episodes of which most still survive after all these years.

OTR was killed off primarily by the less expensive music formats that took their place. Formats such as rock and roll and beautiful music. The end of the OTR period is generally recognized as September 30th, 1962, when the final episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense aired. Thank goodness for the programs existing on tapes, transcription discs, albums, CDs, and the like today.

As a side note, one of the sources I use to download and purchase OTR CDs, OTRCAT.com, has a service that allows you to listen to a different program each day. I've included this now at the top right of my blog. Be sure to check it daily.