Podcasts about sierras

Special guest joins to debrief the legendary Western States Endurance Run one week after the 100.2 mile traverse of California's Sierras. After several years in person at the event, we draw on our experiences and observations to comment on some notable elements. As the "Kona" of ultra running, it only seemed appropriate to juxtapose Western States with the Ironman World Champs. 

This Fourth of July, The Back of the Pack Podcast: Second Wind kicks off its Run the Nation series by heading out West — where the freedom to run wild is as big as the coastline itself. From misty coastal boardwalks to rugged mountain trails, the West Coast running scene is all about adventure, grit, and epic scenery that makes you grateful to lace up in the land of the free. Kyle breaks down iconic bucket-list races like Big Sur, Western States 100, and the legendary Hood to Coast Relay. We'll dig into how the terrain, climate, and laid-back surf-and-trail culture shape a community where ultramarathons, mindful miles, and post-run beers go hand in hand. You'll hear stories about West Coast running legends like Jim Walmsley, Sally McRae, Ann Trason, and Dean Karnazes — athletes who show what American endurance is all about. Whether you dream of running under the Golden Gate Bridge or climbing mountain passes in the high Sierras, this episode will stoke your wanderlust and remind you that running is one of the best ways to celebrate the freedom we have. So on this Independence Day, let's hit the road, the trail, and the coast — and honor America, one mile at a time.

Stories in this episode: - Unsettling Encounter in the Sierras, by Navy - Premonitions by Jules - Strange Beeping and Footsteps Outside of Tent by South_Sort5612 - Tack Warns Me, by ThickPaw - Mark Twain National Forest, by choccybirb Submissions: stories@oddtrails.com Hate ads? Sign up for our Patreon for only $5 a month! You'll also hear episodes at even better audio quality. Your support is very much appreciated. Connect with us on Instagram, the Odd Trails Discord, and the Cryptic County Facebook Group. Listen to Odd Trails on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts! Find more Cryptic County shows at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com.

In this episode of Nursing Uncharted, we dive into the critical topic of mental health for nurses. Ann is joined by Dr. Matt Boland to discuss the importance of acknowledging and addressing mental health challenges within the nursing profession, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, they explore key concepts such as emotional regulation, the effects of suppression, coping with trauma, and recognizing signs of distress. The episode also highlights practical self-care strategies, the value of seeking professional help, and the necessity of fostering supportive work environments for healthcare professionals.Chapters00:00 – Mental Health Awareness for Nurses02:56 – Understanding Emotional Regulation06:01 – Navigating Stressful Situations08:59 – The Impact of Suppression on Mental Health12:01 – Coping with Trauma in Nursing14:49 – Recognizing Signs of Distress18:02 – The Importance of Self-Care20:56 – Practical Strategies for Emotional Well-Being23:46 – Seeking Professional Help27:06 – Building a Supportive Work Environment30:07 – Final Thoughts and ResourcesAbout Dr. Matt BolandDr. Matthew Boland is a university lecturer and licensed clinical psychologist. He completed his PhD at the University of Nevada and a clinical research fellowship at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Dr. Boland conducts structured assessments and psychotherapy with medical patients and mental health consumers. He teaches university courses and supervises psychiatric residents conducting psychotherapy in a medical school setting. Additionally, he works as a forensic expert witness in civil and criminal legal cases.Dr. Boland is a published researcher in the areas of trauma/posttraumatic stress and emotional regulation in anxiety and depression. He provides peer reviews for scientific journals and medical reviews for Healthline.com network sites. He is also featured in informational videos on mental health topics as “Dr. Matt B.” In his spare time, he enjoys skiing and hiking in the Sierras, sailing, working on his surfing skills, and traveling to his favorite destinations.Websites: bridgepsych.info & mattbphd.comLinkedIn: @dr-mattbInstagram: @dr.mattbFacebook: @dr.mattbYouTube: @dr-mattb Celebrate Nurses Month with us on Instagram @AMNNurse! About AnnAnn King, a seasoned travel nurse with a remarkable 14-year track record, has dedicated the past 13 years to specializing in Neonatal ICU. Ann has been traveling with AMN Healthcare for 4.5 years, enriching her expertise with diverse experiences. Currently residing in San Diego, Ann not only thrives in her nursing career but also serves as the host of the Nursing Uncharted podcast, where she shares invaluable insights and stories from the world of nursing. Connect with Ann on Instagram @annifer05 No Better Place than CA! Book your assignment in the Golden State Today! Level up your career today! Find your dream travel assignment! Support for every step. Learn more about AMN Healthcare's EAP Program. Share the opportunity and refer a friend today! Ready to start your next travel assignment in the Golden State? Browse CA Jobs! Episode Sponsor:We're proudly sponsored by AMN Healthcare, the leader in healthcare staffing and workforce solutions. Explore their services at AMN Healthcare. Discover job opportunities and manage your assignments with ease using AMN Passport. Download the AMN Passport App today! Join Our Communities: WebsiteYouTubeInstagramApple PodcastsSpotifyLinkedInFacebook Powered by AMN Healthcare

Gary talks about his experiences with Bigfoot while living in the Eastern Sierra region of California. He no longer goes out into certain areas of these woods alone.If you love iNTO THE FRAY and want more content....join us over on Patreon! Exclusive interviews, ad-free and early versions of the main show, physical rewards like stickers, signed books, T-shirts,  interactive live-on-video guest interviews and group chats with fellow patrons, private RSS feed, Patron-only Discord room and FB group, and more.Click HERE to check out the various pledge levels.OR...if you prefer Apple Podcasts...subscribe to iTF Premium in your Apple Podcasts app! You'll get all bonus episodes and early releases of the main show. Completely AD-FREE. If you have an encounter or encounters you'd like to share, contact me HERE or via email, shannon@intothefrayradio.comGet your iTF STICKERS....HEREFollow iTF:Facebook: Join the interactive group and visit the official iTF page Twitter: Official iTF and Shannon's personal accountShannon's Instagram Website artwork and logo for iNTO THE FRAY, by Mister-Sam ShearonIntro music with permission from TanekOutro music provided with permission from Electus Official

Terreno en las sierras: lo que no te cuentan ¿Soñás con irte al monte, construir tu casa natural y vivir en paz? En este episodio te contamos lo que nadie dice sobre comprar un terreno en las sierras: trámites eternos, estafas disfrazadas de espiritualidad, burocracia que frena hasta el alma... y también lo mágico que tiene ese llamado a salir del sistema. Conversamos en formato telefónico, sin filtro, sobre nuestras propias experiencias: cómo sostenerte cuando el "sueño de la vida natural" se enfrenta con la realidad. Si estás pensando en dejar la ciudad, este episodio es para vos. ✨ Spoiler: no es fácil, pero tampoco imposible.

The Kautz family settled in California in 1926 from Germany to farm, eventually expanding into grape growing in the Lodi and Sierra Foothills appellations. Their Ironstone Vineyards located in Calaveras County is considered “the Queen of the Sierras” for its volcanic soils, optimum growing conditions and many grape varieties cultivated from Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay to Cabernet Franc and Zinfandel. The family is recognized for its many innovations in the region. www.ironstonevineyards.comThe Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).  The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.

Quest for Glory er Sierras rollespillserie som har en helt spesiell plass i hjertene til mange gamere. Av den grunn har vi fått inn to store fans av serien. Joachim Froholt og David Skaufjord. Les om SpreadCheat hos NRK eller kjøp på Steam.. Les mer om episoden hos spillhistorie.no Støtt oss gjerne på Patreon. Følg oss gjerne på Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, og Podchaser. (00:00) Intro (00:39) Velkommen til cd SPILL (01:50) Velkommen til Joachim Froholt (03:02) Velkommen til David Skaufjord (05:10) Kommentarer fra forrige episode (08:01) Dagens spill: Quest for Glory: So you want to be a hero (09:19) Litt om Amigaversjon og lyden (14:22) Tech Specs (19:11) Litt EGA vs VGA (22:32) Hva går spillet ut på? (30:14) Hvordan rollespillet fungerer (33:41) Din rollefigur (40:10) Hva er main questen? (42:57) Tekstparseren (48:16) Heltens reise (53:44) Sidespor om memes (55:56) Hvordan går det videre? (01:04:10) Dag/Natt-syklus (01:06:08) Fighting (01:08:54) Litt om utviklingen (01:12:40) Musikken (01:16:16) Spillmekanismene (01:19:19) Lore (01:26:15) Får man kjøpt det? (01:26:35) EGA vs VGA-remake (01:27:48) Kommentarer fra sosiale medier (01:35:35) Har det holdt seg? (01:38:02) Finnes det noe tilsvarende idag? (01:43:54) Tips fra David (01:45:55) Neste episode Chapters, images & show notes powered by vizzy.fm.

The Ford Sierra RS Cosworth is best described as... Porsche-great. This week we're doing a deep dive into Ford's funky sedan of the 1980s: the Sierra, together with its American identical cousin, the Merkur XR4Ti. In the early 1980s, Ford of Europe (and chairman Bob Lutz) was on a mission to get a piece of the export pie that was dominated by Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. The car they conjured up to do so, the Sierra, was a massive success in Europe. When it eventually made it to the U.S., badged as a Merkur XR4Ti, Lutz's plan to sell the cars to yuppies via independent niche dealers was foiled, and the car was placed on Lincoln-Mercury dealer lots alongside big American barges and clueless salesmen, only to die a slow death. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the extra-spicy Ford Sierra RS Cosworth was born. In fact, the car was so sought-after (i.e. stolen) by British hooligans that insurance companies refused to cover them. And it was so fast it was repeatedly banned from racing, eventually effectively spelling the end for Group A racing. Ford of Europe (headed up by Bob Lutz) was seeing the likes of BMW and Audi making a killing with their U.S. exports and Ford wanted in. The plan was to try something different, and rather than a Ford-branded import program where Sierras would be sold alongside LTDs, Cougars and other giant American sedans, Bob wanted to do a Ford of Europe export scheme where their new car could be sold alongside other European curios like Saabs and Volvos at independent dealers under a new brand name. They settled on Merkur (the German word for mercury – pronounced “maercoor”), but they also needed a new model name as Sierra was trademarked by Oldsmobile (think: Cutlass Ciera.) Ford used the “XR” prefix to denote a variety of upgraded model trims followed by a number which corresponded to the vehicle size – which is where XR4 comes from. Add abbreviations for “turbo” and “injection” and you're off to the races! Both the Merkur and Sierra RS Cosworth were powered by versions of Ford's Pinto 4-cylinder motor. The Merkur engine could also be found in the USDM Mercury Cougar XR7, Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, and Mustang SVO. Across the pond however, the Sierra engine went to Cosworth to get an aluminum head with an extra cam. The results were clear: the XR4Ti's motor needed 13 lbs of boost to pump out 175 hp, while the Cosworth version only needed 8 psi to make 200 hp. But the Cosworth got a whole host of additional modifications beyond the engine, and the resulting package was so exceptional it wound up getting banned from racing repeatedly, until eventually the regs shut down the entire series. The chassis is so exceptional that Jason proclaims it the best sedan chassis he's ever experienced – on the same level as a Porsche Cayman GT4. Transcendent. A 9.9/10. Where "Beatrice," his extensively modified E30, only managed a mid-8 (for the same reasons that caused Sreten at M539 Restoration to drive his into a tree). The likes of the Lotus Carlton didn't even garner a 5 from either Carmudgeon. Honorable mentions go to the Maserati Quattroporte, C126 560SEC, and a handful of M products. We'll even dive into every generation of M5 – E28 through G90. Lastly, we'll learn about 80s and 90s Lexus dealership brutalism, that “light” means window, our friend Mike's transient collection of eclectic cars has graced the show at least 3 times (thanks, Mike!), superbly compliant AWD cars like the Delta Integrale and Subaru WRX are good but rarely fun, and Bob Lutz had to fight tooth and nail to get a Chevrolet dealership in NorCal to sell him a Corvair Monza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Las geólogas Ana Teresa Moreno y Gloria Jódar nos han hablado de esta iniciativa, que se centrará en los Parques Naturales de los Calares del Mundo y la Sima y de las Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas. Y que se celebra el Riópar del 27 al 30 de marzo

In today's episode of Backpacker Radio, presented by The Trek and brought to you by Topo Athletic, we're joined by Ben Vaugh, known on trail as Ginger Ballz. Ben is a Navy veteran, accomplished thru-hiker, and currently works as a dog musher, a topic Chaunce and Badger had way too much fun diving into. Ginger Ballz takes us through his transition from the military to thru-hiking, why he recommends it to fellow service members, and the parallels between the two. He shares stories from his hikes of the Triple Crown trails, the Hayduke, Superior Hiking Trail, and Long Trail. We also get a deep dive into his current gig managing a dog mushing and guiding company in Colorado, working with Iditarod-winning pups. He breaks down the process of training huskies for guiding, the biggest challenges of mushing, and the unique bond he shares with his dogs. We close out the show with a feature on a man who thru-hiked the AT while legally blind, a debate on whether airplanes have keys, why Zach is no longer allowed to enjoy pho, Chaunce's honey grease, the Triple Crown of abbreviated insults, and more. Topo Athletic: Use code “TREKWINTER15” at topoathletic.com. Gossamer Gear: Use code “BACKPACKER20” for 20% off packs at gossamergear.com.  [divider] Interview with Ben “Ginger Ballz” Vaughan Ben's Instagram Ben's Facebook Colorado Dog Sledding Website Time stamps & Questions 00:05:12 - Reminders: Join us for our live show in Austin, listen to our episodes ad-free on Patreon, and apply to blog for the Trek! 00:08:05 - Introducing Ben 00:10:00 - Tell us about your Navy experience 00:12:10 - What's it like chasing down pirates? 00:16:06 - Tell us about transitioning between the Navy and thru-hiking 00:19:00 - How did the AT get on your radar? 00:20:38 - Did your military background help you go into the AT with confidence? 00:22:30 - Did you do thru-hiking specific research? 00:24:02 - Did you feel your purpose restored when you started the AT? 00:24:30 - Do you think thru-hikers could succeed in the military? 00:26:20 - Tell us about the Kona Ironman? 00:28:20 - Tell us about the Navy culture in Coronado 00:31:15 - Did you know right away that thru-hiking was for you? 00:34:10 - How did you feel upon finishing the AT? 00:36:00 - What other traits did you get from the Navy that aided you in thru-hiking? 00:39:44 - Tell us about going from the AT to the PCT 00:42:50 - What was it like adjusting to the high snow year on the PCT? 00:48:00 - Can you completely recover from frostbite? 00:50:00 - Did you freak out when you were stuck in a blizzard? 00:51:55 - Was it fun seeing the Sierra in a different season? 00:53:55 - When did you decide to complete the Triple Crown? 00:57:10 - What was the difference in reactions you got on the CDT versus the AT? 00:58:14 - What did your Big 3 look like on the CDT? 01:00:45 - How does a snowy Smokies compare to the snowy Sierras? 01:05:00 - Tell us about hiking the Hayduke 01:09:45 - Tell us about dropping your pack down a canyon 01:12:20 - Tell us about hiking the Superior Hiking Trail 01:15:12 - Tell us about hiking the Long Trail 01:17:00 - How did you end up in Alaska dog mushing? 01:19:30 - What are the dogs like in their off time? 01:22:00 - What does it take to win the Iditarod? 01:23:10 - How do you train the dog to do what it needs to do? 01:24:50 - How can you tell if one of the dogs is getting tired? 01:26:10 - What do the dogs eat? 01:29:15 - Story from the Iditarod 01:31:40 - How does the tour operation work in CO? 01:33:00 - What types of commands do the dogs know? 01:35:10 - Who are your dogs? 01:39:45 - What do you pack for a backcountry dog mushing trip? 01:40:50 - What is your bond like with the dogs? 01:42:00 - How long can the dogs run for? 01:43:40 - Are Huskies all not great off leash? 01:47:05 - Ben is hiring! 01:49:40 - Peak Performance Question: What is your top performance-enhancing or backpacking hack? Segments Trek Propaganda  Thru-Hiking While Blind: Completing the Appalachian Trail With A Visual Disability by Andrew Neylon The Best Trail Runners for Thru-Hiking in 2025 by the Editors QOTD: Do airplanes have keys? Thing of the Week Triple Crown of short insults Gross or Not Gross Mail Bag 5 Star Review [divider] Check out our sound guy @my_boy_pauly/ and his coffee. Leave us a voicemail! Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes (and please leave us a review)!  Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Support us on Patreon to get bonus content. Advertise on Backpacker Radio Follow The Trek, Chaunce, Badger, and Trail Correspondents on Instagram. Follow Backpacker Radio, The Trek and Chaunce on YouTube. Follow Backpacker Radio on Tik Tok.  Our theme song is Walking Slow by Animal Years. A super big thank you to our Chuck Norris Award winner(s) from Patreon: Alex and Misty with NavigatorsCrafting, Alex Kindle, Andrew, Austen McDaniel, Ben Love, Brad & Blair Thirteen Adventures, Brent Stenberg, Bryan Alsop, Christopher Marshburn, Coach from Marion Outdoors, Derek Koch, Eric Casper, Erik Hofmann, Gillian Daniels, Greg Knight, Greg Martin, Greg McDaniel, Griffin Haywood, Hailey Buckingham, Liz Seger, Mud Tom, Patrick Cianciolo, Rebecca Brave, Sawyer Products, SPAM, Timothy Hahn, Tracy ‘Trigger' Fawns A big thank you to our Cinnamon Connection Champions from Patreon: Bells, Bonnie Ackerman, Chris Pyle, David, Dcnerdlet, Emily Galusha, Jeanie, Jeanne Latshaw, Katharine Rudzitis, Lauren Cain, Luke Netjes, Merle Watkins, Peter, Ruth S, and Spencer Hinson.

Buzzwords like "biotransformation" and "thiolized" are thrown around a lot in modern hop forward brewing techniques and products, but what is actually happening during fermentation that makes these aromatic compounds shine? The goal is to get the most terpenes and thiols possible out of your hops, and by learning about the complex mechanisms responsible we can harness the power of yeast to maximize your beers potential.Kyle Somers (he/him) is the Technical Sales Manager for California and the Western US for the Lallemand Brewing division, and the current President of the Northern California district of the Master Brewers Association. He holds an International Brewing Diploma from Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago and Doemens Academy in Munich, and has ten years of hands-on production brewing experience prior to joining the Lallemand team in 2019, including stints with Firestone Walker, Lagunitas, and Hen House Brewing. He currently lives in Santa Rosa with his wife Kristin and his dog Simcoe. His favorite beer styles are hop forward modern lagers, and when he isn't hanging around a brewery you can find him backpacking through the Sierras.Stay up to date with CBP:http://update.craftbeerprofessionals.org/Join us in-person for CBP ConnectsHalf workshop, half networkingCharlotte, NC | June 9-11, 2025Register now:https://tickets.beertrail.com/e/cbp-connects-charlotte

Send us a textThis special Valentine's Week episode of Hikes & Mics features an incredible love story that unfolded step by step on the Pacific Crest Trail. We're joined by returning guest Chickpea and her partner Artifact as they share their individual journeys to the PCT, their very different approaches to preparing for a thru-hike, and how a chance encounter at mile 300 led to something neither of them expected—falling in love on trail.From hiking through the snow-covered Sierras together to surviving on the PCT diet, Chickpea and Artifact take us through the highs, lows, and unexpected twists of their PCT adventure. We also dive into life after trail, their experiences as full-time digital nomads, and their next big adventures—including a possible trek on the Camino de Santiago!Tune in for a heartwarming, hilarious, and inspiring conversation about love, adventure, and the power of taking risks—both in the wilderness and in life. Episode Links:My Free 7-Day Mindset Challenge for Thru-HikingChickpea's InstagramArtifact's InstagramChickpea's YouTubeMay Yoga Retreat in Spain!Support those impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires.Support these amazing Los Angeles based hiking groups/non-profits and their efforts:We Explore EarthHiking on Purpose

This episode is a mixed bag of Fresno topics we bounce around on. Like: The Sierra or The Sierras? Bald Eagles at Millerton Lake. There is something off about Fresno Facebook pages. Cen Cal Cinema. Measure P ideas. Fresno theater jobs? Band Of The Episode: Russian Leg Sweep. Underground Gardens tangent. Breaking news on what is happening with the old Zack's Brewing building. This and more! Downloable: FlowingWithFamousFeb2025.mp3 Thank you for listening! Hosted by Joshua Tehee and Mike Seay. Flowing's Blogspot. Josh at the Fresno Bee. Josh's local music newsletter: Bandgeeeek.substack.com. Josh's bands: New Old Man, It'll Grow Back, Big Balls, and the Strikingly Originals.  Mike's newsletters: Fresno! Fresno! and Drinking & Thinking. Mike's blogs The Fresnan, The Tape Player, and Mikey Top Pour Plus the podcasts Get Off My Podcast, The Perfect Pour.  

Doug Sovern is away today. January has been a particularly dry month in Northern California, but that's about to change. With storms sweeping through the region this weekend, the Bay Area braces for a soaking while further east in the Sierra, a downpour of the powdery kind is expected. For a deeper look, KCBS Radio news anchor Bret Burkhart spoke with Andrew Schwartz, Director of UC Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Laboratory.

Coarsegold, California, welcomed us with its Gold Rush charm and forested beauty! A planned one-week stay at the 141-acre Park of the Sierras turned into three weeks filled with line dancing, Christmas lights, and unexpected challenges. Midway through a Christmas show, I collapsed on stage—cardiac arrest. Thanks to quick heroes with an AED, I'm here, recovering with a defibrillator and a grateful heart. Healing hasn't been easy, but moments like Yosemite's breathtaking Bridalveil and Yosemite Falls, a Christmas duet, and Oreo gingerbread houses brought joy through it all. Special thanks to the angels who saved me—you gave me a second chance to chase life's adventures. Here's to heartbeats, heroes, and the beauty of living.

Rocket and Stump take over Hiker Trash Radio for a special episode about a true legend from the Sierras, Norman Clyde! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SMN pronostica nevadas en sierras de seis estadosCongreso capitalino deberá revisar la iniciativa para prohibir las corridas de torosEEUU inicia investigación que afecta a 2.58 millones de vehículos de TeslaMás información en nuestro Podcast

Rocket and Stump take over Hiker Trash Radio for a special episode about a true legend from the Sierras, Snowshoe Thompson! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode of Backpacker Radio, presented by The Trek, we are joined by Carson Oliver, known on trail as Anita. Carson is an accomplished thru-hiker, cyclist, and adventurer. Following up his 2019 PCT thru-hike, Carson completed the Calendar Year Triple Crown in 2023. We of course learn all about this remarkable trek, his circuitous route to make it happen, highlights and lowlights from each trail, and much more. Carson also shares some personal stories, including the tragic loss of his father, who was murdered, and how this has shaped his perspective on life. We wrap the show with news of the oldest woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail and a clarification of what it means to thru-hike the AT, and things we wish were holiday traditions, and the triple crown of cringy holiday moments. Gossamer Gear: Use code “SNUGGLEBUG” for 20% off shelters at gossamergear.com.  Holiday Book Bundle: Get Badger & Chaunce's signed book package here. CTDC: Donate $35 or more or sign up for monthly donations at cdtcoalition.org. Duer: Get 20% off your first purchase at shopduer.com/backpacker. [divider] Interview with Carson Oliver Carson's Instagram Time stamps & Questions 00:03:30 - Reminders: Support us on Patreon for exclusive bonus content and apply to be a 2025 blogger OR vlogger! 00:06:05 - Introducing Carson 00:08:45 - How would you describe yourself? 00:10:22 - Where did you grow up? 00:14:27 - Where do you suspect your sense of adventure came from? 00:16:15 - Did you ride motorbikes in Vietnam? 00:18:20 - Did you find the north to south journey to be dangerous? 00:20:40 - How did your father's death influence your future adventures? 00:24:38 - How did the PCT interface with processing your grief? 00:26:00 - Tell us about hitting a deer at 75 miles per hour 00:31:20 - Were you afraid to get back on a bike after the accident? 00:36:36 - Tell us about getting your hiking gear in Vietnam 00:40:30 - What'd you get rid of during your hike? 00:41:12 - What was it like to hike through the Sierra during a high snow year? 00:45:00 - Was it hard to split your group in the Sierras? 00:47:40 - Were you happy or sad to reach the end of the snow? 00:49:30 - Tell us about biking across the country 00:53:00 - Were you nervous to mountain bike after the deer accident? 00:55:40 - How do you assess the risk level of mountain biking vs motorcycles? 00:57:22 - How long did your ride take and what route did you take? 01:01:20 - How did your biking experience compare to the PCT? 01:03:00 - Why'd you stop being vegan? 01:04:02 - What was the inspiration for the Calendar Year Triple Crown? 01:07:35 - When and where did you start the trail? 01:13:00 - Was leaving Vermont the first time Type 1 or Type 2 fun? 01:15:45 - Were you stressed out going through the Whites? 01:18:18 - Tell us about being on Franconia Ridge 01:22:40 - Did you sleep in the huts in the Whites? 01:23:30 - How did southern Maine compare to the Whites? 01:25:30 - How was completing the AT and moving to the next trail? 01:30:30 - Did you hike southbound on the CDT and PCT? 01:33:30 - What stories standout from the CDT? 01:35:50 - Did you use your umbrella more for rain or sun? 01:38:00 - Did you ever get the doldrums during your CYTC? 01:40:45 - Any good poop stories? 01:43:35 - What was it like hiking north on the PCT? 01:44:52 - Were you relieved to complete the Sierras? 01:48:15 - What was the highlight of your year? 01:51:05 - Do you have any advice for someone interested in the CYTC? 01:53:40 - Fuck Marry Kill: PCT, CDT, AT and backpacking, motorbiking, and mountain biking 01:55:15 - Kumo Question: What is your favorite historical period and why? Segments Trek Propaganda: Linda “Nana” Vanderloop Just Became the Oldest Woman To Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail by Kelly Floro QOTD: What do you wish was a holiday tradition? Triple Crown of cringy holiday moments Mail Bag 5 Star Review [divider] Check out our sound guy @my_boy_pauly/ and his coffee. Leave us a voicemail! Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes (and please leave us a review)!  Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Support us on Patreon to get bonus content. Advertise on Backpacker Radio Follow The Trek, Chaunce, Badger, and Trail Correspondents on Instagram. Follow Backpacker Radio, The Trek and Chaunce on YouTube. Follow Backpacker Radio on Tik Tok.  Our theme song is Walking Slow by Animal Years. A super big thank you to our Chuck Norris Award winner(s) from Patreon: Alex and Misty with NavigatorsCrafting, Alex Kindle, Andrew, Austen McDaniel, Ben Love, Brad & Blair Thirteen Adventures, Brent Stenberg, Bryan Alsop, Christopher Marshburn, Coach from Marion Outdoors, Derek Koch, Eric Casper, Erik Hofmann, Gillian Daniels, Greg Knight, Greg McDaniel may he bring honor to his name, Griffin Haywood, Hailey Buckingham, Liz Seger, Mud Tom, Patrick Cianciolo, Rebecca Brave, Sawyer Products, SPAM, Timothy Hahn, Tracy ‘Trigger' Fawns A big thank you to our Cinnamon Connection Champions from Patreon: Bells, Bonnie Ackerman, Chris Pyle, David, Dcnerdlet, Emily Galusha, Jeanie, Jeanne Latshaw, Katharine Rudzitis, Lauren Cain, Luke Netjes, Merle Watkins, Peter, Ruth S, and Spencer Hinson.

In this episode of the Acres USA Podcast, host Taylor Henry sits down with Travis Potter, a pioneering figure in sustainable and regenerative farming. Travis shares his incredible journey from growing up on a ranch in the southern Sierras to revolutionizing agriculture with his innovative product, Green Lightning. With a background in ranching, meat production, and organic farming, Travis delves into the development and impact of Green Lightning, a technology that mimics lightning to capture nitrogen from the air and improve soil health. This episode explores the challenges and triumphs of farming, advancements in eco agriculture, and the potential for Green Lightning to transform the future of food production. Join us for an inspiring and informative conversation that touches on family, entrepreneurship, and the quest for sustainable farming solutions. Important Links from Today's Episode: Members site: https://members.acresusa.com Acres U.S.A. Homepage: https://www.acresusa.com/ Green Lightning Website: https://www.greenlightning.ag/

Send us a textIn our Season 8 Finale we have an amazing guest who shares her incredible journey that led her to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2023. Her name is Chloe also known as Chickpea when on the trails and you can follow her on Instagram, @_itsmechickpeaWe talk to Chickpea about growing up on the Eastern Coast of Canada, living in Europe, and her inspirational journey that led her to complete the PCT in 2023. She shares some memorable experiences in the desert sections, trekking through the snow covered Sierras, and ultimately making it all the way back home to Canada and reaching the Northern Terminus. If you ever dreamed of hiking the PCT or getting into thru-hiking, this episode is for you.Episode Links:Chickpea's WebsiteChickpea's YouTube ChannelBook Recommendation - Pacific Crest Trials by Zach Davis & Carly Moree Follow us on Instagram, @HikesandmicsThis episode's music was created by Ketsa, follow him on Instagram @Ketsamusic Episode Sponsor(s):CureSearch Ultimate Hike - Ultimate Hike is the nation's largest endurance program dedicated to funding childhood cancer research.You can register for a 2025 Ultimate Hike for FREE! Just use the promo code hikesandmics when you sign up at ultimatehike.org, and your registration fee is waived. Ursa Minor Outfitters - Inspired by the outdoors, Created by local artistsGo check them at www.ursaminoroutfitters.com and don't forget to enter the promo code HikesMics10 at checkout to receive 10% off your order.FlipSockz will keep Mother Nature out of your boots with their innovative nylon sleeve.To get your first pair visit www.FlipSockz.com and enter the promo code HikesMics10 at checkout to receive 10% off your order.

Ashley is an ultrarunner with an incredible track record of outdoor adventures in the Sierras. Moving from marathon training to lose weight for college credit to winning ultramarathons after starting on dirt to better exercise her dog off-leash, Ashley is a badass on trails.  We talk about some of the opportunities she has living in the Great Basin with access to the Sierra in less than an hour, exploring the mountains with her dog, then her dogs, camping trips to hot springs, and point-to-point adventures she has her sights on. Ashley has completed a number of epic races, and just as many big adventure days in the Lake Tahoe area. Mindset is a key theme of our discussion, including how to press on in an adventure despite pain and mental challenges, and what it was like exploring, solo, with paper maps. This episode covers Ashley's experience at Javelina Jundred 2024, which featured an entirely runnable course with 105 degree temperatures in the open desert, how to troubleshoot long adventures and ultramarathons when nutrition, weather or injuries take things sideways, and some future experiences on her "one day" list. Ashley frequently explores trails in Tahoe, and shares some of the learnings from her Tahoe Rim Trail Fastest Known Time (FKT) attempt, big future goals, and volunteering at races to give back to the run community. Some of the invaluable wisdom she shares: take baby steps toward your goal then add on. She first started running ten minutes, then added time the next run. Now, she's going after sub-20 hour 100 mile races and pondering some of the most challenging events in North America. If there's a will, there's a way!  Ashley can be found out on the trails with one or both of her dogs, or on Instagram at @ashleyyayoutside You can always connect with me on Instagram @cactusmoose or through my website.

It has been way too long, in fact, you could argue and I would argue that this is the one guest who should have been on this show the most time ago amount - 5 years ago! I am so glad to finally get my buddy Dan Buttler on the show to talk about his vast experience and experiences investigating Bigfoot. He doesn't believe Bigfoot is real, he knows it. Once you hear this conversation you'll know why. click here for the Bigfoot River video! www.ryansingercomedy.comwww.patreon.com/ryansingerBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/me-paranormal-you-with-ryan-singer--5471727/support.

Thru hiker David "Yoyo" Poston jumps off trail to join Doc in the studio to catch up on what's he's been doing since his June 2022 interview. Settle in and buckle up as Yoyo shares his various trail adventures, including his walk with Sponge, thunderstorms in the Sierras, typical old school Croatian dudes, failed hikes, Twig, Hiker Trash moments, Stories from the Pacific Crest Trail, JMT permit secrets, minimalism, and why shortcuts are never short cuts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entérate en Noticentro  Descenso de la temperatura y posible caída de nieve en las sierras de Sonora y Chihuahua Policía ecuatoriana detiene a dos mexicanos durante una operación antidrogas en la ciudad de PortoviejoMás detalles en nuestro Podcast

Learn about Ken's roots in this program about his mother and father. Take a cue from Ephesians and honor your parents because it's right. -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.   Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Show Notes:Paloma's Links:Paloma Farkas (website)Paloma's instagramEpisode Intro:Dear guests of the Female Guides Requested Podcast, happy Wednesday. This is your host Ting Ting from Las Vegas. Our guest today is Paloma Farkas from Bishop California. Paloma is only 25 years old, but she already has 6 years of guiding under her belt. Right after she graduated from high school, her parents gifted her a NOLS backcountry rock course at the Wind River Range. Paloma then listened to the callings of mountains and followed her heart towards alpine rock climbing and started her guiding career.Paloma grew up in Seattle, Washington where she discovered her passion for the mountains through family backpacking and climbing trips in the Cascades. In 2017 she traveled to South America and fell in love with the granite towers of Patagonia. Since then she has split her time between Patagonia, Chile and the US. Paloma spends as much time as possible climbing and some of her favorite areas are Patagonia, the Peruvian Andes, the Cascades, Indian Creek, the Wind River Range, and the High Sierras. Her favorite type of climbing is big wall alpine climbing, but Paloma also enjoys single pitch trad and sport climbing, bouldering and ice climbing. When Paloma isn't pursuing her own climbing goals, she finds fulfillment in sharing her passion with others and teaching the skills necessary to be self-sufficient in the mountains. She is currently an AMGA Rock Guide, Apprentice Alpine Guide, Wilderness First Responder, AIARE Avalanche Pro 1, and Leave No Trace Trainer.I admire Paloma's attitude of going for it when she knows what she wants. She works hard and remains optimistic. We had so much laughter during our conversation and I know you'll laugh with us too when you listen to this episode. Things We Talked about:Cross Country Running was already thereFamily's influence – climbing wall at home, backpacking and climbing trips in the CascadesNOLS backcountry rock course changed Paloma's life pathThe year of 2016Wanting to head out of the country, and wanting to go to the mountainsA powerful conversation between father and daughterWhy Patagonia?From dirtbagging to hiking guide to weekend warrior2020 now what?After AMGA Rock Guide Course, Paloma started technical rock guiding in BishopComparing the work environment between the US and Chile from a female guide's perspectivePaloma's vision and business ideas – train climbers in the Sierras and bring them to PatagoniaDoes Bishop has enough work year round?How to make Bishop guiding career sustainable?Favorite type of guiding?The so-called “Gap Courses”

Good evening and a huge welcome back to the show, I hope you've had a great day and you're ready to kick back and relax with another episode of Brett's old time radio show. Hello, I'm Brett your host for this evening and welcome to my home in beautiful Lyme Bay where it's lovely December night. I hope it's just as nice where you are. You'll find all of my links at www.linktr.ee/brettsoldtimeradioshow A huge thankyou for joining me once again for our regular late night visit to those dusty studio archives of Old Time radio shows right here at my home in the united kingdom. Don't forget I have an instagram page and youtube channel both called brett's old time radio show and I'd love it if you could follow me. Feel free to send me some feedback on this and the other shows if you get a moment, brett@tourdate.co.uk #sleep #insomnia #relax #chill #night #nighttime #bed #bedtime #oldtimeradio #drama #comedy #radio #talkradio #hancock #tonyhancock #hancockshalfhour #sherlock #sherlockholmes #radiodrama #popular #viral #viralpodcast #podcast #podcasting #podcasts #podtok #podcastclip #podcastclips #podcasttrailer #podcastteaser #newpodcastepisode #newpodcast #videopodcast #upcomingpodcast #audiogram #audiograms #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #truecrime #podcaster #viral #popular #viralpodcast #number1 #instagram #youtube #facebook #johnnydollar #crime #fiction #unwind #devon #texas #texasranger #beer #seaton #seaside  #smuggler #colyton #devon #seaton #beer #branscombe #lymebay #lymeregis #brett #brettorchard #orchard #greatdetectives #greatdetectivesofoldtimeradio #detectives #johnnydollar #thesaint #steptoe #texasrangers #goldenageofradio sleep insomnia relax chill night nightime bed bedtime oldtimeradio drama comedy radio talkradio hancock tonyhancock hancockshalfhour sherlock sherlockholmes radiodrama popular viral viralpodcast podcast brett brettorchard orchard east devon seaton beer lyme regis village condado de alhama spain murcia   Tales of the Texas Rangers is a 20th century Western old-time radio and television police procedural drama which originally aired on NBC Radio from 1950 to 1952 and later on CBS Television from 1955 to 1958. Film star Joel McCrea voiced the radio version as the fictitious Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who uses the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. His faithful horse, Charcoal (or "Charky"), helps Pearson to track down the culprits. The radio shows, some of which are available on the Internet, are re-enactments of actual Texas Ranger cases. The television version was produced and also directed for several episodes by Stacy Keach, Sr. It was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties cereal. Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who was said to have killed thirty-one men during his 30-year career as a Texas Ranger, was the consultant for the television series, as he had been for the earlier radio series. The television version was filmed by Screen Gems. On radio, Joel McCrea's Pearson often worked by request with a local sheriff's office or police department. But in the television version, Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson and had a regular partner, Ranger Clay Morgan, who had been an occasional character on the radio show. Morgan was portrayed in the television version by Harry Lauter. William Boyett appeared five times on the television series, including the role of Wade Crowell in the 1955 premiere episode, "Ransom Flight." During the opening and closing credits of the television series, the actors march toward the camera as an off-screen men's chorus sings the theme song, "These Are Tales of Texas Rangers", to the tune of "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". The radio series used contemporary cases and modern detective methods to solve crimes; it was a procedural drama, in many ways Jack Webb's Dragnet with a western flavour. The television version had some episodes set in the 1950s, comparable in some ways to Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Other episodes were set in the 19th century in a traditional western genre. In each case, Parker and Lauter were involved with chases and shoot-outs. The weaponry varied greatly between the modern and older stories. Irving J. Moore, later with Gunsmoke, began his career as a director on two episodes of Tales of the Texas Rangers. Besides Keach and Moore, the other directors included Lew Landers, George Blair, and Earl Bellamy. Guest stars (TV series) Chris Alcaide, as Clint Hollister in "Uranium Pete", as Slade in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955), and as Ben Thomas in "Trail Herd" (1957) Stanley Andrews, four episodes, mainly as Marshal MacDonald Morris Ankrum, as Colonel Cole Bryson in "Trail Herd" (1957) Gregg Barton, as George Webster in "Horseman of the Sierras" (1956) and as Quiqley in "Double Reward" (1957) Ray Boyle, in "Streamlined Rustlers" (1957) Lane Bradford, as Asa Brockway in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Big Jack in "The Rough Tough West" (both 1955) X Brands, as Johnnie Tyce in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Paul Brinegar, as the lead guest star in "The Hobo" (1956) Harry Cheshire, as Joe Chaney in "Desert Fury" (1958) Andy Clyde in "Hardrock's Dilemma" and "Double Reward" (both 1957) Michael Dante, as Alfred in "Edge of Danger" (1958) Anthony Eisley, as Jack Carr in "Kickback" (1958) Dick Elliott, as prospector Pete Cooper in "Uranium Pete" (1955) and as Sheriff Tiny Morris in "Both Barrels Blazine" (1957) Frank Ferguson, as Dembrow in "Deadfall" (1958) Leo Gordon, as Joe Brock in "Desert Fury" (1958) Ron Hagerthy, as Jim Hartley in "The Devil's Deputy" (1956) Don C. Harvey, as Milo Paxin in "Return of the Rough Riders" (1955) Harry Harvey, Jr., as Jeff Thorpe in "Traitor's Gold" (1958) Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955) I. Stanford Jolley, as Sheriff Clinton in "West of Sonora"; the sheriff fights a former outlaw for custody of a little girl. Jimmy Lydon, as Lt. Jared Evans in "Warpath" (1958) Ewing Mitchell, as Tom Weldon in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Dennis Moore, as Jim Webb in "Panhandle" (1956) Burt Mustin, as Ned Watkins in "Home in San Antone" (1955) Gregg Palmer, as Pete Hackett in "Panhandle" (1956) Eddie Parker, three times and as stuntman John M. Pickard, as Frank Warren in "Ransom Flight", the series premiere Paul Picerni, as Philip Conzog in "Gypsy Boy" (1957) Denver Pyle, as Noah Reed in "Texas Flyer" (1958) Rhodes Reason, as Sheriff Tom Keever in "Uranium Pete" and as Dave in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955) Olan Soule, as Bill Peters in "Steel Trap" (1958) Marjorie Stapp, as Stacey Walker in "Ambush" (1958, series finale) Dub Taylor, as Jack Geyer in "The Fifth Plague" (1958) Pierre Watkin, as Ross Oliver in "Jace and Clay" (1958) Grant Withers, as Ramrod Johnson in "Cattle Drive" (1958)   Radio episode log AUD Just A Number 04-13-50 :27:40  1 Just A Number 07-08-50 :29:40  2 The White Elephant 07-15-50 :29:40  3 Apache Peak 07-22-50 :29:40  4 The Trigger Man 07-29-50 :29:40  5 Quick Silver 08-05-50 :29:30  6 The Broken Spur 08-12-50 :29:10  7 Fool's Gold 08-19-50 :29:40  8 The Open Range 08-26-50 :29:40  9 Play For Keeps 09-02-50 :29:50  10 Dead Or Alive 09-09-50 :29:30  11 Candy Man 09-16-50 :29:40  12 Open And Shut 09-23-50 :29:20 This is the broadcast of 11-11-51 of the same title. 13 Clean Up 09-30-50 :29:40  14 Living Death 10-08-50 :29:40 Show moves to Sundays at this point 15 Dead Give-Away 10-15-50 :29:40  16 Title Unknown 10-22-50 :30:00  17 Soft Touch 10-29-50 :29:50  18 The White Suit 11-05-50 :30:00  19 Blood Relative 11-12-50 :30:00  20 Hanging By A Thread 11-26-50 :30:00 show of 11-19 Pre-Empted for Hedda Hopper Program 21 Room 114 12-03-50 :30:00  22 The Lucky Dollar 12-10-50 :30:00  23 The Cactus Pear 12-17-50 :30:00  24 Christmas Present 12-24-50 :30:00 Christmas Program 25 The Devil's Share 12-31-50 :30:00  26 Deadhead Freight 01-07-51 :30:00  27 Death In The Cards 01-14-51 :30:00  28 Blood Harvest 01-21-51 :30:00  29 Night Chase 01-28-51 :30:00  30 Logger's Larceny 02-04-51 :30:00  31 The Hatchet 02-11-51 :30:00  32 Sweet Revenge 02-18-51 :30:00  33 The Trap 02-25-51 :30:00  34 Blind Justice 03-11-51 :30:00 Show of 3/4 Pre-empted for "Theatre Guild's" HAMLET 35 Death By Adoption 03-18-51 :30:00  36 Breakdown 03-25-51 :30:00  37 Pressure 04-01-51 :30:00  38 Bad Blood 04-08-51 :30:00  39 Conspiracy 04-15-51 :30:00  40 Canned Death 04-22-51 :30:00  41 Title Unknown 04-29-51 :30:00  42 No Living Witnesses 05-06-51 :30:00  43 Paid In Full 05-13-51 :30:00  44 Squaredance 05-20-51 :30:00  45 Joy Ride 05-27-51 :30:00  46 Death Shaft 09-30-51 :30:00  47 The Wheelchair Killer 10-07-51 :30:00  48 Play For Keeps 10-14-51 :30:00  49 Fugitive Trail 10-21-51 :30:00  50 The White Elephant 10-28-51 :30:00  51 Helping Hand 11-04-51 :30:00  52 Open And Shut 11-11-51 :30:00  53 Wild Crop 11-18-51 :30:00  54 The Blow Off 11-25-51 :30:00  55 The Dead Give-Away 12-02-51 :30:00  56 Death Plant 12-09-51 :30:00  57 Pick-Up 12-16-51 :30:00  58 Christmas Payoff 12-23-51 :30:00 Christmas Program 59 Killer's Crop 12-30-51 :30:00  60 Birds Of A Feather 01-06-52 :30:00  61 Clip Job 01-13-52 :30:00  62 Blood Trail 01-20-52 :30:00  63 Night Chase 01-27-52 :30:00  64 The Rub Out 02-03-52 :30:00  65 Hitchhiker 02-10-52 :30:00  66 Cold Blood 02-17-52 :27:20  67 Bright Boy 02-24-52 :30:00  68 The Ice Man 03-02-52 :30:00  69 Dream Farm 03-09-52 :30:00  70 Prelude To Felony 03-16-52 :30:00  71 Nighthawk 03-30-52 :30:00 Program of 3-23 Preempted 72 Troop Train 04-06-52 :30:00  73 Uncertain Death 04-13-52 :30:00  74 Illusion 04-20-52 :30:00  75 Address Unknown 04-27-52 :30:00  76 Little Sister 05-04-52 :30:00  77 Unleashed Fury 05-11-52 :30:00  78 Smart Kill 05-18-52 :30:00  79 Jailbird 05-25-52 :30:00  80 Sell-Out 06-01-52 :30:00  81 Illegal Entry 06-08-52 :30:00  82 Travesty 06-15-52 :30:00  83 Knockout 06-22-52 :30:00  84 Ex-Con 06-29-52 :30:00  85 The Boomerang 07-06-52 :30:00  86 Finger Man 07-13-52 :30:00  87 Round Trip 07-20-52 :30:00  88 Stick-Up 07-27-52 :30:00  89 Double Edge 08-03-52 :30:00  90 Last Stop 08-10-52 :30:00  91 Cover-Up 08-17-52 :30:00  92 Three Victims 08-24-52 :30:00  93 Misplaced Person 08-31-52 :30:00  94 Alibi 09-07-52 :30:00  95 Drive-In 09-14-52 :30:00  Comic book adaptations The series was adapted into a comic book distributed by Dell Comics and drawn by Dan Spiegle.[3] It also inspired Willy Vandersteen's Suske en Wiske album De Texasrakkers.   The Golden Age of Radio Also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium, and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favourite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to the home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, talent shows, daytime and evening variety hours, situation comedies, play-by-play sports, children's shows, cooking shows, and more. In the 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. Origins A family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal radio. The crystal radio, a legacy from the pre-broadcast era, could not power a loudspeaker so the family must share earphones During the first three decades of radio, from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped; the information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code. At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. 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. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM (amplitude modulation), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. 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 Christmas 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 (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden"[2] and also in James O'Neal's essays.[3][4] An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "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 ("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; 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. 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." A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ. Growth of radio Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Consumer adoption Through the decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in a home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio,[8] a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the centre of American life. 83% of American homes would own a radio by 1940. Government regulation Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927, which included the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40, which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of the country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. Broadcast networks The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network. The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to a group headed by RCA, which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company. Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: National Broadcasting Company Red Network (NBC Red), launched November 15, 1926. Originally founded as the National Broadcasting Company in late 1926, the company was almost immediately forced to split under antitrust laws to form NBC Red and NBC Blue. When, in 1942, NBC Blue was sold and renamed the Blue Network, this network would go back to calling itself simply the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network (NBC). National Broadcasting Company Blue Network (NBC Blue); launched January 10, 1927, split from NBC Red. NBC Blue was sold in 1942 and became the Blue Network, and it in turn transferred its assets to a new company, the American Broadcasting Company on June 15, 1945. That network identified itself as the American Broadcasting Company Radio Network (ABC). Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), launched September 18, 1927. After an initially struggling attempt to compete with the NBC networks, CBS gained new momentum when William S. Paley was installed as company president. Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), launched September 29, 1934. Mutual was initially run as a cooperative in which the flagship stations owned the network, not the other way around as was the case with the other three radio networks. Programming In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of the Golden Age, 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 at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. 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 the United States, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). Live events Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. News The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news: headlines, remote reporting, sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop), panel discussions, weather reports, and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s, eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated [citation needed] reports of a mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds, which had been presented as a faux newscast. Musical features The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. 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. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. 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 such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, 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 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Comedy Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy, 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?,[18] 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. 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 Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson. Soap operas The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em, which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960, the last four daytime radio dramas—Young Dr. Malone, Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins, all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network—were brought to an end. Children's programming 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 boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase. Radio plays Radio plays 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 The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The 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 1938 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 90-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.[22] Recordings of many of these programs survive. During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. 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 many 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 Theatre 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 Mystery 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. Game shows Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of the first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold, but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949.[23] Broadcast production methods The RCA Type 44-BX 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 their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to the carpeted floor after use. Radio stations Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc 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 pre-recorded 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 331⁄3 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 centre 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. 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 moulded in a record press. Armed Forces Radio Service Frank Sinatra and Alida Valli converse over 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 consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs 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 GI Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Kate Smith,[26] and John Serry Sr. After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. 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 discs, 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,[31] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc is the only surviving recording of a program. 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 331⁄3 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 that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to 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. Recording media Electrical transcription discs The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disc Before the early 1950s, 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 disc. 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 discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 rpm, which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 331⁄3 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 discs 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 discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. 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, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for the duration of the war. 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 discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs 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 discs 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. Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription discs and magnetic wire. Discs could be edited only by copying parts of them to a new disc, 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 discs to performances pre-recorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs. However, for the physical distribution of pre-recorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 331⁄3 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 are lost. Many were never recorded; few recordings antedate the early 1930s. Beginning then several of the longer-running radio dramas have their archives complete or nearly complete. The earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording survives. However, a good number of syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies were 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. The survival of network programming from this time frame is more inconsistent; the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, and the expensive tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used (especially since, in the age of emerging trends such as television and music radio, such recordings were believed to have virtually no rerun or resale value). Thus, while some prime time network radio series from this era exist in full or almost in full, especially the most famous and longest-lived of them, less prominent or shorter-lived series (such as serials) may have only a handful of extant episodes. 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 analogue tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analogue 16-inch transcription disc, although some are off-the-air AM recordings. But in many cases, the circulating recordings are corrupted (decreased in quality), because lossless digital recording for the home market did not come until the very end of the twentieth century. Collectors made and shared recordings on analogue magnetic tapes, the only practical, relatively inexpensive medium, first on reels, then cassettes. "Sharing" usually meant making a duplicate tape. They connected two recorders, playing on one and recording on the other. Analog recordings are never perfect, and copying an analogue recording multiplies the imperfections. With the oldest recordings this can even mean it went out the speaker of one machine and in via the microphone of the other. 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. In addition, magnetic recordings, unless preserved archivally, are gradually damaged by the Earth's magnetic field. 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. As of 2020, the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive contains 5,121 recordings. An active group of collectors makes digitally available, via CD or download, large collections of programs. RadioEchoes.com offers 98,949 episodes in their collection, but not all is old-time radio. Copyright status Unlike film, television, and print items from the era, the copyright status of most recordings from the Golden Age of Radio is unclear. This is because, prior to 1972, the United States delegated the copyrighting of sound recordings to the individual states, many of which offered more generous common law copyright protections than the federal government offered for other media (some offered perpetual copyright, which has since been abolished; under the Music Modernization Act of September 2018, any sound recording 95 years old or older will be thrust into the public domain regardless of state law). The only exceptions are AFRS original productions, which are considered work of the United States government and thus both ineligible for federal copyright and outside the jurisdiction of any state; these programs are firmly in the public domain (this does not apply to programs carried by AFRS but produced by commercial networks). In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as orphan works: although there may still be a valid copyright on the program, it is seldom enforced. The copyright on an individual sound recording is distinct from the federal copyright for the underlying material (such as a published script, music, or in the case of adaptations, the original film or television material), and in many cases it is impossible to determine where or when the original recording was made or if the recording was copyrighted in that state. The U.S. Copyright Office states "there are a variety of legal regimes governing protection of pre-1972 sound recordings in the various states, and the scope of protection and of exceptions and limitations to that protection is unclear."[39] For example, New York has issued contradicting rulings on whether or not common law exists in that state; the most recent ruling, 2016's Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, holds that there is no such copyright in New York in regard to public performance.[40] Further complicating matters is that certain examples in case law have implied that radio broadcasts (and faithful reproductions thereof), because they were distributed freely to the public over the air, may not be eligible for copyright in and of themselves. The Internet Archive and other organizations that distribute public domain and open-source audio recordings maintain extensive archives of old-time radio programs. Legacy United States 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 off old-time radio 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 the golden-age era of radio drama by 1962. (Radio as a broadcast medium would survive, thanks in part to the proliferation of the transistor radio, and permanent installation in vehicles, making the medium far more portable than television). 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. Several radio theatre series are 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, and weekly programs such as The Big Broadcast on WAMU, hosted by Murray Horwitz. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Carl Amari's nationally syndicated radio show Hollywood 360 features 5 old-time radio episodes each week during his 5-hour broadcast. Amari's show is heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast and in 168 countries on American Forces Radio. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Sirius XM Radio maintains a full-time Radio Classics channel devoted to rebroadcasts of vintage radio shows. Starting in 1974, Garrison Keillor, through his syndicated two-hour-long program A Prairie Home Companion, has provided a living museum of the production, tone and listener's experience of this era of radio for several generations after its demise. Produced live in theaters throughout the country, using the same sound effects and techniques of the era, it ran through 2016 with Keillor as host. The program included segments that were close renditions (in the form of parody) of specific genres of this era, including Westerns ("Dusty and Lefty, The Lives of the Cowboys"), detective procedurals ("Guy Noir, Private Eye") and even advertising through fictional commercials. Keillor also wrote a novel, WLT: A Radio Romance based on a radio station of this era—including a personally narrated version for the ultimate in verisimilitude. Upon Keillor's retirement, replacement host Chris Thile chose to reboot the show (since renamed Live from Here after the syndicator cut ties with Keillor) and eliminate much of the old-time radio trappings of the format; the show was ultimately canceled in 2020 due to financial and logistics problems. 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 advised 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 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 that feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events was the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey, which held its final convention in October 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). Veterans of the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, including Chairperson Steven M. Lewis of The Gotham Radio Players, Maggie Thompson, publisher of the Comic Book Buyer's Guide, Craig Wichman of audio drama troupe Quicksilver Audio Theatre and long-time FOTR Publicist Sean Dougherty have launched a successor event, Celebrating Audio Theatre – Old & New, scheduled for October 12–13, 2012. 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. 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. A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), The Lutheran Hour (1930), 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. The Wheeling Jamboree counts an earlier program on a competing station as part of its history, tracing its lineage back to 1933. Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to provide sketch comedy on existing radio programs including the Grand Ole Opry, Midnite Jamboree and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Elsewhere Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in—among other countries—Australia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, such scripted radio drama continues on BBC Radio 3 and (principally) BBC Radio 4, the second-most popular radio station in the country, as well as on the rerun channel BBC Radio 4 Extra, which is the seventh-most popular station there.   #starradio #totalstar #star1075 #heart #heartradio #lbc #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio1 #bbcradio2 #bbcradio3 #bbcradio4 #radio4extra #absoluteradio #absolute #capital #capitalradio #greatesthitsradio #hitsradio #radio #adultcontemporary #spain #bristol #frenchay #colyton #lymeregis #seaton #beer #devon #eastdevon #brettorchard #brettsoldtimeradioshow

Good evening and a huge welcome back to the show, I hope you've had a great day and you're ready to kick back and relax with another episode of Brett's old time radio show. Hello, I'm Brett your host for this evening and welcome to my home in beautiful Lyme Bay where it's lovely December night. I hope it's just as nice where you are. You'll find all of my links at www.linktr.ee/brettsoldtimeradioshow A huge thankyou for joining me once again for our regular late night visit to those dusty studio archives of Old Time radio shows right here at my home in the united kingdom. Don't forget I have an instagram page and youtube channel both called brett's old time radio show and I'd love it if you could follow me. Feel free to send me some feedback on this and the other shows if you get a moment, brett@tourdate.co.uk #sleep #insomnia #relax #chill #night #nighttime #bed #bedtime #oldtimeradio #drama #comedy #radio #talkradio #hancock #tonyhancock #hancockshalfhour #sherlock #sherlockholmes #radiodrama #popular #viral #viralpodcast #podcast #podcasting #podcasts #podtok #podcastclip #podcastclips #podcasttrailer #podcastteaser #newpodcastepisode #newpodcast #videopodcast #upcomingpodcast #audiogram #audiograms #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #truecrime #podcaster #viral #popular #viralpodcast #number1 #instagram #youtube #facebook #johnnydollar #crime #fiction #unwind #devon #texas #texasranger #beer #seaton #seaside  #smuggler #colyton #devon #seaton #beer #branscombe #lymebay #lymeregis #brett #brettorchard #orchard #greatdetectives #greatdetectivesofoldtimeradio #detectives #johnnydollar #thesaint #steptoe #texasrangers #goldenageofradio sleep insomnia relax chill night nightime bed bedtime oldtimeradio drama comedy radio talkradio hancock tonyhancock hancockshalfhour sherlock sherlockholmes radiodrama popular viral viralpodcast podcast brett brettorchard orchard east devon seaton beer lyme regis village condado de alhama spain murcia   Tales of the Texas Rangers is a 20th century Western old-time radio and television police procedural drama which originally aired on NBC Radio from 1950 to 1952 and later on CBS Television from 1955 to 1958. Film star Joel McCrea voiced the radio version as the fictitious Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who uses the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. His faithful horse, Charcoal (or "Charky"), helps Pearson to track down the culprits. The radio shows, some of which are available on the Internet, are re-enactments of actual Texas Ranger cases. The television version was produced and also directed for several episodes by Stacy Keach, Sr. It was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties cereal. Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who was said to have killed thirty-one men during his 30-year career as a Texas Ranger, was the consultant for the television series, as he had been for the earlier radio series. The television version was filmed by Screen Gems. On radio, Joel McCrea's Pearson often worked by request with a local sheriff's office or police department. But in the television version, Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson and had a regular partner, Ranger Clay Morgan, who had been an occasional character on the radio show. Morgan was portrayed in the television version by Harry Lauter. William Boyett appeared five times on the television series, including the role of Wade Crowell in the 1955 premiere episode, "Ransom Flight." During the opening and closing credits of the television series, the actors march toward the camera as an off-screen men's chorus sings the theme song, "These Are Tales of Texas Rangers", to the tune of "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". The radio series used contemporary cases and modern detective methods to solve crimes; it was a procedural drama, in many ways Jack Webb's Dragnet with a western flavour. The television version had some episodes set in the 1950s, comparable in some ways to Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Other episodes were set in the 19th century in a traditional western genre. In each case, Parker and Lauter were involved with chases and shoot-outs. The weaponry varied greatly between the modern and older stories. Irving J. Moore, later with Gunsmoke, began his career as a director on two episodes of Tales of the Texas Rangers. Besides Keach and Moore, the other directors included Lew Landers, George Blair, and Earl Bellamy. Guest stars (TV series) Chris Alcaide, as Clint Hollister in "Uranium Pete", as Slade in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955), and as Ben Thomas in "Trail Herd" (1957) Stanley Andrews, four episodes, mainly as Marshal MacDonald Morris Ankrum, as Colonel Cole Bryson in "Trail Herd" (1957) Gregg Barton, as George Webster in "Horseman of the Sierras" (1956) and as Quiqley in "Double Reward" (1957) Ray Boyle, in "Streamlined Rustlers" (1957) Lane Bradford, as Asa Brockway in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Big Jack in "The Rough Tough West" (both 1955) X Brands, as Johnnie Tyce in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Paul Brinegar, as the lead guest star in "The Hobo" (1956) Harry Cheshire, as Joe Chaney in "Desert Fury" (1958) Andy Clyde in "Hardrock's Dilemma" and "Double Reward" (both 1957) Michael Dante, as Alfred in "Edge of Danger" (1958) Anthony Eisley, as Jack Carr in "Kickback" (1958) Dick Elliott, as prospector Pete Cooper in "Uranium Pete" (1955) and as Sheriff Tiny Morris in "Both Barrels Blazine" (1957) Frank Ferguson, as Dembrow in "Deadfall" (1958) Leo Gordon, as Joe Brock in "Desert Fury" (1958) Ron Hagerthy, as Jim Hartley in "The Devil's Deputy" (1956) Don C. Harvey, as Milo Paxin in "Return of the Rough Riders" (1955) Harry Harvey, Jr., as Jeff Thorpe in "Traitor's Gold" (1958) Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955) I. Stanford Jolley, as Sheriff Clinton in "West of Sonora"; the sheriff fights a former outlaw for custody of a little girl. Jimmy Lydon, as Lt. Jared Evans in "Warpath" (1958) Ewing Mitchell, as Tom Weldon in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Dennis Moore, as Jim Webb in "Panhandle" (1956) Burt Mustin, as Ned Watkins in "Home in San Antone" (1955) Gregg Palmer, as Pete Hackett in "Panhandle" (1956) Eddie Parker, three times and as stuntman John M. Pickard, as Frank Warren in "Ransom Flight", the series premiere Paul Picerni, as Philip Conzog in "Gypsy Boy" (1957) Denver Pyle, as Noah Reed in "Texas Flyer" (1958) Rhodes Reason, as Sheriff Tom Keever in "Uranium Pete" and as Dave in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955) Olan Soule, as Bill Peters in "Steel Trap" (1958) Marjorie Stapp, as Stacey Walker in "Ambush" (1958, series finale) Dub Taylor, as Jack Geyer in "The Fifth Plague" (1958) Pierre Watkin, as Ross Oliver in "Jace and Clay" (1958) Grant Withers, as Ramrod Johnson in "Cattle Drive" (1958)   Radio episode log AUD Just A Number 04-13-50 :27:40  1 Just A Number 07-08-50 :29:40  2 The White Elephant 07-15-50 :29:40  3 Apache Peak 07-22-50 :29:40  4 The Trigger Man 07-29-50 :29:40  5 Quick Silver 08-05-50 :29:30  6 The Broken Spur 08-12-50 :29:10  7 Fool's Gold 08-19-50 :29:40  8 The Open Range 08-26-50 :29:40  9 Play For Keeps 09-02-50 :29:50  10 Dead Or Alive 09-09-50 :29:30  11 Candy Man 09-16-50 :29:40  12 Open And Shut 09-23-50 :29:20 This is the broadcast of 11-11-51 of the same title. 13 Clean Up 09-30-50 :29:40  14 Living Death 10-08-50 :29:40 Show moves to Sundays at this point 15 Dead Give-Away 10-15-50 :29:40  16 Title Unknown 10-22-50 :30:00  17 Soft Touch 10-29-50 :29:50  18 The White Suit 11-05-50 :30:00  19 Blood Relative 11-12-50 :30:00  20 Hanging By A Thread 11-26-50 :30:00 show of 11-19 Pre-Empted for Hedda Hopper Program 21 Room 114 12-03-50 :30:00  22 The Lucky Dollar 12-10-50 :30:00  23 The Cactus Pear 12-17-50 :30:00  24 Christmas Present 12-24-50 :30:00 Christmas Program 25 The Devil's Share 12-31-50 :30:00  26 Deadhead Freight 01-07-51 :30:00  27 Death In The Cards 01-14-51 :30:00  28 Blood Harvest 01-21-51 :30:00  29 Night Chase 01-28-51 :30:00  30 Logger's Larceny 02-04-51 :30:00  31 The Hatchet 02-11-51 :30:00  32 Sweet Revenge 02-18-51 :30:00  33 The Trap 02-25-51 :30:00  34 Blind Justice 03-11-51 :30:00 Show of 3/4 Pre-empted for "Theatre Guild's" HAMLET 35 Death By Adoption 03-18-51 :30:00  36 Breakdown 03-25-51 :30:00  37 Pressure 04-01-51 :30:00  38 Bad Blood 04-08-51 :30:00  39 Conspiracy 04-15-51 :30:00  40 Canned Death 04-22-51 :30:00  41 Title Unknown 04-29-51 :30:00  42 No Living Witnesses 05-06-51 :30:00  43 Paid In Full 05-13-51 :30:00  44 Squaredance 05-20-51 :30:00  45 Joy Ride 05-27-51 :30:00  46 Death Shaft 09-30-51 :30:00  47 The Wheelchair Killer 10-07-51 :30:00  48 Play For Keeps 10-14-51 :30:00  49 Fugitive Trail 10-21-51 :30:00  50 The White Elephant 10-28-51 :30:00  51 Helping Hand 11-04-51 :30:00  52 Open And Shut 11-11-51 :30:00  53 Wild Crop 11-18-51 :30:00  54 The Blow Off 11-25-51 :30:00  55 The Dead Give-Away 12-02-51 :30:00  56 Death Plant 12-09-51 :30:00  57 Pick-Up 12-16-51 :30:00  58 Christmas Payoff 12-23-51 :30:00 Christmas Program 59 Killer's Crop 12-30-51 :30:00  60 Birds Of A Feather 01-06-52 :30:00  61 Clip Job 01-13-52 :30:00  62 Blood Trail 01-20-52 :30:00  63 Night Chase 01-27-52 :30:00  64 The Rub Out 02-03-52 :30:00  65 Hitchhiker 02-10-52 :30:00  66 Cold Blood 02-17-52 :27:20  67 Bright Boy 02-24-52 :30:00  68 The Ice Man 03-02-52 :30:00  69 Dream Farm 03-09-52 :30:00  70 Prelude To Felony 03-16-52 :30:00  71 Nighthawk 03-30-52 :30:00 Program of 3-23 Preempted 72 Troop Train 04-06-52 :30:00  73 Uncertain Death 04-13-52 :30:00  74 Illusion 04-20-52 :30:00  75 Address Unknown 04-27-52 :30:00  76 Little Sister 05-04-52 :30:00  77 Unleashed Fury 05-11-52 :30:00  78 Smart Kill 05-18-52 :30:00  79 Jailbird 05-25-52 :30:00  80 Sell-Out 06-01-52 :30:00  81 Illegal Entry 06-08-52 :30:00  82 Travesty 06-15-52 :30:00  83 Knockout 06-22-52 :30:00  84 Ex-Con 06-29-52 :30:00  85 The Boomerang 07-06-52 :30:00  86 Finger Man 07-13-52 :30:00  87 Round Trip 07-20-52 :30:00  88 Stick-Up 07-27-52 :30:00  89 Double Edge 08-03-52 :30:00  90 Last Stop 08-10-52 :30:00  91 Cover-Up 08-17-52 :30:00  92 Three Victims 08-24-52 :30:00  93 Misplaced Person 08-31-52 :30:00  94 Alibi 09-07-52 :30:00  95 Drive-In 09-14-52 :30:00  Comic book adaptations The series was adapted into a comic book distributed by Dell Comics and drawn by Dan Spiegle.[3] It also inspired Willy Vandersteen's Suske en Wiske album De Texasrakkers.   The Golden Age of Radio Also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium, and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favourite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to the home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, talent shows, daytime and evening variety hours, situation comedies, play-by-play sports, children's shows, cooking shows, and more. In the 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. Origins A family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal radio. The crystal radio, a legacy from the pre-broadcast era, could not power a loudspeaker so the family must share earphones During the first three decades of radio, from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped; the information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code. At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. 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. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM (amplitude modulation), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. 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 Christmas 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 (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden"[2] and also in James O'Neal's essays.[3][4] An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "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 ("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; 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. 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." A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ. Growth of radio Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Consumer adoption Through the decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in a home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio,[8] a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the centre of American life. 83% of American homes would own a radio by 1940. Government regulation Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927, which included the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40, which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of the country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. Broadcast networks The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network. The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to a group headed by RCA, which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company. Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: National Broadcasting Company Red Network (NBC Red), launched November 15, 1926. Originally founded as the National Broadcasting Company in late 1926, the company was almost immediately forced to split under antitrust laws to form NBC Red and NBC Blue. When, in 1942, NBC Blue was sold and renamed the Blue Network, this network would go back to calling itself simply the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network (NBC). National Broadcasting Company Blue Network (NBC Blue); launched January 10, 1927, split from NBC Red. NBC Blue was sold in 1942 and became the Blue Network, and it in turn transferred its assets to a new company, the American Broadcasting Company on June 15, 1945. That network identified itself as the American Broadcasting Company Radio Network (ABC). Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), launched September 18, 1927. After an initially struggling attempt to compete with the NBC networks, CBS gained new momentum when William S. Paley was installed as company president. Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), launched September 29, 1934. Mutual was initially run as a cooperative in which the flagship stations owned the network, not the other way around as was the case with the other three radio networks. Programming In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of the Golden Age, 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 at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. 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 the United States, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). Live events Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. News The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news: headlines, remote reporting, sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop), panel discussions, weather reports, and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s, eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated [citation needed] reports of a mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds, which had been presented as a faux newscast. Musical features The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. 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. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. 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 such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, 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 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Comedy Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy, 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?,[18] 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. 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 Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson. Soap operas The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em, which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960, the last four daytime radio dramas—Young Dr. Malone, Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins, all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network—were brought to an end. Children's programming 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 boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase. Radio plays Radio plays 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 The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The 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 1938 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 90-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.[22] Recordings of many of these programs survive. During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. 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 many 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 Theatre 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 Mystery 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. Game shows Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of the first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold, but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949.[23] Broadcast production methods The RCA Type 44-BX 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 their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to the carpeted floor after use. Radio stations Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc 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 pre-recorded 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 331⁄3 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 centre 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. 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 moulded in a record press. Armed Forces Radio Service Frank Sinatra and Alida Valli converse over 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 consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs 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 GI Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Kate Smith,[26] and John Serry Sr. After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. 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 discs, 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,[31] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc is the only surviving recording of a program. 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 331⁄3 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 that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to 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. Recording media Electrical transcription discs The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disc Before the early 1950s, 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 disc. 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 discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 rpm, which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 331⁄3 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 discs 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 discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. 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, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for the duration of the war. 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 discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs 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 discs 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. Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription discs and magnetic wire. Discs could be edited only by copying parts of them to a new disc, 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 discs to performances pre-recorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs. However, for the physical distribution of pre-recorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 331⁄3 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 are lost. Many were never recorded; few recordings antedate the early 1930s. Beginning then several of the longer-running radio dramas have their archives complete or nearly complete. The earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording survives. However, a good number of syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies were 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. The survival of network programming from this time frame is more inconsistent; the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, and the expensive tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used (especially since, in the age of emerging trends such as television and music radio, such recordings were believed to have virtually no rerun or resale value). Thus, while some prime time network radio series from this era exist in full or almost in full, especially the most famous and longest-lived of them, less prominent or shorter-lived series (such as serials) may have only a handful of extant episodes. 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 analogue tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analogue 16-inch transcription disc, although some are off-the-air AM recordings. But in many cases, the circulating recordings are corrupted (decreased in quality), because lossless digital recording for the home market did not come until the very end of the twentieth century. Collectors made and shared recordings on analogue magnetic tapes, the only practical, relatively inexpensive medium, first on reels, then cassettes. "Sharing" usually meant making a duplicate tape. They connected two recorders, playing on one and recording on the other. Analog recordings are never perfect, and copying an analogue recording multiplies the imperfections. With the oldest recordings this can even mean it went out the speaker of one machine and in via the microphone of the other. 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. In addition, magnetic recordings, unless preserved archivally, are gradually damaged by the Earth's magnetic field. 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. As of 2020, the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive contains 5,121 recordings. An active group of collectors makes digitally available, via CD or download, large collections of programs. RadioEchoes.com offers 98,949 episodes in their collection, but not all is old-time radio. Copyright status Unlike film, television, and print items from the era, the copyright status of most recordings from the Golden Age of Radio is unclear. This is because, prior to 1972, the United States delegated the copyrighting of sound recordings to the individual states, many of which offered more generous common law copyright protections than the federal government offered for other media (some offered perpetual copyright, which has since been abolished; under the Music Modernization Act of September 2018, any sound recording 95 years old or older will be thrust into the public domain regardless of state law). The only exceptions are AFRS original productions, which are considered work of the United States government and thus both ineligible for federal copyright and outside the jurisdiction of any state; these programs are firmly in the public domain (this does not apply to programs carried by AFRS but produced by commercial networks). In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as orphan works: although there may still be a valid copyright on the program, it is seldom enforced. The copyright on an individual sound recording is distinct from the federal copyright for the underlying material (such as a published script, music, or in the case of adaptations, the original film or television material), and in many cases it is impossible to determine where or when the original recording was made or if the recording was copyrighted in that state. The U.S. Copyright Office states "there are a variety of legal regimes governing protection of pre-1972 sound recordings in the various states, and the scope of protection and of exceptions and limitations to that protection is unclear."[39] For example, New York has issued contradicting rulings on whether or not common law exists in that state; the most recent ruling, 2016's Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, holds that there is no such copyright in New York in regard to public performance.[40] Further complicating matters is that certain examples in case law have implied that radio broadcasts (and faithful reproductions thereof), because they were distributed freely to the public over the air, may not be eligible for copyright in and of themselves. The Internet Archive and other organizations that distribute public domain and open-source audio recordings maintain extensive archives of old-time radio programs. Legacy United States 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 off old-time radio 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 the golden-age era of radio drama by 1962. (Radio as a broadcast medium would survive, thanks in part to the proliferation of the transistor radio, and permanent installation in vehicles, making the medium far more portable than television). 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. Several radio theatre series are 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, and weekly programs such as The Big Broadcast on WAMU, hosted by Murray Horwitz. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Carl Amari's nationally syndicated radio show Hollywood 360 features 5 old-time radio episodes each week during his 5-hour broadcast. Amari's show is heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast and in 168 countries on American Forces Radio. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Sirius XM Radio maintains a full-time Radio Classics channel devoted to rebroadcasts of vintage radio shows. Starting in 1974, Garrison Keillor, through his syndicated two-hour-long program A Prairie Home Companion, has provided a living museum of the production, tone and listener's experience of this era of radio for several generations after its demise. Produced live in theaters throughout the country, using the same sound effects and techniques of the era, it ran through 2016 with Keillor as host. The program included segments that were close renditions (in the form of parody) of specific genres of this era, including Westerns ("Dusty and Lefty, The Lives of the Cowboys"), detective procedurals ("Guy Noir, Private Eye") and even advertising through fictional commercials. Keillor also wrote a novel, WLT: A Radio Romance based on a radio station of this era—including a personally narrated version for the ultimate in verisimilitude. Upon Keillor's retirement, replacement host Chris Thile chose to reboot the show (since renamed Live from Here after the syndicator cut ties with Keillor) and eliminate much of the old-time radio trappings of the format; the show was ultimately canceled in 2020 due to financial and logistics problems. 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 advised 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 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 that feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events was the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey, which held its final convention in October 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). Veterans of the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, including Chairperson Steven M. Lewis of The Gotham Radio Players, Maggie Thompson, publisher of the Comic Book Buyer's Guide, Craig Wichman of audio drama troupe Quicksilver Audio Theater and long-time FOTR Publicist Sean Dougherty have launched a successor event, Celebrating Audio Theater – Old & New, scheduled for October 12–13, 2012. 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. 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. A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), The Lutheran Hour (1930), 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. The Wheeling Jamboree counts an earlier program on a competing station as part of its history, tracing its lineage back to 1933. Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to provide sketch comedy on existing radio programs including the Grand Ole Opry, Midnite Jamboree and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Elsewhere Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in—among other countries—Australia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, such scripted radio drama continues on BBC Radio 3 and (principally) BBC Radio 4, the second-most popular radio station in the country, as well as on the rerun channel BBC Radio 4 Extra, which is the seventh-most popular station there.   #starradio #totalstar #star1075 #heart #heartradio #lbc #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio1 #bbcradio2 #bbcradio3 #bbcradio4 #radio4extra #absoluteradio #absolute #capital #capitalradio #greatesthitsradio #hitsradio #radio #adultcontemporary #spain #bristol #frenchay #colyton #lymeregis #seaton #beer #devon #eastdevon #brettorchard #brettsoldtimeradioshow

Good evening and a huge welcome back to the show, I hope you've had a great day and you're ready to kick back and relax with another episode of Brett's old time radio show. Hello, I'm Brett your host for this evening and welcome to my home in beautiful Lyme Bay where it's lovely December night. I hope it's just as nice where you are. You'll find all of my links at www.linktr.ee/brettsoldtimeradioshow A huge thankyou for joining me once again for our regular late night visit to those dusty studio archives of Old Time radio shows right here at my home in the united kingdom. Don't forget I have an instagram page and youtube channel both called brett's old time radio show and I'd love it if you could follow me. Feel free to send me some feedback on this and the other shows if you get a moment, brett@tourdate.co.uk #sleep #insomnia #relax #chill #night #nighttime #bed #bedtime #oldtimeradio #drama #comedy #radio #talkradio #hancock #tonyhancock #hancockshalfhour #sherlock #sherlockholmes #radiodrama #popular #viral #viralpodcast #podcast #podcasting #podcasts #podtok #podcastclip #podcastclips #podcasttrailer #podcastteaser #newpodcastepisode #newpodcast #videopodcast #upcomingpodcast #audiogram #audiograms #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #truecrime #podcaster #viral #popular #viralpodcast #number1 #instagram #youtube #facebook #johnnydollar #crime #fiction #unwind #devon #texas #texasranger #beer #seaton #seaside  #smuggler #colyton #devon #seaton #beer #branscombe #lymebay #lymeregis #brett #brettorchard #orchard #greatdetectives #greatdetectivesofoldtimeradio #detectives #johnnydollar #thesaint #steptoe #texasrangers #goldenageofradio sleep insomnia relax chill night nightime bed bedtime oldtimeradio drama comedy radio talkradio hancock tonyhancock hancockshalfhour sherlock sherlockholmes radiodrama popular viral viralpodcast podcast brett brettorchard orchard east devon seaton beer lyme regis village condado de alhama spain murcia   Tales of the Texas Rangers is a 20th century Western old-time radio and television police procedural drama which originally aired on NBC Radio from 1950 to 1952 and later on CBS Television from 1955 to 1958. Film star Joel McCrea voiced the radio version as the fictitious Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who uses the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. His faithful horse, Charcoal (or "Charky"), helps Pearson to track down the culprits. The radio shows, some of which are available on the Internet, are re-enactments of actual Texas Ranger cases. The television version was produced and also directed for several episodes by Stacy Keach, Sr. It was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties cereal. Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who was said to have killed thirty-one men during his 30-year career as a Texas Ranger, was the consultant for the television series, as he had been for the earlier radio series. The television version was filmed by Screen Gems. On radio, Joel McCrea's Pearson often worked by request with a local sheriff's office or police department. But in the television version, Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson and had a regular partner, Ranger Clay Morgan, who had been an occasional character on the radio show. Morgan was portrayed in the television version by Harry Lauter. William Boyett appeared five times on the television series, including the role of Wade Crowell in the 1955 premiere episode, "Ransom Flight." During the opening and closing credits of the television series, the actors march toward the camera as an off-screen men's chorus sings the theme song, "These Are Tales of Texas Rangers", to the tune of "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". The radio series used contemporary cases and modern detective methods to solve crimes; it was a procedural drama, in many ways Jack Webb's Dragnet with a western flavour. The television version had some episodes set in the 1950s, comparable in some ways to Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Other episodes were set in the 19th century in a traditional western genre. In each case, Parker and Lauter were involved with chases and shoot-outs. The weaponry varied greatly between the modern and older stories. Irving J. Moore, later with Gunsmoke, began his career as a director on two episodes of Tales of the Texas Rangers. Besides Keach and Moore, the other directors included Lew Landers, George Blair, and Earl Bellamy. Guest stars (TV series) Chris Alcaide, as Clint Hollister in "Uranium Pete", as Slade in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955), and as Ben Thomas in "Trail Herd" (1957) Stanley Andrews, four episodes, mainly as Marshal MacDonald Morris Ankrum, as Colonel Cole Bryson in "Trail Herd" (1957) Gregg Barton, as George Webster in "Horseman of the Sierras" (1956) and as Quiqley in "Double Reward" (1957) Ray Boyle, in "Streamlined Rustlers" (1957) Lane Bradford, as Asa Brockway in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Big Jack in "The Rough Tough West" (both 1955) X Brands, as Johnnie Tyce in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Paul Brinegar, as the lead guest star in "The Hobo" (1956) Harry Cheshire, as Joe Chaney in "Desert Fury" (1958) Andy Clyde in "Hardrock's Dilemma" and "Double Reward" (both 1957) Michael Dante, as Alfred in "Edge of Danger" (1958) Anthony Eisley, as Jack Carr in "Kickback" (1958) Dick Elliott, as prospector Pete Cooper in "Uranium Pete" (1955) and as Sheriff Tiny Morris in "Both Barrels Blazine" (1957) Frank Ferguson, as Dembrow in "Deadfall" (1958) Leo Gordon, as Joe Brock in "Desert Fury" (1958) Ron Hagerthy, as Jim Hartley in "The Devil's Deputy" (1956) Don C. Harvey, as Milo Paxin in "Return of the Rough Riders" (1955) Harry Harvey, Jr., as Jeff Thorpe in "Traitor's Gold" (1958) Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955) I. Stanford Jolley, as Sheriff Clinton in "West of Sonora"; the sheriff fights a former outlaw for custody of a little girl. Jimmy Lydon, as Lt. Jared Evans in "Warpath" (1958) Ewing Mitchell, as Tom Weldon in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Dennis Moore, as Jim Webb in "Panhandle" (1956) Burt Mustin, as Ned Watkins in "Home in San Antone" (1955) Gregg Palmer, as Pete Hackett in "Panhandle" (1956) Eddie Parker, three times and as stuntman John M. Pickard, as Frank Warren in "Ransom Flight", the series premiere Paul Picerni, as Philip Conzog in "Gypsy Boy" (1957) Denver Pyle, as Noah Reed in "Texas Flyer" (1958) Rhodes Reason, as Sheriff Tom Keever in "Uranium Pete" and as Dave in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955) Olan Soule, as Bill Peters in "Steel Trap" (1958) Marjorie Stapp, as Stacey Walker in "Ambush" (1958, series finale) Dub Taylor, as Jack Geyer in "The Fifth Plague" (1958) Pierre Watkin, as Ross Oliver in "Jace and Clay" (1958) Grant Withers, as Ramrod Johnson in "Cattle Drive" (1958)   Radio episode log AUD Just A Number 04-13-50 :27:40  1 Just A Number 07-08-50 :29:40  2 The White Elephant 07-15-50 :29:40  3 Apache Peak 07-22-50 :29:40  4 The Trigger Man 07-29-50 :29:40  5 Quick Silver 08-05-50 :29:30  6 The Broken Spur 08-12-50 :29:10  7 Fool's Gold 08-19-50 :29:40  8 The Open Range 08-26-50 :29:40  9 Play For Keeps 09-02-50 :29:50  10 Dead Or Alive 09-09-50 :29:30  11 Candy Man 09-16-50 :29:40  12 Open And Shut 09-23-50 :29:20 This is the broadcast of 11-11-51 of the same title. 13 Clean Up 09-30-50 :29:40  14 Living Death 10-08-50 :29:40 Show moves to Sundays at this point 15 Dead Give-Away 10-15-50 :29:40  16 Title Unknown 10-22-50 :30:00  17 Soft Touch 10-29-50 :29:50  18 The White Suit 11-05-50 :30:00  19 Blood Relative 11-12-50 :30:00  20 Hanging By A Thread 11-26-50 :30:00 show of 11-19 Pre-Empted for Hedda Hopper Program 21 Room 114 12-03-50 :30:00  22 The Lucky Dollar 12-10-50 :30:00  23 The Cactus Pear 12-17-50 :30:00  24 Christmas Present 12-24-50 :30:00 Christmas Program 25 The Devil's Share 12-31-50 :30:00  26 Deadhead Freight 01-07-51 :30:00  27 Death In The Cards 01-14-51 :30:00  28 Blood Harvest 01-21-51 :30:00  29 Night Chase 01-28-51 :30:00  30 Logger's Larceny 02-04-51 :30:00  31 The Hatchet 02-11-51 :30:00  32 Sweet Revenge 02-18-51 :30:00  33 The Trap 02-25-51 :30:00  34 Blind Justice 03-11-51 :30:00 Show of 3/4 Pre-empted for "Theatre Guild's" HAMLET 35 Death By Adoption 03-18-51 :30:00  36 Breakdown 03-25-51 :30:00  37 Pressure 04-01-51 :30:00  38 Bad Blood 04-08-51 :30:00  39 Conspiracy 04-15-51 :30:00  40 Canned Death 04-22-51 :30:00  41 Title Unknown 04-29-51 :30:00  42 No Living Witnesses 05-06-51 :30:00  43 Paid In Full 05-13-51 :30:00  44 Squaredance 05-20-51 :30:00  45 Joy Ride 05-27-51 :30:00  46 Death Shaft 09-30-51 :30:00  47 The Wheelchair Killer 10-07-51 :30:00  48 Play For Keeps 10-14-51 :30:00  49 Fugitive Trail 10-21-51 :30:00  50 The White Elephant 10-28-51 :30:00  51 Helping Hand 11-04-51 :30:00  52 Open And Shut 11-11-51 :30:00  53 Wild Crop 11-18-51 :30:00  54 The Blow Off 11-25-51 :30:00  55 The Dead Give-Away 12-02-51 :30:00  56 Death Plant 12-09-51 :30:00  57 Pick-Up 12-16-51 :30:00  58 Christmas Payoff 12-23-51 :30:00 Christmas Program 59 Killer's Crop 12-30-51 :30:00  60 Birds Of A Feather 01-06-52 :30:00  61 Clip Job 01-13-52 :30:00  62 Blood Trail 01-20-52 :30:00  63 Night Chase 01-27-52 :30:00  64 The Rub Out 02-03-52 :30:00  65 Hitchhiker 02-10-52 :30:00  66 Cold Blood 02-17-52 :27:20  67 Bright Boy 02-24-52 :30:00  68 The Ice Man 03-02-52 :30:00  69 Dream Farm 03-09-52 :30:00  70 Prelude To Felony 03-16-52 :30:00  71 Nighthawk 03-30-52 :30:00 Program of 3-23 Preempted 72 Troop Train 04-06-52 :30:00  73 Uncertain Death 04-13-52 :30:00  74 Illusion 04-20-52 :30:00  75 Address Unknown 04-27-52 :30:00  76 Little Sister 05-04-52 :30:00  77 Unleashed Fury 05-11-52 :30:00  78 Smart Kill 05-18-52 :30:00  79 Jailbird 05-25-52 :30:00  80 Sell-Out 06-01-52 :30:00  81 Illegal Entry 06-08-52 :30:00  82 Travesty 06-15-52 :30:00  83 Knockout 06-22-52 :30:00  84 Ex-Con 06-29-52 :30:00  85 The Boomerang 07-06-52 :30:00  86 Finger Man 07-13-52 :30:00  87 Round Trip 07-20-52 :30:00  88 Stick-Up 07-27-52 :30:00  89 Double Edge 08-03-52 :30:00  90 Last Stop 08-10-52 :30:00  91 Cover-Up 08-17-52 :30:00  92 Three Victims 08-24-52 :30:00  93 Misplaced Person 08-31-52 :30:00  94 Alibi 09-07-52 :30:00  95 Drive-In 09-14-52 :30:00  Comic book adaptations The series was adapted into a comic book distributed by Dell Comics and drawn by Dan Spiegle.[3] It also inspired Willy Vandersteen's Suske en Wiske album De Texasrakkers.   The Golden Age of Radio Also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium, and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favourite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to the home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, talent shows, daytime and evening variety hours, situation comedies, play-by-play sports, children's shows, cooking shows, and more. In the 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. Origins A family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal radio. The crystal radio, a legacy from the pre-broadcast era, could not power a loudspeaker so the family must share earphones During the first three decades of radio, from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped; the information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code. At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. 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. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM (amplitude modulation), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. 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 Christmas 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 (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden"[2] and also in James O'Neal's essays.[3][4] An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "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 ("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; 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. 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." A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ. Growth of radio Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Consumer adoption Through the decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in a home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio,[8] a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the centre of American life. 83% of American homes would own a radio by 1940. Government regulation Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927, which included the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40, which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of the country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. Broadcast networks The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network. The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to a group headed by RCA, which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company. Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: National Broadcasting Company Red Network (NBC Red), launched November 15, 1926. Originally founded as the National Broadcasting Company in late 1926, the company was almost immediately forced to split under antitrust laws to form NBC Red and NBC Blue. When, in 1942, NBC Blue was sold and renamed the Blue Network, this network would go back to calling itself simply the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network (NBC). National Broadcasting Company Blue Network (NBC Blue); launched January 10, 1927, split from NBC Red. NBC Blue was sold in 1942 and became the Blue Network, and it in turn transferred its assets to a new company, the American Broadcasting Company on June 15, 1945. That network identified itself as the American Broadcasting Company Radio Network (ABC). Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), launched September 18, 1927. After an initially struggling attempt to compete with the NBC networks, CBS gained new momentum when William S. Paley was installed as company president. Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), launched September 29, 1934. Mutual was initially run as a cooperative in which the flagship stations owned the network, not the other way around as was the case with the other three radio networks. Programming In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of the Golden Age, 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 at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. 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 the United States, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). Live events Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. News The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news: headlines, remote reporting, sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop), panel discussions, weather reports, and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s, eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated [citation needed] reports of a mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds, which had been presented as a faux newscast. Musical features The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. 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. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. 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 such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, 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 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Comedy Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy, 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?,[18] 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. 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 Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson. Soap operas The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em, which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960, the last four daytime radio dramas—Young Dr. Malone, Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins, all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network—were brought to an end. Children's programming 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 boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase. Radio plays Radio plays 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 The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The 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 1938 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 90-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.[22] Recordings of many of these programs survive. During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. 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 many 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 Theatre 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 Mystery 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. Game shows Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of the first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold, but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949.[23] Broadcast production methods The RCA Type 44-BX 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 their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to the carpeted floor after use. Radio stations Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc 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 pre-recorded 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 331⁄3 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 centre 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. 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 moulded in a record press. Armed Forces Radio Service Frank Sinatra and Alida Valli converse over 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 consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs 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 GI Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Kate Smith,[26] and John Serry Sr. After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. 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 discs, 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,[31] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc is the only surviving recording of a program. 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 331⁄3 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 that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to 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. Recording media Electrical transcription discs The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disc Before the early 1950s, 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 disc. 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 discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 rpm, which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 331⁄3 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 discs 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 discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. 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, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for the duration of the war. 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 discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs 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 discs 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. Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription discs and magnetic wire. Discs could be edited only by copying parts of them to a new disc, 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 discs to performances pre-recorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs. However, for the physical distribution of pre-recorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 331⁄3 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 are lost. Many were never recorded; few recordings antedate the early 1930s. Beginning then several of the longer-running radio dramas have their archives complete or nearly complete. The earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording survives. However, a good number of syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies were 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. The survival of network programming from this time frame is more inconsistent; the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, and the expensive tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used (especially since, in the age of emerging trends such as television and music radio, such recordings were believed to have virtually no rerun or resale value). Thus, while some prime time network radio series from this era exist in full or almost in full, especially the most famous and longest-lived of them, less prominent or shorter-lived series (such as serials) may have only a handful of extant episodes. 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 analogue tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analogue 16-inch transcription disc, although some are off-the-air AM recordings. But in many cases, the circulating recordings are corrupted (decreased in quality), because lossless digital recording for the home market did not come until the very end of the twentieth century. Collectors made and shared recordings on analogue magnetic tapes, the only practical, relatively inexpensive medium, first on reels, then cassettes. "Sharing" usually meant making a duplicate tape. They connected two recorders, playing on one and recording on the other. Analog recordings are never perfect, and copying an analogue recording multiplies the imperfections. With the oldest recordings this can even mean it went out the speaker of one machine and in via the microphone of the other. 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. In addition, magnetic recordings, unless preserved archivally, are gradually damaged by the Earth's magnetic field. 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. As of 2020, the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive contains 5,121 recordings. An active group of collectors makes digitally available, via CD or download, large collections of programs. RadioEchoes.com offers 98,949 episodes in their collection, but not all is old-time radio. Copyright status Unlike film, television, and print items from the era, the copyright status of most recordings from the Golden Age of Radio is unclear. This is because, prior to 1972, the United States delegated the copyrighting of sound recordings to the individual states, many of which offered more generous common law copyright protections than the federal government offered for other media (some offered perpetual copyright, which has since been abolished; under the Music Modernization Act of September 2018, any sound recording 95 years old or older will be thrust into the public domain regardless of state law). The only exceptions are AFRS original productions, which are considered work of the United States government and thus both ineligible for federal copyright and outside the jurisdiction of any state; these programs are firmly in the public domain (this does not apply to programs carried by AFRS but produced by commercial networks). In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as orphan works: although there may still be a valid copyright on the program, it is seldom enforced. The copyright on an individual sound recording is distinct from the federal copyright for the underlying material (such as a published script, music, or in the case of adaptations, the original film or television material), and in many cases it is impossible to determine where or when the original recording was made or if the recording was copyrighted in that state. The U.S. Copyright Office states "there are a variety of legal regimes governing protection of pre-1972 sound recordings in the various states, and the scope of protection and of exceptions and limitations to that protection is unclear."[39] For example, New York has issued contradicting rulings on whether or not common law exists in that state; the most recent ruling, 2016's Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, holds that there is no such copyright in New York in regard to public performance.[40] Further complicating matters is that certain examples in case law have implied that radio broadcasts (and faithful reproductions thereof), because they were distributed freely to the public over the air, may not be eligible for copyright in and of themselves. The Internet Archive and other organizations that distribute public domain and open-source audio recordings maintain extensive archives of old-time radio programs. Legacy United States 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 off old-time radio 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 the golden-age era of radio drama by 1962. (Radio as a broadcast medium would survive, thanks in part to the proliferation of the transistor radio, and permanent installation in vehicles, making the medium far more portable than television). 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. Several radio theatre series are 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, and weekly programs such as The Big Broadcast on WAMU, hosted by Murray Horwitz. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Carl Amari's nationally syndicated radio show Hollywood 360 features 5 old-time radio episodes each week during his 5-hour broadcast. Amari's show is heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast and in 168 countries on American Forces Radio. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Sirius XM Radio maintains a full-time Radio Classics channel devoted to rebroadcasts of vintage radio shows. Starting in 1974, Garrison Keillor, through his syndicated two-hour-long program A Prairie Home Companion, has provided a living museum of the production, tone and listener's experience of this era of radio for several generations after its demise. Produced live in theaters throughout the country, using the same sound effects and techniques of the era, it ran through 2016 with Keillor as host. The program included segments that were close renditions (in the form of parody) of specific genres of this era, including Westerns ("Dusty and Lefty, The Lives of the Cowboys"), detective procedurals ("Guy Noir, Private Eye") and even advertising through fictional commercials. Keillor also wrote a novel, WLT: A Radio Romance based on a radio station of this era—including a personally narrated version for the ultimate in verisimilitude. Upon Keillor's retirement, replacement host Chris Thile chose to reboot the show (since renamed Live from Here after the syndicator cut ties with Keillor) and eliminate much of the old-time radio trappings of the format; the show was ultimately canceled in 2020 due to financial and logistics problems. 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 advised 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 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 that feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events was the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey, which held its final convention in October 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). Veterans of the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, including Chairperson Steven M. Lewis of The Gotham Radio Players, Maggie Thompson, publisher of the Comic Book Buyer's Guide, Craig Wichman of audio drama troupe Quicksilver Audio Theater and long-time FOTR Publicist Sean Dougherty have launched a successor event, Celebrating Audio Theater – Old & New, scheduled for October 12–13, 2012. 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. 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. A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), The Lutheran Hour (1930), 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. The Wheeling Jamboree counts an earlier program on a competing station as part of its history, tracing its lineage back to 1933. Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to provide sketch comedy on existing radio programs including the Grand Ole Opry, Midnite Jamboree and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Elsewhere Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in—among other countries—Australia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, such scripted radio drama continues on BBC Radio 3 and (principally) BBC Radio 4, the second-most popular radio station in the country, as well as on the rerun channel BBC Radio 4 Extra, which is the seventh-most popular station there.   #starradio #totalstar #star1075 #heart #heartradio #lbc #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio1 #bbcradio2 #bbcradio3 #bbcradio4 #radio4extra #absoluteradio #absolute #capital #capitalradio #greatesthitsradio #hitsradio #radio #adultcontemporary #spain #bristol #frenchay #colyton #lymeregis #seaton #beer #devon #eastdevon #brettorchard #brettsoldtimeradioshow

In this scintillating episode, the Pastords talk about trouble in the Sierras, fascinating technology, struggling football teams, life-giving people and spaces, and all the ways we can give without actually loving people.

Good evening and a huge welcome back to the show, I hope you've had a great day and you're ready to kick back and relax with another episode of Brett's old time radio show. Hello, I'm Brett your host for this evening and welcome to my home in beautiful Lyme Bay where it's lovely December night. I hope it's just as nice where you are. You'll find all of my links at www.linktr.ee/brettsoldtimeradioshow A huge thankyou for joining me once again for our regular late night visit to those dusty studio archives of Old Time radio shows right here at my home in the united kingdom. Don't forget I have an instagram page and youtube channel both called brett's old time radio show and I'd love it if you could follow me. Feel free to send me some feedback on this and the other shows if you get a moment, brett@tourdate.co.uk #sleep #insomnia #relax #chill #night #nighttime #bed #bedtime #oldtimeradio #drama #comedy #radio #talkradio #hancock #tonyhancock #hancockshalfhour #sherlock #sherlockholmes #radiodrama #popular #viral #viralpodcast #podcast #podcasting #podcasts #podtok #podcastclip #podcastclips #podcasttrailer #podcastteaser #newpodcastepisode #newpodcast #videopodcast #upcomingpodcast #audiogram #audiograms #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #truecrime #podcaster #viral #popular #viralpodcast #number1 #instagram #youtube #facebook #johnnydollar #crime #fiction #unwind #devon #texas #texasranger #beer #seaton #seaside  #smuggler #colyton #devon #seaton #beer #branscombe #lymebay #lymeregis #brett #brettorchard #orchard #greatdetectives #greatdetectivesofoldtimeradio #detectives #johnnydollar #thesaint #steptoe #texasrangers #goldenageofradio sleep insomnia relax chill night nightime bed bedtime oldtimeradio drama comedy radio talkradio hancock tonyhancock hancockshalfhour sherlock sherlockholmes radiodrama popular viral viralpodcast podcast brett brettorchard orchard east devon seaton beer lyme regis village condado de alhama spain murcia   Tales of the Texas Rangers is a 20th century Western old-time radio and television police procedural drama which originally aired on NBC Radio from 1950 to 1952 and later on CBS Television from 1955 to 1958. Film star Joel McCrea voiced the radio version as the fictitious Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who uses the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. His faithful horse, Charcoal (or "Charky"), helps Pearson to track down the culprits. The radio shows, some of which are available on the Internet, are re-enactments of actual Texas Ranger cases. The television version was produced and also directed for several episodes by Stacy Keach, Sr. It was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties cereal. Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who was said to have killed thirty-one men during his 30-year career as a Texas Ranger, was the consultant for the television series, as he had been for the earlier radio series. The television version was filmed by Screen Gems. On radio, Joel McCrea's Pearson often worked by request with a local sheriff's office or police department. But in the television version, Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson and had a regular partner, Ranger Clay Morgan, who had been an occasional character on the radio show. Morgan was portrayed in the television version by Harry Lauter. William Boyett appeared five times on the television series, including the role of Wade Crowell in the 1955 premiere episode, "Ransom Flight." During the opening and closing credits of the television series, the actors march toward the camera as an off-screen men's chorus sings the theme song, "These Are Tales of Texas Rangers", to the tune of "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". The radio series used contemporary cases and modern detective methods to solve crimes; it was a procedural drama, in many ways Jack Webb's Dragnet with a western flavour. The television version had some episodes set in the 1950s, comparable in some ways to Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Other episodes were set in the 19th century in a traditional western genre. In each case, Parker and Lauter were involved with chases and shoot-outs. The weaponry varied greatly between the modern and older stories. Irving J. Moore, later with Gunsmoke, began his career as a director on two episodes of Tales of the Texas Rangers. Besides Keach and Moore, the other directors included Lew Landers, George Blair, and Earl Bellamy. Guest stars (TV series) Chris Alcaide, as Clint Hollister in "Uranium Pete", as Slade in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955), and as Ben Thomas in "Trail Herd" (1957) Stanley Andrews, four episodes, mainly as Marshal MacDonald Morris Ankrum, as Colonel Cole Bryson in "Trail Herd" (1957) Gregg Barton, as George Webster in "Horseman of the Sierras" (1956) and as Quiqley in "Double Reward" (1957) Ray Boyle, in "Streamlined Rustlers" (1957) Lane Bradford, as Asa Brockway in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Big Jack in "The Rough Tough West" (both 1955) X Brands, as Johnnie Tyce in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Paul Brinegar, as the lead guest star in "The Hobo" (1956) Harry Cheshire, as Joe Chaney in "Desert Fury" (1958) Andy Clyde in "Hardrock's Dilemma" and "Double Reward" (both 1957) Michael Dante, as Alfred in "Edge of Danger" (1958) Anthony Eisley, as Jack Carr in "Kickback" (1958) Dick Elliott, as prospector Pete Cooper in "Uranium Pete" (1955) and as Sheriff Tiny Morris in "Both Barrels Blazine" (1957) Frank Ferguson, as Dembrow in "Deadfall" (1958) Leo Gordon, as Joe Brock in "Desert Fury" (1958) Ron Hagerthy, as Jim Hartley in "The Devil's Deputy" (1956) Don C. Harvey, as Milo Paxin in "Return of the Rough Riders" (1955) Harry Harvey, Jr., as Jeff Thorpe in "Traitor's Gold" (1958) Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955) I. Stanford Jolley, as Sheriff Clinton in "West of Sonora"; the sheriff fights a former outlaw for custody of a little girl. Jimmy Lydon, as Lt. Jared Evans in "Warpath" (1958) Ewing Mitchell, as Tom Weldon in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Dennis Moore, as Jim Webb in "Panhandle" (1956) Burt Mustin, as Ned Watkins in "Home in San Antone" (1955) Gregg Palmer, as Pete Hackett in "Panhandle" (1956) Eddie Parker, three times and as stuntman John M. Pickard, as Frank Warren in "Ransom Flight", the series premiere Paul Picerni, as Philip Conzog in "Gypsy Boy" (1957) Denver Pyle, as Noah Reed in "Texas Flyer" (1958) Rhodes Reason, as Sheriff Tom Keever in "Uranium Pete" and as Dave in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955) Olan Soule, as Bill Peters in "Steel Trap" (1958) Marjorie Stapp, as Stacey Walker in "Ambush" (1958, series finale) Dub Taylor, as Jack Geyer in "The Fifth Plague" (1958) Pierre Watkin, as Ross Oliver in "Jace and Clay" (1958) Grant Withers, as Ramrod Johnson in "Cattle Drive" (1958)   Radio episode log AUD Just A Number 04-13-50 :27:40  1 Just A Number 07-08-50 :29:40  2 The White Elephant 07-15-50 :29:40  3 Apache Peak 07-22-50 :29:40  4 The Trigger Man 07-29-50 :29:40  5 Quick Silver 08-05-50 :29:30  6 The Broken Spur 08-12-50 :29:10  7 Fool's Gold 08-19-50 :29:40  8 The Open Range 08-26-50 :29:40  9 Play For Keeps 09-02-50 :29:50  10 Dead Or Alive 09-09-50 :29:30  11 Candy Man 09-16-50 :29:40  12 Open And Shut 09-23-50 :29:20 This is the broadcast of 11-11-51 of the same title. 13 Clean Up 09-30-50 :29:40  14 Living Death 10-08-50 :29:40 Show moves to Sundays at this point 15 Dead Give-Away 10-15-50 :29:40  16 Title Unknown 10-22-50 :30:00  17 Soft Touch 10-29-50 :29:50  18 The White Suit 11-05-50 :30:00  19 Blood Relative 11-12-50 :30:00  20 Hanging By A Thread 11-26-50 :30:00 show of 11-19 Pre-Empted for Hedda Hopper Program 21 Room 114 12-03-50 :30:00  22 The Lucky Dollar 12-10-50 :30:00  23 The Cactus Pear 12-17-50 :30:00  24 Christmas Present 12-24-50 :30:00 Christmas Program 25 The Devil's Share 12-31-50 :30:00  26 Deadhead Freight 01-07-51 :30:00  27 Death In The Cards 01-14-51 :30:00  28 Blood Harvest 01-21-51 :30:00  29 Night Chase 01-28-51 :30:00  30 Logger's Larceny 02-04-51 :30:00  31 The Hatchet 02-11-51 :30:00  32 Sweet Revenge 02-18-51 :30:00  33 The Trap 02-25-51 :30:00  34 Blind Justice 03-11-51 :30:00 Show of 3/4 Pre-empted for "Theatre Guild's" HAMLET 35 Death By Adoption 03-18-51 :30:00  36 Breakdown 03-25-51 :30:00  37 Pressure 04-01-51 :30:00  38 Bad Blood 04-08-51 :30:00  39 Conspiracy 04-15-51 :30:00  40 Canned Death 04-22-51 :30:00  41 Title Unknown 04-29-51 :30:00  42 No Living Witnesses 05-06-51 :30:00  43 Paid In Full 05-13-51 :30:00  44 Squaredance 05-20-51 :30:00  45 Joy Ride 05-27-51 :30:00  46 Death Shaft 09-30-51 :30:00  47 The Wheelchair Killer 10-07-51 :30:00  48 Play For Keeps 10-14-51 :30:00  49 Fugitive Trail 10-21-51 :30:00  50 The White Elephant 10-28-51 :30:00  51 Helping Hand 11-04-51 :30:00  52 Open And Shut 11-11-51 :30:00  53 Wild Crop 11-18-51 :30:00  54 The Blow Off 11-25-51 :30:00  55 The Dead Give-Away 12-02-51 :30:00  56 Death Plant 12-09-51 :30:00  57 Pick-Up 12-16-51 :30:00  58 Christmas Payoff 12-23-51 :30:00 Christmas Program 59 Killer's Crop 12-30-51 :30:00  60 Birds Of A Feather 01-06-52 :30:00  61 Clip Job 01-13-52 :30:00  62 Blood Trail 01-20-52 :30:00  63 Night Chase 01-27-52 :30:00  64 The Rub Out 02-03-52 :30:00  65 Hitchhiker 02-10-52 :30:00  66 Cold Blood 02-17-52 :27:20  67 Bright Boy 02-24-52 :30:00  68 The Ice Man 03-02-52 :30:00  69 Dream Farm 03-09-52 :30:00  70 Prelude To Felony 03-16-52 :30:00  71 Nighthawk 03-30-52 :30:00 Program of 3-23 Preempted 72 Troop Train 04-06-52 :30:00  73 Uncertain Death 04-13-52 :30:00  74 Illusion 04-20-52 :30:00  75 Address Unknown 04-27-52 :30:00  76 Little Sister 05-04-52 :30:00  77 Unleashed Fury 05-11-52 :30:00  78 Smart Kill 05-18-52 :30:00  79 Jailbird 05-25-52 :30:00  80 Sell-Out 06-01-52 :30:00  81 Illegal Entry 06-08-52 :30:00  82 Travesty 06-15-52 :30:00  83 Knockout 06-22-52 :30:00  84 Ex-Con 06-29-52 :30:00  85 The Boomerang 07-06-52 :30:00  86 Finger Man 07-13-52 :30:00  87 Round Trip 07-20-52 :30:00  88 Stick-Up 07-27-52 :30:00  89 Double Edge 08-03-52 :30:00  90 Last Stop 08-10-52 :30:00  91 Cover-Up 08-17-52 :30:00  92 Three Victims 08-24-52 :30:00  93 Misplaced Person 08-31-52 :30:00  94 Alibi 09-07-52 :30:00  95 Drive-In 09-14-52 :30:00  Comic book adaptations The series was adapted into a comic book distributed by Dell Comics and drawn by Dan Spiegle.[3] It also inspired Willy Vandersteen's Suske en Wiske album De Texasrakkers.   The Golden Age of Radio Also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium, and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favourite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to the home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, talent shows, daytime and evening variety hours, situation comedies, play-by-play sports, children's shows, cooking shows, and more. In the 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. Origins A family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal radio. The crystal radio, a legacy from the pre-broadcast era, could not power a loudspeaker so the family must share earphones During the first three decades of radio, from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped; the information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code. At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. 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. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM (amplitude modulation), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. 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 Christmas 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 (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden"[2] and also in James O'Neal's essays.[3][4] An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "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 ("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; 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. 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." A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ. Growth of radio Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Consumer adoption Through the decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in a home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio,[8] a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the centre of American life. 83% of American homes would own a radio by 1940. Government regulation Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927, which included the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40, which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of the country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. Broadcast networks The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network. The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to a group headed by RCA, which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company. Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: National Broadcasting Company Red Network (NBC Red), launched November 15, 1926. Originally founded as the National Broadcasting Company in late 1926, the company was almost immediately forced to split under antitrust laws to form NBC Red and NBC Blue. When, in 1942, NBC Blue was sold and renamed the Blue Network, this network would go back to calling itself simply the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network (NBC). National Broadcasting Company Blue Network (NBC Blue); launched January 10, 1927, split from NBC Red. NBC Blue was sold in 1942 and became the Blue Network, and it in turn transferred its assets to a new company, the American Broadcasting Company on June 15, 1945. That network identified itself as the American Broadcasting Company Radio Network (ABC). Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), launched September 18, 1927. After an initially struggling attempt to compete with the NBC networks, CBS gained new momentum when William S. Paley was installed as company president. Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), launched September 29, 1934. Mutual was initially run as a cooperative in which the flagship stations owned the network, not the other way around as was the case with the other three radio networks. Programming In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of the Golden Age, 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 at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. 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 the United States, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). Live events Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. News The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news: headlines, remote reporting, sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop), panel discussions, weather reports, and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s, eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated [citation needed] reports of a mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds, which had been presented as a faux newscast. Musical features The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. 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. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. 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 such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, 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 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Comedy Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy, 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?,[18] 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. 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 Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson. Soap operas The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em, which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960, the last four daytime radio dramas—Young Dr. Malone, Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins, all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network—were brought to an end. Children's programming 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 boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase. Radio plays Radio plays 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 The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The 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 1938 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 90-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.[22] Recordings of many of these programs survive. During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. 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 many 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 Theatre 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 Mystery 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. Game shows Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of the first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold, but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949.[23] Broadcast production methods The RCA Type 44-BX 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 their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to the carpeted floor after use. Radio stations Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc 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 pre-recorded 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 331⁄3 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 centre 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. 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 moulded in a record press. Armed Forces Radio Service Frank Sinatra and Alida Valli converse over 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 consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs 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 GI Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Kate Smith,[26] and John Serry Sr. After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. 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 discs, 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,[31] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc is the only surviving recording of a program. 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 331⁄3 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 that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to 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. Recording media Electrical transcription discs The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disc Before the early 1950s, 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 disc. 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 discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 rpm, which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 331⁄3 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 discs 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 discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. 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, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for the duration of the war. 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 discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs 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 discs 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. Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription discs and magnetic wire. Discs could be edited only by copying parts of them to a new disc, 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 discs to performances pre-recorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs. However, for the physical distribution of pre-recorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 331⁄3 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 are lost. Many were never recorded; few recordings antedate the early 1930s. Beginning then several of the longer-running radio dramas have their archives complete or nearly complete. The earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording survives. However, a good number of syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies were 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. The survival of network programming from this time frame is more inconsistent; the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, and the expensive tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used (especially since, in the age of emerging trends such as television and music radio, such recordings were believed to have virtually no rerun or resale value). Thus, while some prime time network radio series from this era exist in full or almost in full, especially the most famous and longest-lived of them, less prominent or shorter-lived series (such as serials) may have only a handful of extant episodes. 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 analogue tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analogue 16-inch transcription disc, although some are off-the-air AM recordings. But in many cases, the circulating recordings are corrupted (decreased in quality), because lossless digital recording for the home market did not come until the very end of the twentieth century. Collectors made and shared recordings on analogue magnetic tapes, the only practical, relatively inexpensive medium, first on reels, then cassettes. "Sharing" usually meant making a duplicate tape. They connected two recorders, playing on one and recording on the other. Analog recordings are never perfect, and copying an analogue recording multiplies the imperfections. With the oldest recordings this can even mean it went out the speaker of one machine and in via the microphone of the other. 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. In addition, magnetic recordings, unless preserved archivally, are gradually damaged by the Earth's magnetic field. 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. As of 2020, the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive contains 5,121 recordings. An active group of collectors makes digitally available, via CD or download, large collections of programs. RadioEchoes.com offers 98,949 episodes in their collection, but not all is old-time radio. Copyright status Unlike film, television, and print items from the era, the copyright status of most recordings from the Golden Age of Radio is unclear. This is because, prior to 1972, the United States delegated the copyrighting of sound recordings to the individual states, many of which offered more generous common law copyright protections than the federal government offered for other media (some offered perpetual copyright, which has since been abolished; under the Music Modernization Act of September 2018, any sound recording 95 years old or older will be thrust into the public domain regardless of state law). The only exceptions are AFRS original productions, which are considered work of the United States government and thus both ineligible for federal copyright and outside the jurisdiction of any state; these programs are firmly in the public domain (this does not apply to programs carried by AFRS but produced by commercial networks). In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as orphan works: although there may still be a valid copyright on the program, it is seldom enforced. The copyright on an individual sound recording is distinct from the federal copyright for the underlying material (such as a published script, music, or in the case of adaptations, the original film or television material), and in many cases it is impossible to determine where or when the original recording was made or if the recording was copyrighted in that state. The U.S. Copyright Office states "there are a variety of legal regimes governing protection of pre-1972 sound recordings in the various states, and the scope of protection and of exceptions and limitations to that protection is unclear."[39] For example, New York has issued contradicting rulings on whether or not common law exists in that state; the most recent ruling, 2016's Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, holds that there is no such copyright in New York in regard to public performance.[40] Further complicating matters is that certain examples in case law have implied that radio broadcasts (and faithful reproductions thereof), because they were distributed freely to the public over the air, may not be eligible for copyright in and of themselves. The Internet Archive and other organizations that distribute public domain and open-source audio recordings maintain extensive archives of old-time radio programs. Legacy United States 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 off old-time radio 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 the golden-age era of radio drama by 1962. (Radio as a broadcast medium would survive, thanks in part to the proliferation of the transistor radio, and permanent installation in vehicles, making the medium far more portable than television). 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. Several radio theatre series are 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, and weekly programs such as The Big Broadcast on WAMU, hosted by Murray Horwitz. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Carl Amari's nationally syndicated radio show Hollywood 360 features 5 old-time radio episodes each week during his 5-hour broadcast. Amari's show is heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast and in 168 countries on American Forces Radio. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Sirius XM Radio maintains a full-time Radio Classics channel devoted to rebroadcasts of vintage radio shows. Starting in 1974, Garrison Keillor, through his syndicated two-hour-long program A Prairie Home Companion, has provided a living museum of the production, tone and listener's experience of this era of radio for several generations after its demise. Produced live in theaters throughout the country, using the same sound effects and techniques of the era, it ran through 2016 with Keillor as host. The program included segments that were close renditions (in the form of parody) of specific genres of this era, including Westerns ("Dusty and Lefty, The Lives of the Cowboys"), detective procedurals ("Guy Noir, Private Eye") and even advertising through fictional commercials. Keillor also wrote a novel, WLT: A Radio Romance based on a radio station of this era—including a personally narrated version for the ultimate in verisimilitude. Upon Keillor's retirement, replacement host Chris Thile chose to reboot the show (since renamed Live from Here after the syndicator cut ties with Keillor) and eliminate much of the old-time radio trappings of the format; the show was ultimately canceled in 2020 due to financial and logistics problems. 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 advised 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 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 that feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events was the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey, which held its final convention in October 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). Veterans of the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, including Chairperson Steven M. Lewis of The Gotham Radio Players, Maggie Thompson, publisher of the Comic Book Buyer's Guide, Craig Wichman of audio drama troupe Quicksilver Audio Theater and long-time FOTR Publicist Sean Dougherty have launched a successor event, Celebrating Audio Theater – Old & New, scheduled for October 12–13, 2012. 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. 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. A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), The Lutheran Hour (1930), 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. The Wheeling Jamboree counts an earlier program on a competing station as part of its history, tracing its lineage back to 1933. Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to provide sketch comedy on existing radio programs including the Grand Ole Opry, Midnite Jamboree and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Elsewhere Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in—among other countries—Australia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, such scripted radio drama continues on BBC Radio 3 and (principally) BBC Radio 4, the second-most popular radio station in the country, as well as on the rerun channel BBC Radio 4 Extra, which is the seventh-most popular station there.   #starradio #totalstar #star1075 #heart #heartradio #lbc #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio1 #bbcradio2 #bbcradio3 #bbcradio4 #radio4extra #absoluteradio #absolute #capital #capitalradio #greatesthitsradio #hitsradio #radio #adultcontemporary #spain #bristol #frenchay #colyton #lymeregis #seaton #beer #devon #eastdevon #brettorchard #brettsoldtimeradioshow

Good evening and a huge welcome back to the show, I hope you've had a great day and you're ready to kick back and relax with another episode of Brett's old time radio show. Hello, I'm Brett your host for this evening and welcome to my home in beautiful Lyme Bay where it's lovely December night. I hope it's just as nice where you are. You'll find all of my links at www.linktr.ee/brettsoldtimeradioshow A huge thankyou for joining me once again for our regular late night visit to those dusty studio archives of Old Time radio shows right here at my home in the united kingdom. Don't forget I have an instagram page and youtube channel both called brett's old time radio show and I'd love it if you could follow me. Feel free to send me some feedback on this and the other shows if you get a moment, brett@tourdate.co.uk #sleep #insomnia #relax #chill #night #nighttime #bed #bedtime #oldtimeradio #drama #comedy #radio #talkradio #hancock #tonyhancock #hancockshalfhour #sherlock #sherlockholmes #radiodrama #popular #viral #viralpodcast #podcast #podcasting #podcasts #podtok #podcastclip #podcastclips #podcasttrailer #podcastteaser #newpodcastepisode #newpodcast #videopodcast #upcomingpodcast #audiogram #audiograms #truecrimepodcast #historypodcast #truecrime #podcaster #viral #popular #viralpodcast #number1 #instagram #youtube #facebook #johnnydollar #crime #fiction #unwind #devon #texas #texasranger #beer #seaton #seaside  #smuggler #colyton #devon #seaton #beer #branscombe #lymebay #lymeregis #brett #brettorchard #orchard #greatdetectives #greatdetectivesofoldtimeradio #detectives #johnnydollar #thesaint #steptoe #texasrangers #goldenageofradio sleep insomnia relax chill night nightime bed bedtime oldtimeradio drama comedy radio talkradio hancock tonyhancock hancockshalfhour sherlock sherlockholmes radiodrama popular viral viralpodcast podcast brett brettorchard orchard east devon seaton beer lyme regis village condado de alhama spain murcia   Tales of the Texas Rangers is a 20th century Western old-time radio and television police procedural drama which originally aired on NBC Radio from 1950 to 1952 and later on CBS Television from 1955 to 1958. Film star Joel McCrea voiced the radio version as the fictitious Texas Ranger Jace Pearson, who uses the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. His faithful horse, Charcoal (or "Charky"), helps Pearson to track down the culprits. The radio shows, some of which are available on the Internet, are re-enactments of actual Texas Ranger cases. The television version was produced and also directed for several episodes by Stacy Keach, Sr. It was sponsored for part of its run by Wheaties cereal. Captain Manuel T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, who was said to have killed thirty-one men during his 30-year career as a Texas Ranger, was the consultant for the television series, as he had been for the earlier radio series. The television version was filmed by Screen Gems. On radio, Joel McCrea's Pearson often worked by request with a local sheriff's office or police department. But in the television version, Willard Parker assumed the role of Jace Pearson and had a regular partner, Ranger Clay Morgan, who had been an occasional character on the radio show. Morgan was portrayed in the television version by Harry Lauter. William Boyett appeared five times on the television series, including the role of Wade Crowell in the 1955 premiere episode, "Ransom Flight." During the opening and closing credits of the television series, the actors march toward the camera as an off-screen men's chorus sings the theme song, "These Are Tales of Texas Rangers", to the tune of "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". The radio series used contemporary cases and modern detective methods to solve crimes; it was a procedural drama, in many ways Jack Webb's Dragnet with a western flavour. The television version had some episodes set in the 1950s, comparable in some ways to Rod Cameron's syndicated series, State Trooper. Other episodes were set in the 19th century in a traditional western genre. In each case, Parker and Lauter were involved with chases and shoot-outs. The weaponry varied greatly between the modern and older stories. Irving J. Moore, later with Gunsmoke, began his career as a director on two episodes of Tales of the Texas Rangers. Besides Keach and Moore, the other directors included Lew Landers, George Blair, and Earl Bellamy. Guest stars (TV series) Chris Alcaide, as Clint Hollister in "Uranium Pete", as Slade in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955), and as Ben Thomas in "Trail Herd" (1957) Stanley Andrews, four episodes, mainly as Marshal MacDonald Morris Ankrum, as Colonel Cole Bryson in "Trail Herd" (1957) Gregg Barton, as George Webster in "Horseman of the Sierras" (1956) and as Quiqley in "Double Reward" (1957) Ray Boyle, in "Streamlined Rustlers" (1957) Lane Bradford, as Asa Brockway in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Big Jack in "The Rough Tough West" (both 1955) X Brands, as Johnnie Tyce in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Paul Brinegar, as the lead guest star in "The Hobo" (1956) Harry Cheshire, as Joe Chaney in "Desert Fury" (1958) Andy Clyde in "Hardrock's Dilemma" and "Double Reward" (both 1957) Michael Dante, as Alfred in "Edge of Danger" (1958) Anthony Eisley, as Jack Carr in "Kickback" (1958) Dick Elliott, as prospector Pete Cooper in "Uranium Pete" (1955) and as Sheriff Tiny Morris in "Both Barrels Blazine" (1957) Frank Ferguson, as Dembrow in "Deadfall" (1958) Leo Gordon, as Joe Brock in "Desert Fury" (1958) Ron Hagerthy, as Jim Hartley in "The Devil's Deputy" (1956) Don C. Harvey, as Milo Paxin in "Return of the Rough Riders" (1955) Harry Harvey, Jr., as Jeff Thorpe in "Traitor's Gold" (1958) Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955) I. Stanford Jolley, as Sheriff Clinton in "West of Sonora"; the sheriff fights a former outlaw for custody of a little girl. Jimmy Lydon, as Lt. Jared Evans in "Warpath" (1958) Ewing Mitchell, as Tom Weldon in "Whirlwind Raiders" (1957) Dennis Moore, as Jim Webb in "Panhandle" (1956) Burt Mustin, as Ned Watkins in "Home in San Antone" (1955) Gregg Palmer, as Pete Hackett in "Panhandle" (1956) Eddie Parker, three times and as stuntman John M. Pickard, as Frank Warren in "Ransom Flight", the series premiere Paul Picerni, as Philip Conzog in "Gypsy Boy" (1957) Denver Pyle, as Noah Reed in "Texas Flyer" (1958) Rhodes Reason, as Sheriff Tom Keever in "Uranium Pete" and as Dave in "Hail to the Rangers" (both 1955) Olan Soule, as Bill Peters in "Steel Trap" (1958) Marjorie Stapp, as Stacey Walker in "Ambush" (1958, series finale) Dub Taylor, as Jack Geyer in "The Fifth Plague" (1958) Pierre Watkin, as Ross Oliver in "Jace and Clay" (1958) Grant Withers, as Ramrod Johnson in "Cattle Drive" (1958)   Radio episode log AUD Just A Number 04-13-50 :27:40  1 Just A Number 07-08-50 :29:40  2 The White Elephant 07-15-50 :29:40  3 Apache Peak 07-22-50 :29:40  4 The Trigger Man 07-29-50 :29:40  5 Quick Silver 08-05-50 :29:30  6 The Broken Spur 08-12-50 :29:10  7 Fool's Gold 08-19-50 :29:40  8 The Open Range 08-26-50 :29:40  9 Play For Keeps 09-02-50 :29:50  10 Dead Or Alive 09-09-50 :29:30  11 Candy Man 09-16-50 :29:40  12 Open And Shut 09-23-50 :29:20 This is the broadcast of 11-11-51 of the same title. 13 Clean Up 09-30-50 :29:40  14 Living Death 10-08-50 :29:40 Show moves to Sundays at this point 15 Dead Give-Away 10-15-50 :29:40  16 Title Unknown 10-22-50 :30:00  17 Soft Touch 10-29-50 :29:50  18 The White Suit 11-05-50 :30:00  19 Blood Relative 11-12-50 :30:00  20 Hanging By A Thread 11-26-50 :30:00 show of 11-19 Pre-Empted for Hedda Hopper Program 21 Room 114 12-03-50 :30:00  22 The Lucky Dollar 12-10-50 :30:00  23 The Cactus Pear 12-17-50 :30:00  24 Christmas Present 12-24-50 :30:00 Christmas Program 25 The Devil's Share 12-31-50 :30:00  26 Deadhead Freight 01-07-51 :30:00  27 Death In The Cards 01-14-51 :30:00  28 Blood Harvest 01-21-51 :30:00  29 Night Chase 01-28-51 :30:00  30 Logger's Larceny 02-04-51 :30:00  31 The Hatchet 02-11-51 :30:00  32 Sweet Revenge 02-18-51 :30:00  33 The Trap 02-25-51 :30:00  34 Blind Justice 03-11-51 :30:00 Show of 3/4 Pre-empted for "Theatre Guild's" HAMLET 35 Death By Adoption 03-18-51 :30:00  36 Breakdown 03-25-51 :30:00  37 Pressure 04-01-51 :30:00  38 Bad Blood 04-08-51 :30:00  39 Conspiracy 04-15-51 :30:00  40 Canned Death 04-22-51 :30:00  41 Title Unknown 04-29-51 :30:00  42 No Living Witnesses 05-06-51 :30:00  43 Paid In Full 05-13-51 :30:00  44 Squaredance 05-20-51 :30:00  45 Joy Ride 05-27-51 :30:00  46 Death Shaft 09-30-51 :30:00  47 The Wheelchair Killer 10-07-51 :30:00  48 Play For Keeps 10-14-51 :30:00  49 Fugitive Trail 10-21-51 :30:00  50 The White Elephant 10-28-51 :30:00  51 Helping Hand 11-04-51 :30:00  52 Open And Shut 11-11-51 :30:00  53 Wild Crop 11-18-51 :30:00  54 The Blow Off 11-25-51 :30:00  55 The Dead Give-Away 12-02-51 :30:00  56 Death Plant 12-09-51 :30:00  57 Pick-Up 12-16-51 :30:00  58 Christmas Payoff 12-23-51 :30:00 Christmas Program 59 Killer's Crop 12-30-51 :30:00  60 Birds Of A Feather 01-06-52 :30:00  61 Clip Job 01-13-52 :30:00  62 Blood Trail 01-20-52 :30:00  63 Night Chase 01-27-52 :30:00  64 The Rub Out 02-03-52 :30:00  65 Hitchhiker 02-10-52 :30:00  66 Cold Blood 02-17-52 :27:20  67 Bright Boy 02-24-52 :30:00  68 The Ice Man 03-02-52 :30:00  69 Dream Farm 03-09-52 :30:00  70 Prelude To Felony 03-16-52 :30:00  71 Nighthawk 03-30-52 :30:00 Program of 3-23 Preempted 72 Troop Train 04-06-52 :30:00  73 Uncertain Death 04-13-52 :30:00  74 Illusion 04-20-52 :30:00  75 Address Unknown 04-27-52 :30:00  76 Little Sister 05-04-52 :30:00  77 Unleashed Fury 05-11-52 :30:00  78 Smart Kill 05-18-52 :30:00  79 Jailbird 05-25-52 :30:00  80 Sell-Out 06-01-52 :30:00  81 Illegal Entry 06-08-52 :30:00  82 Travesty 06-15-52 :30:00  83 Knockout 06-22-52 :30:00  84 Ex-Con 06-29-52 :30:00  85 The Boomerang 07-06-52 :30:00  86 Finger Man 07-13-52 :30:00  87 Round Trip 07-20-52 :30:00  88 Stick-Up 07-27-52 :30:00  89 Double Edge 08-03-52 :30:00  90 Last Stop 08-10-52 :30:00  91 Cover-Up 08-17-52 :30:00  92 Three Victims 08-24-52 :30:00  93 Misplaced Person 08-31-52 :30:00  94 Alibi 09-07-52 :30:00  95 Drive-In 09-14-52 :30:00  Comic book adaptations The series was adapted into a comic book distributed by Dell Comics and drawn by Dan Spiegle.[3] It also inspired Willy Vandersteen's Suske en Wiske album De Texasrakkers.   The Golden Age of Radio Also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium, and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favourite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to the home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, talent shows, daytime and evening variety hours, situation comedies, play-by-play sports, children's shows, cooking shows, and more. In the 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. Origins A family listening to the first broadcasts around 1920 with a crystal radio. The crystal radio, a legacy from the pre-broadcast era, could not power a loudspeaker so the family must share earphones During the first three decades of radio, from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped; the information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code. At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. 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. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM (amplitude modulation), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. 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 Christmas 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 (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden"[2] and also in James O'Neal's essays.[3][4] An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as the world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "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 ("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; 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. 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." A highlight of this time was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ. Growth of radio Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Consumer adoption Through the decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in a home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio,[8] a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the centre of American life. 83% of American homes would own a radio by 1940. Government regulation Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927, which included the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40, which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of the country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. Broadcast networks The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network. The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were a service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to a group headed by RCA, which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company. Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: National Broadcasting Company Red Network (NBC Red), launched November 15, 1926. Originally founded as the National Broadcasting Company in late 1926, the company was almost immediately forced to split under antitrust laws to form NBC Red and NBC Blue. When, in 1942, NBC Blue was sold and renamed the Blue Network, this network would go back to calling itself simply the National Broadcasting Company Radio Network (NBC). National Broadcasting Company Blue Network (NBC Blue); launched January 10, 1927, split from NBC Red. NBC Blue was sold in 1942 and became the Blue Network, and it in turn transferred its assets to a new company, the American Broadcasting Company on June 15, 1945. That network identified itself as the American Broadcasting Company Radio Network (ABC). Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), launched September 18, 1927. After an initially struggling attempt to compete with the NBC networks, CBS gained new momentum when William S. Paley was installed as company president. Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual), launched September 29, 1934. Mutual was initially run as a cooperative in which the flagship stations owned the network, not the other way around as was the case with the other three radio networks. Programming In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of the Golden Age, 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 at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. 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 the United States, was written and produced by the radio section of the Office of War Information (OWI). Live events Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. News The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news: headlines, remote reporting, sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop), panel discussions, weather reports, and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s, eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated [citation needed] reports of a mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds, which had been presented as a faux newscast. Musical features The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies, Champion Spark Plug Hour, The Clicquot Club Eskimos, and King Biscuit Time; commercials, as they are known in the modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. 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. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. 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 such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as a guest, 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 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Comedy Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby, Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Victor Borge, Fanny Brice, Billie Burke, Bob Burns, Judy Canova, Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, Burns and Allen, Phil Harris, Edgar Bergen, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jean Shepherd, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn. Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy, 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?,[18] 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. 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 Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson. Soap operas The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams, which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em, which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960, the last four daytime radio dramas—Young Dr. Malone, Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins, all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network—were brought to an end. Children's programming 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 boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase. Radio plays Radio plays 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 The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The 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 1938 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 90-minute Hamlet, starring John Gielgud.[22] Recordings of many of these programs survive. During the 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. 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 many 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 Theatre 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 Mystery 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. Game shows Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of the first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All, which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold, but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949.[23] Broadcast production methods The RCA Type 44-BX 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 their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to the carpeted floor after use. Radio stations Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc 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 pre-recorded 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 331⁄3 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 centre 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. 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 moulded in a record press. Armed Forces Radio Service Frank Sinatra and Alida Valli converse over 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 consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs 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 GI Jive. At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini, Juan Arvizu, Nestor Mesta Chayres, Kate Smith,[26] and John Serry Sr. After the war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra. 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 discs, 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,[31] though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc is the only surviving recording of a program. 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 331⁄3 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 that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to 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. Recording media Electrical transcription discs The War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles on electrical transcription disc Before the early 1950s, 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 disc. 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 discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at the then-standard speed of 78 rpm, which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 331⁄3 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 discs 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 discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. 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, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for the duration of the war. 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 discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs 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 discs 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. Tape had several advantages over earlier recording methods. Running at a sufficiently high speed, it could achieve higher fidelity than both electrical transcription discs and magnetic wire. Discs could be edited only by copying parts of them to a new disc, 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 discs to performances pre-recorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs. However, for the physical distribution of pre-recorded programming to individual stations, 16-inch 331⁄3 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 are lost. Many were never recorded; few recordings antedate the early 1930s. Beginning then several of the longer-running radio dramas have their archives complete or nearly complete. The earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording survives. However, a good number of syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies were 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. The survival of network programming from this time frame is more inconsistent; the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, and the expensive tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used (especially since, in the age of emerging trends such as television and music radio, such recordings were believed to have virtually no rerun or resale value). Thus, while some prime time network radio series from this era exist in full or almost in full, especially the most famous and longest-lived of them, less prominent or shorter-lived series (such as serials) may have only a handful of extant episodes. 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 analogue tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analogue 16-inch transcription disc, although some are off-the-air AM recordings. But in many cases, the circulating recordings are corrupted (decreased in quality), because lossless digital recording for the home market did not come until the very end of the twentieth century. Collectors made and shared recordings on analogue magnetic tapes, the only practical, relatively inexpensive medium, first on reels, then cassettes. "Sharing" usually meant making a duplicate tape. They connected two recorders, playing on one and recording on the other. Analog recordings are never perfect, and copying an analogue recording multiplies the imperfections. With the oldest recordings this can even mean it went out the speaker of one machine and in via the microphone of the other. 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. In addition, magnetic recordings, unless preserved archivally, are gradually damaged by the Earth's magnetic field. 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. As of 2020, the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive contains 5,121 recordings. An active group of collectors makes digitally available, via CD or download, large collections of programs. RadioEchoes.com offers 98,949 episodes in their collection, but not all is old-time radio. Copyright status Unlike film, television, and print items from the era, the copyright status of most recordings from the Golden Age of Radio is unclear. This is because, prior to 1972, the United States delegated the copyrighting of sound recordings to the individual states, many of which offered more generous common law copyright protections than the federal government offered for other media (some offered perpetual copyright, which has since been abolished; under the Music Modernization Act of September 2018, any sound recording 95 years old or older will be thrust into the public domain regardless of state law). The only exceptions are AFRS original productions, which are considered work of the United States government and thus both ineligible for federal copyright and outside the jurisdiction of any state; these programs are firmly in the public domain (this does not apply to programs carried by AFRS but produced by commercial networks). In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as orphan works: although there may still be a valid copyright on the program, it is seldom enforced. The copyright on an individual sound recording is distinct from the federal copyright for the underlying material (such as a published script, music, or in the case of adaptations, the original film or television material), and in many cases it is impossible to determine where or when the original recording was made or if the recording was copyrighted in that state. The U.S. Copyright Office states "there are a variety of legal regimes governing protection of pre-1972 sound recordings in the various states, and the scope of protection and of exceptions and limitations to that protection is unclear."[39] For example, New York has issued contradicting rulings on whether or not common law exists in that state; the most recent ruling, 2016's Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, holds that there is no such copyright in New York in regard to public performance.[40] Further complicating matters is that certain examples in case law have implied that radio broadcasts (and faithful reproductions thereof), because they were distributed freely to the public over the air, may not be eligible for copyright in and of themselves. The Internet Archive and other organizations that distribute public domain and open-source audio recordings maintain extensive archives of old-time radio programs. Legacy United States 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 off old-time radio 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 the golden-age era of radio drama by 1962. (Radio as a broadcast medium would survive, thanks in part to the proliferation of the transistor radio, and permanent installation in vehicles, making the medium far more portable than television). 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. Several radio theatre series are 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, and weekly programs such as The Big Broadcast on WAMU, hosted by Murray Horwitz. These shows usually air in late nights and/or on weekends on small AM stations. Carl Amari's nationally syndicated radio show Hollywood 360 features 5 old-time radio episodes each week during his 5-hour broadcast. Amari's show is heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast and in 168 countries on American Forces Radio. Local rerun compilations are also heard, primarily on public radio stations. Sirius XM Radio maintains a full-time Radio Classics channel devoted to rebroadcasts of vintage radio shows. Starting in 1974, Garrison Keillor, through his syndicated two-hour-long program A Prairie Home Companion, has provided a living museum of the production, tone and listener's experience of this era of radio for several generations after its demise. Produced live in theaters throughout the country, using the same sound effects and techniques of the era, it ran through 2016 with Keillor as host. The program included segments that were close renditions (in the form of parody) of specific genres of this era, including Westerns ("Dusty and Lefty, The Lives of the Cowboys"), detective procedurals ("Guy Noir, Private Eye") and even advertising through fictional commercials. Keillor also wrote a novel, WLT: A Radio Romance based on a radio station of this era—including a personally narrated version for the ultimate in verisimilitude. Upon Keillor's retirement, replacement host Chris Thile chose to reboot the show (since renamed Live from Here after the syndicator cut ties with Keillor) and eliminate much of the old-time radio trappings of the format; the show was ultimately canceled in 2020 due to financial and logistics problems. 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 advised 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 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 that feature re-creations of classic shows, as well as music, memorabilia and historical panels. The largest of these events was the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, held in Newark, New Jersey, which held its final convention in October 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). Veterans of the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, including Chairperson Steven M. Lewis of The Gotham Radio Players, Maggie Thompson, publisher of the Comic Book Buyer's Guide, Craig Wichman of audio drama troupe Quicksilver Audio Theater and long-time FOTR Publicist Sean Dougherty have launched a successor event, Celebrating Audio Theater – Old & New, scheduled for October 12–13, 2012. 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. 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. A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the Grand Ole Opry (1925), Music and the Spoken Word (1929), The Lutheran Hour (1930), 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. The Wheeling Jamboree counts an earlier program on a competing station as part of its history, tracing its lineage back to 1933. Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theatre in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to provide sketch comedy on existing radio programs including the Grand Ole Opry, Midnite Jamboree and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Elsewhere Regular broadcasts of radio plays are also heard in—among other countries—Australia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, and Sweden. In the United Kingdom, such scripted radio drama continues on BBC Radio 3 and (principally) BBC Radio 4, the second-most popular radio station in the country, as well as on the rerun channel BBC Radio 4 Extra, which is the seventh-most popular station there.   #starradio #totalstar #star1075 #heart #heartradio #lbc #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio1 #bbcradio2 #bbcradio3 #bbcradio4 #radio4extra #absoluteradio #absolute #capital #capitalradio #greatesthitsradio #hitsradio #radio #adultcontemporary #spain #bristol #frenchay #colyton #lymeregis #seaton #beer #devon #eastdevon #brettorchard #brettsoldtimeradioshow