It’s generally accepted that the rise of television in the 1950s led to the death of all those old-timey radio programs (OTR) that were either scripted dramas or adventure shows, or pictureless precursors of shows that would later move to TV. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, detailing the cases of a freelance insurance detective, soldiered on into the early 1960s because the creators and producers were unwilling to let the format die until then. But everything else had already been gone for years.
While TV is a technically superior medium, OTR had one key advantage over TV, namely that it facilitated multitasking. You could follow a detective story on the radio and still drive a car safely. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that radio soap operas were popular with housewives, who could carry on with their ironing and other housework while keeping up with the plot; I’m sure this also applicable to many similar situations, like working on something in your garage, or certain types of business or paid employment.
I wonder if anybody back then were disappointed that the radio medium pretty much sloughed off everything that wasn’t talk, news, sports, or music. Was there any public statement of opinions, either by media pundits or in the form of letters to newspapers or radio stations? I can’t argue with the logic of commerce, but it does seem like something was lost there, especially since were talking about a time many decades before podcasts and MP3 players. This would have been particularly true if the news and music part was so completely dominated, as today’s is, by 20-minute news roundups and pop hits.
If you’d been accustomed to having OTR during long drives, and now found yourself limited to modern format radio, it must have made your brain hurt.
As the youngest son of an older father I had a connection to an older generation that most of my friends did not. Their father’s were Viet Nam era. My father just missed the end of WWII. After growing up on the Depression I don’t know if my father lamented the passing of the radio era. But he certainly was nostalgic for it. He got a big kick out of the movie Radio Days. He listened to Gene Shepherd on WOR radio in NYC long before A Christmas Story came out. And he loved A Christmas Story too. It certainly was a big part of his childhood and he remembered it fondly. But he liked watching contemporary TV shows too. He died in 1989 so I don’t know what his opinion of current TV would be.
IIRC there were a number of over the air lecture style talks and interviews where people expressed opinions often later in the evening or at night. Radio was also huge for certain popular religious oriented speakers where lots of opinions were expressed. The bottom line however was that airtime was limited and very valuable and content was often advertiser driven so lower ratings content was not a priority.
Plus it’s not like there was any lack of opinions expressed in the newspapers or magazines which is where people hashed out political opinions and other esoteric discussions. We forget in these days of slim, content lite, dying newspapers but newspaper columns and the op-ed pages were a BFD back in the day as a medium of communication. There was real power there.
My favoriteclassic radio site is down right now, so I’ll have to do this without links.
There are a few things to remember.
“Old time radio” wasn’t a single thing. There were kiddie shows, dramas, variety shows, talk shows, etc. They all had different fans and different life spans. Hell, Arthur Godfrey kept doing a daily talk/variety show until 1972. Conversely, the first “disk jockey” show, Make Believe Ballroom, went on the air in 1935.
Therefore, it wasn’t a “disappearance” so much as a long, slow transition.
The networks held out as long as they could and tried different ways to fight television. Some of the most innovative programming in terms of writing and production techniques was done in the 1950s.
A lot of radio stars (Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, et al) and programs (Ozzie & Harriet, I Remember Mama, Gunsmoke, The Original Amateur Hour, This Is Your Life, a whole bunch of daytime programs) were brought over to TV more or less unchanged, so the radio listeners didn’t feel they were being deprived when the radio versions finally flickered out.
That doesn’t mean that people didn’t notice what was happening. I found a 1962 article in a trade publication where a radio executive complained that advertising agencies had put all their best creative talent onto television commercials and had ruined radio advertising in just a few years.
I can confirm this, my mother used to listen to a soap on the radio as she did housework, I remember it clearly when I was a toddler back in the 70s. I’m not sure what show it was, it may have been The Archers, or possibly a local one to New Zealand.
Not only is The Archers still going, but there are many one-off scripted dramas and comedies still playing on BBC Radio, recent highlights including Cabin Pressure and Good Omens.
What was the quality of car radios and radio broadcasting like in those days? For instance, on long drives, would you have been able to find another station broadcasting the same program when you drove out of range of the station you had been listening to.
For that matter, given that radios were less portable and more expensive during even the last years of OTR’s heyday than they would later become, would that have seriously limited people’s ability to do other things while they listened?
With the longer commutes people have now, I’m surprised something like that hasn’t started back up. I love listening to Radio Classics on XM 82. Johnny Dollar, The Whistler and Gun Smoke are my favorites. They use a rotating format so you have no consistency for any time slot what you’re going to get. I would like it if they had a fixed schedule. It would be nice to know that if I could get to my car at 6:00 PM on Thursday (for example) to listen to an old Radio Drama; I would seriously plan for that.
One thing I find kind of interesting is how our tastes in comedy have matured. Some of the old comedy material is painful to listen to; and I have to turn the channel when it’s on. The Bickersons for example is horrible to listen to. The entire premise of the show is how the main characters are always in a verbal battle with each other.
Or you could just download shows and bring them with you to play in the car. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about missing the beginning or end of a program.
Tastes in comedy have matured, but I think Sturgeon’s Law also plays a role. I’ve laughed out loud at Vic and Sade shows from the 30s.
The above are a sample of sites where you can download old radio shows for free. There are also Old Time Radio podcasts, some of them devoted to a specific show or specific genre.
People went absolutely apeshit about the loss of imagination when TV took over. Pretty much every intellectual in America was against television. Pretty much every radio writer, especially the better, more prestigious ones, hated television writing. That was a major reason why a whole new generation of younger writers, many of them from the theater, got sudden fame: Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, Gore Vidal. But for the first half of the 50s especially, television was the end of civilization.
You’re right. It’s not a wide variety. Their programming runs heavily to comedy.
As far as something to follow while multitasking, audiobooks and podcasts fill at least some of that gap. There is also still a vast amount of vintage OTR that can be downloaded for free. Crime Classics and the radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel are great places to start as the entire runs of the shows (or nearly so) are available on iTunes. They are well scripted, well acted shows that hold up well even to modern audiences.
I know you were riffing off the ‘not’ typo, but BBC Radio 4 is not primarily a comedy channel (nor does it have much in the way of old-timey serials as per the OP). It’s mainly serious high-brow factual programming, though it tries to keep up a good sense of humour.
To me, it’s a sliver of tasteful sanity in a vulgar, crazy world.
The scripted drama available as podcasts is at least as variable in quality as OTR. We’re Alive started off as a pretty good full cast zombie apocalypse story. My daughter and I were avid listeners for the first couple seasons. They dragged things out without resolving anythhing for too long and we lost interest. I see it’s wrapped up now, but neither of us cares enough to listen long enough even just to find out the ending. OTOH, the Pseudopod and Escape Pod podcasts are pretty consistently good, though each epidode is a self-contained story.