Radio Transcriptions

Transcriptions could be made for many different reasons. The most common was to provide a recording of a program for post-broadcast evaluation. Beginning in the early 1930s, many private recording studios offered "air checking" services that would record a program off-the-air on aluminum discs for use by performers, advertisers, or advertising agencies. In 1935, NBC opened a Radio Recording Division to provide this service internally for its clients. The majority of radio recordings that survive today were recorded by such services for such reasons. Many other programs were never broadcast live in the first place -- they were made and released on recordings for sale to individual stations, and by contract they were to be destroyed or returned to the distributor for destruction after broadcast. Many, however, were pilfered by station employees or recovered by dump-pickers before they could be destroyed.

By reasonable estimate, well over a quarter of a million radio programs still survive in the United States -- most of them in institutional collections such as the Library of Congress. NBC donated the bulk of its archive to the LOC in the late 1970s, but before that time many of the recordings were pilfered by employees, or lost to breakage or decomposition. Many others were simply discarded when they became irrelevant in one way or another.

Many sponsors kept archives of programs they presented, and the same fate befell many of these discs: theft, damage, loss due to poor storage, and a simple sense of "why do we need to save this old junk anyway?"

People began seriously collecting discarded radio recordings in the 1950s, and an organized radio hobby, trading dubs on tape, existed in the sixties. The first company to sell radio recordings to the public, on reels and cassettes, was Radio Yesteryear, formed by collector David Goldin in 1967, and many others followed his lead. These companies -- some legally licensed by copyright owners, and some not -- along private tape traders and radio clubs were the main source for distribution of vintage radio before the internet took over in the late 1990s.

I began collecting in 1977, and the bulk of my own collection is still on tape.

I used to buy my radio shows from radio Yesteryear many years ago. They used to have some really off-the-wall collections and some bad quality but glad to get rare shows.
BTW, I recently got my new Radio Spirits catalog and finally realized "Hey, I know the lady that wrote a lot of these program guides.":eusa_clap

Sincerely,
The Wolf

Ahhh, so that's what "Eveneing In Paris" LOOKS like! Wonderful. I love all this old-time technology.

The Wolf said:

I used to buy my radio shows from radio Yesteryear many years ago. They used to have some really off-the-wall collections and some bad quality but glad to get rare shows.
BTW, I recently got my new Radio Spirits catalog and finally realized "Hey, I know the lady that wrote a lot of these program guides.":eusa_clap

Sincerely,
The Wolf

Click to expand...

Yep, that would be me. I pretty much kept Radio Yesteryear in business when I was in high school, and Dave Goldin went on to become a good friend -- one of the most unforgettable people I ever met.

The use of the adjective unforgettable makes me want to hear some stories about him.
In high school I was always described as "different". Both are "loaded" descriptions.lol

Sincerely,
The Wolf

The first time I went to visit him, he told me to meet him in the parking lot of a nearby diner. "Follow me," he declared ominously, "and don't take your eyes off the road. YOU'D NEVER MAKE IT BACK OUT ALIVE."

Later in that same visit he took me and my best friend on a wild high-speed drive thru the winding roads of suburban Connecticut in a vintage Mercedes while telling us, in explicit detail, the true story of the Newtown Woodchipper Murders. My friend has never let me forget that trip.

Dave has a copper towel boiler, liberated from a long-extinct barbershop, as the focal point of his living room suite, and on his honeymoon, he took his bride on a jaunt across the country in a Checker Marathon to pick up a load of transcriptions that had been stored for years in the back of an old chicken barn.

His wife is a *saint.*

In all seriousness though, I can't think of another collector who did more for old-time-radio than he did, in terms of unearthing rare and unusual material and making it available thru his company. Getting a new envelope full of Radio Yesteryear flyers in the mail was always a very eagerly-awaited event when I was a teen.

Re: Are there any other recordings of this program to be found anywhere? I figure most are probably lost. Just curious. I'm rather new to radio listening.

As far as I know, the "Evening In Paris" I have is the only complete one that survives -- the fellow I bought the discs from had a couple of incomplete programs, but I couldn't afford to buy the whole lot. It's on two separate discs -- the first half on one, and the second on the other, with the other side of each disc being blank. This was a common setup for half-hour programs, and it was very easy for the two parts to get separated.

How cool that you have the complete recording. Well, I know Agnes Moorehead took part in the show in the early 30's. I'm a really huge fan of her work. She brought me to radio and not a moment too soon. I look forward to branching out and discovering more programs. I have started to listen to Lux Theater also. Great stuff.