Happen to be a huge fan of the old time radio. Been listening to them for about ten years or so (since I found The WRVO Playhouse back home in CNY)… Am a collector now and have found some pretty good links to free ones. My faves are Dimension X and X Minus One… though I get a kick out of the detective shows like Boston Blackie and Sam Spade. Any other Old Time Radio fans out there?
A now-defunct classical radio station in the Chicago area used to have old-time radio every Saturday afternoon. I always enjoyed the Jack Benny programs. It’s amazing that a 50 year old show could still make me laugh out loud.
Yes! We got a 10-CD set from Daedalus and listen to them on car trips! They’re great driving entertainment. I like the comedy best.
My favorite is Quiet Please, which is a supernatural show.
My kids. (my kids!) actually love Jack Benny… we listen to him and Burns and Allen on road trips cuz thats what we can all agree on…
I’ve listened to some of it. The radio science fiction shows were more ambitious than SF TV was – they did more adaptations of lassic SF stories, and tackled more outre plots. It’s not just a matter of not needing good effects – I think TV was always too timid, being afraid that ideas that were too “far-out” would alienate the average viewer, But radio did things like Heinlein’s “The Roads must Roll”, Asimov’s “C-Chute”, and de Camp’s “A Gun for Dinosaur”.
Jack Webb’s “Dragnet” started out on radio, and it works well there.
I’m a fan of OTR. Jack Benny is a favorite, as is Fred Allen.
The thing is, OTR was wildly uneven. Not every comedian was Jack Benny. Not every drama was competently staged by the likes of the Mercury Theater on the Air. I enjoy the good stuff, but I’m unable to enjoy the copious not-so-good stuff simply because it is OTR.
Agreed one hundred percent… Even within the good stuff there is some real shit. When Benny was on, it was ON. When it was off, it was atrocious.
I haven’t listened in a while, but my family had a few sets of cassette tapes we played on road trips. Abbott & Costello and Jack Benny were my favorites.
Before each program started, a male voice would say, “This old-time radio program was originally aired live; long before the advent of hi-fidelity. As a result, you may detect an occasional surface noise or volume drop due to transmission problems so common to old radio. We hope, however, that any variance in audio quality will not take away from your pleasure in listening to this, one of the all time favorite shows.”
Then an ad for Camel cigarettes would start… 
Good times.
Also, I forgot to mention “Bob and Ray”. Later than what might be considered the classic era, but hilarious! And if you’re familiar with classic old-time radio, a lot of what Bob and Ray did was parodying that.
I started a thread on Duffy’s Tavernlast year.
This is a good site for OTR fans: http://www.freeotrshows.com/
I enjoyed listening to some of the old music programs.
Thanks for the link will definitely check it out.
Archive.org and Zoot Radio also have a good selection of freebies, though I beleive Zoot Radio requires registration to download
I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit but I used to listen to quite a bit of OTR. When I was a kid, one of the local radio stations ran an hour of OTR every Sunday night and my brother and I both listened to it before we went to bed. Apparently the recordings were someone’s private collection, and one Sunday night the announcer said that they had played the entire collectionand were discontinuing the program. My brother and I both started crying, we were so upset. Later I got into CBS Radio Mystery Theatre but it was on so late at night I could almost never make it through to the end.
My parents bought me a lot of tape sets some years back, mostly genre samplers with one or two shows from a variety of series. I used to subscribe to a bunch of OTR podcasts through iTunes because they were the perfect length to listen to on breaks and lunch but I found myself so overloaded with podcasts that something had to give.
My favorite is The Shadow. I also like Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, Superman, mostly the adventure stuff. Burns and Allen are great. You Bet Your Life is consistently funny. I have a few episodes of Tallulah Bankhead’s The Big Show (including an adaptation of “All About Eve” where she finally nabs her chance to play Margo Channing) and I wish I had more.
Wormwood is a pretty decent OTR-ish serial. Unfortunately they’ve suspended production on season two. Fortunately before I started listening to it.
OOH! They’ve got The Goon Show!
I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth repeating: The Plot Spot is a valuable resource for anyone who’s a fan of, or is curious about, radio science fiction (like Dimension X and X Minus One).
Agreed. The same goes for “Gunsmoke.”
Occasionally, the dialogue on “Dragnet” is laugh-out-loud funny, in a dry sort of way.
But the OTR that has made me laugh the most is the quirky, unique Vic and Sade. Of the episodes listed on that page, I can remember enjoying
(links are to mp3’s)
VS_39-01-02_-_Lodge_Regalia_Out_on_Loan
VS_38-11-30_-_Vics_New_Hat
VS_39-07-05_-_Two_Tons_of_Coal
VS_39-08-30_-_Preselected_School_Clothes
VS_40-01-02_-_Painted_Portrait_of_Big_Dipper
VS_40-02-27_-_Deep_Currents_of_School_Life
and probably numerous others, but that’ll do for starters.
SiriusXM (the merged daughter of the two satellite radio companies) has a Radio Classics channel.
I love X-Minus-1 and a few of the detective and western shows (obviously the Cisco Kid.) The bad stuff is bad, though, and none of the comedy is funny anymore. That sucks because it seems like 70% of old time radio is comedy.
I’ve always liked “Night Beat,” and some other shows they played on the local CBS radio station. Also, the Sherlock Holmes series. But suddenly they just stopped them.
Thanks for this… got it bookmarked now…