Golden Age of Radio
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the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows.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
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
During the first three decades of
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
It was not until after the
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."[6] 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
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.[10] 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,[11] 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.[12]
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
- antitrustlaws 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.[16] 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.[17]
- 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.
Live events
Coverage of live events included musical concerts and
News
The capability of the new medium to get information to people created the format of modern
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
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.
Comedy
Radio attracted top comedy talents from
Radio comedy ran the gamut from the small town humor of
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
Soap operas
The first program generally considered to be a daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is
Children's programming
The line-up of late afternoon adventure serials included
Radio plays
Radio plays were presented on such programs as
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
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.
History of professional radio recordings in the United States
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 prerecorded
Recording was done using a
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.[24][25]
When a substantial number of copies of an electrical transcription were required, as for the distribution of a syndicated program, they were produced by the same process used to make ordinary records. A master recording was cut, then electroplated to produce a stamper from which pressings in vinyl (or, in the case of transcription discs pressed before about 1935, shellac) were molded in a record press.
Armed Forces Radio Service
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
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.[30] 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
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.[32][33]
Recording media
Electrical transcription discs
Before the early 1950s, when radio networks and local stations wanted to preserve a live broadcast, they did so by means of special
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.[34]
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.[33][35] 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 prerecorded on magnetic tape for later broadcast was complete for network radio programs.[36][37] However, for the physical distribution of prerecorded 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 analog tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s—originated from analog 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
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[update], 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.[38]
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
In practice, most old-time radio recordings are treated as
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
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
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.[42]
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.[43][44]
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.[45]
A handful of radio programs from the old-time era remain in production, all from the genres of news, music, or religious broadcasting: the
Western revival/comedy act Riders in the Sky produced a radio serial Riders Radio Theater 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,[46] 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.
Museums
- SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention
- Museum of Broadcast Communications
- Paley Center for Media
- Pavek Museum of Broadcasting
See also
- List of old-time radio programs
- List of old-time American radio people
- List of U.S. radio programs
- List of radio soap operas
- List of radios – List of specific models of radios
- Antique radio
- Audio theater
- Music radio
- Radio comedy
- Radio Days (Woody Allen film dramatizing old-time radio)
- Radio drama
- Remember WENN (AMC television series set at an old-time radio station in Pittsburgh)
- Soap opera
- When Radio Was
Notes
- ^ "The Golden Age of Radio | SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention". SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention. Archived from the original on 2019-10-24. Retrieved 2019-10-24.
- ^ Halper, Donna (14 February 2007). "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden". Radio World Online. Archived from the original on 12 September 2012. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ O'Neal, James E. (October 25, 2006). "Fessenden: World's First Broadcaster? – A Radio History Buff Finds That Evidence for the Famous Brant Rock Broadcast Is Lacking". Radio World Online. Archived from the original on 29 January 2007.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ O'Neal, James E. (December 23, 2008). "Fessenden – The Next Chapter". Radio World Online. Archived from the original on September 16, 2009. Retrieved June 29, 2009.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Belrose, John S. "Fessenden's 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
- ^ Sayles, Ron. Old-Time Radio Digest, Volume 2009, number 51.
- ^ a b "Radio: A Consumer Product and a Producer of Consumption (Interactive Historical Introduction, Coolidge-Consumerism Collection)". American Memory Help Desk. 1995-08-14.
- ^ "Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 (Abstract of the Fifteenth Census of the United States)" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. 1933.
- ^ "Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 (Housing, Volume II, General Chraracteristics)" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. 1943.
- ^ "Hoover Advised That He Has No Authority Over the Radio Rules". The Herald Statesman. 1926-07-09. p. 2. Retrieved 2020-10-10.
- ^ "General Order No. 40 (August 30, 1928)", Radio Service Bulletin, August 31, 1928, pp. 9–10.
- ^ "Broadcasting Stations by Wave Lengths, Effective November 11, 1928", Commercial and Government Radio Stations of the United States (Edition June 30, 1928), pp. 172–176.
- ^ Donald Christensen, "Remember Radio?" July, 2012 http://www.todaysengineer.org/2012/Jul/backscatter.asp Archived 2013-01-27 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "National Radio Broadcast By Bell System", Science & Invention, April 1922, pp. 1144, 1173.
- ^ "Big Business and Radio" by Gleason L. Archer, 1939, pp. 275–276.
- ^ "Moving Day For Radio Nears". The Birmingham News. 1945-06-13. p. 10. Retrieved 2020-10-10.
- ^ Sally Bedell Smith, In All His Glory: the Life and Times of William S. Paley and the Birth of Modern Broadcasting (1990)[ISBN missing]
- ^ "Home". www.museum.tv. Archived from the original on 22 September 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
- ^ "Everybody's Friend: Remembering Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo's 'My Friend Irma'". Hogan's Alley. cartoonician.com. 2010. Archived from the original on 2013-03-19. Retrieved 2013-03-25.
- ISBN 978-0-8108-6523-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-0786416318.
- ^ Hamlet (Episode 065) (MP3). Theater Guild on the Air. Internet Archive. 1951-03-04.
- ^ "FCC Bans Give-Away Radio Shows". The Miami Herald. 1949-08-20. p. 1. Retrieved 2020-10-10.
- ^ Bradley, Hanson (30 March 2018). "The Tennessee Jamboree: Local Radio, the Barn Dance, and Cultural Life in Appalachian East Tennessee". southernspaces.org. 2008. Archived from the original on 15 April 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
- ^ Fybush, Scott. "Frequently-Asked Questions". The [email protected]. Archived from the original on 2007-04-19. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
- ^ Photograph of actor Pat O'Brien and singer Kate Smith on the Viva America program for CBS Radio on Getty Images.com
- ISBN 0-313-30812-8Viva America on books.google.com
- LCCN 73-600146.
- ISBN 0-313-30812-8"Seventh Army Symphony on Armed Forces Radio in 1961 performing works by Vivaldi and Dvorak" via – Google Books
- ^ "Armed Forces Radio Services broadcasts". Bing Crosby Internet Museum. Archived from the original on 2007-02-21. Retrieved 2007-05-16.
- ^ "The History of Magnetic Tape". audiolabo.free.fr. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
- ^ a b Bensman, Marvin R. "A History of Radio Program Collecting". Radio Archive of the University of Memphis. Archived from the original on 2010-06-18. Retrieved 2007-05-18.
- ^ Beaupre, Walter J. "Music Electrically Transcribed!". The Vintage Radio Place. Archived from the original on 2007-11-09. Retrieved 2007-11-05.
- ^ "ABC Spends 100G in Shift From Wax to Tape Repeats Archived 2015-03-17 at the Wayback Machine", Billboard, Feb. 21, 1948, p. 6.
- ^ "NBC Drops All Wax Bans Archived 2015-03-17 at the Wayback Machine", Billboard, Jan. 29, 1949, p. 5.
- ^ "Webs' Tape Measure Grows Archived 2015-03-17 at the Wayback Machine", Billboard, Nov. 5, 1949, p. 5.
- ^ "RadioEchoes.com". RadioEchoes.com. Retrieved 2021-02-11.
- ^ a b "Federal Copyright Protection for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings – U.S. Copyright Office". www.copyright.gov. Archived from the original on 8 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
- ^ Klepper, David (20 December 2016). "Owner of 1967 Hit Song 'Happy Together' Lose Copyright Case". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 21 December 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
- ^ This was a key point in Waring v. WDAS Broadcasting Sta., a case that determined that a record company could claim copyright on a sound recording under Pennsylvania law because the recording was specifically designated as not being for radio broadcast.
- ^ Baenen, Jeff (April 12, 2016). Goodbye, Lake Wobegon: 'Prairie Home' is getting a new host Archived 2016-04-15 at the Wayback Machine. AP. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
- ^ Spiegel, Jan Ellen (2007-09-09). "We Interrupt This Play for a News Bulletin on the War". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2017-07-01. Retrieved 2007-09-09.
- ^ "Radio Dramas". Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. Fairfield University. 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-08-13. Retrieved 2008-04-18.
- ^ Chimes, Art. "Last Radio Drama". NPR.org. National Public Radio. Archived from the original on 2011-06-04. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
- ^ "Raadioteater" (in Estonian). Eesti Rahvusringhääling (formerly Eesti Raadio). 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-02-07. Retrieved 2015-02-01.
References
- Blue, Howard (2002). ISBN 0-8108-4413-3
- Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507678-8.
Further reading
- Buxton, Frank, and Bill Owen. (1972). The Big Broadcast 1920–1950. New York: Viking Press.
- Delong, Thomas A. (1980). The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Radio. Los Angeles, CA: Amber Crest Books. ISBN 0-86533-000-X
- Dunning, John. (1976). Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio 1925–1976. Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13932-616-2.
- Ellett, Ryan (2012). Encyclopedia of Black Radio in the United States, 1921–1955. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc. OCLC 1369512406.
- Maltin, Leonard. (1997). The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-52594-183-5.
- Nachman, Gerald. (1998). Raised on Radio. New York: Pantheon, 1998. ISBN 0-37540-287-X.
- It's That Time Again, Volume 4, edited by ISBN 1-59393-118-2.
External links
- Gunsmoke series on WRCW Radio
- Old Time Radio on-line archive at Archive.org
- Old Time Radio on Way Back When Archived 2020-08-06 at the Wayback Machine
- Audio Noir internet radio station – free old time radio detective & crime shows
- OTRR: Old Time Radio Research group – OTR restoration and preservation
- OTRR Internet Archive homepage – comprehensive OTRR collections
- Golden Age of Radio at Curlie