What Was The Last Radio Program You Heard?

^^^ I saved your link. Sounds like a fun evening.

A few rehearsal shots for the upcoming broadcast.

Doing some work as "The Lone Ranger" came on at 7 -- the episode of October 7, 1938, to be specific -- and laughed out loud when the villain of the episode was identified as a no-good thieving owlhoot named "Red Barber," a desperado meaner than a cage full of wildcats.

It would be about six months before Mr. Barber would turn up in the broadcast booth in Brooklyn, but he was already well known in the midwest for broadcasting Cincinnati Reds games, and even as the Lone Ranger was hunting him down, he was on his way to New York to broadcast Game 3 of the World Series from Yankee Stadium over NBC.

The Ol' Redhead sure got around. Wonder what Brother Al Helfer would think of that.

Yet more publicity for our upcoming broadcast.

Been doing press, TV and radio interviews for it all week, on top of trying to get all the tech stuff squared away and get another broken toilet fixed. I bet Fred Allen didn't have to fix Mr. Rockefeller's toilets.

Well shoot. I had just started listening to the "Strand Theater On The Air" broadcast when some people had the audacity to show up here. My wife told me on her way to the door that I needed to be sociable and turn it off.
Hopefully it will be available somewhere else as an encore.

The station tells me they'll rebroadcast it soon -- when I find out when I'll post the date and time. We may also have a download available at some point thru our own website. Reviewing the aircheck, I was annoyed that the station cut over to us too early and carried the last bit of the warmup. The announcer didn't actually drop his pants.

We got a lot more response than I expected -- we had to turn people away at the door, and had listeners over the web feed from as far away as Hawaii and the UK. So evidently we did something that people liked, and we're already planning on doing it again next summer.

It'll take that long for my feet to stop hurting, having been on them continuously since 8 this morning.

A candid shot taken during the broadcast.

And one from the last rehearsal. The kids are waiting for their cues. They'd never actually heard a radio show before this, but they took to it like naturals.

Please keep us posted on the availability of the download!
As for listening rather than performing, commute time has been a mixture of Christmas songs and The Plot to Overthrow Christmas; parts are of sort of muddy, but Corwin's writing shines through.

It's going to be rebroadcast over WRFR and its internet stream -- http://s2.stationplaylist.com:7028/listen.mp3.m3u this Sunday afternoon at 4pm EST.

Work is now officially underway for another broadcast next summer. The station wants to do four a year, but I don't know if that's an option given the school schedules for the supporting cast. But time will tell.

"Strand On The Air" is now available for online listening -- https://www.mixcloud.com/jojolindsay/the-strand-on-the-air-december-16-2018/

Script is almost finished for our next broadcast, "The Strand On The Air Summer Fun Special," airing sometime this summer! Watch this space for date and time.

I finally got a chance to listen to the Strand broadcast from start to finish. Excellent job by all involved. I'm looking forward to the next one.

It's coming...

Two episodes of The Lineup from about 1952. Clearly a riff on Dragnet, with deadpan-voiced cops semi-mumbling as they work their way through solving crime. Some overlapping dialogue, especially at the opening line up in the police station, with two officers discussing their next assignment while the sergeant fills the background with directions to the suspects. Solid stuff.

The Lineup is one of my favorites, along with Twenty First Precinct. "Sometimes you catch the brass ring, sometimes the brass ring catches you."

3fingers said:

The Lineup is one of my favorites, along with Twenty First Precinct. "Sometimes you catch the brass ring, sometimes the brass ring catches you."

Click to expand...

I will check out Twenty-first Precinct. Read about it in Tune In Yesterday but never listened--

...and I did check out an episode of Twenty-first Precinct, on a podcast called Case Closed. Tight constructed, well-written, solidly acted, with Everett Sloan as the Captain. The Dragnet influence is hard to avoid, with the police trying to get the facts and the witnesses and by-standers going on a rip about people and what-not. Thanks for the tip, 3fingers-

The June 12, 1946 episode of "The Adventures of Superman."

Of all the kiddie-oriented adventure serials of the radio era, "Superman" had the most significant adult audience, and the program earned that audience with storylines that offered a degree of real-life grittiness, albiet involving a tough-talking super-strong flying guy in tights and a cape. The brain behind all this, former pulp author Robert "Bob Maxwell" Jaffe, made a point of pushing the series into realms not usual for a kiddie show, and this 1946 storyline, "The Clan of the Fiery Cross," was a prime example.

That Clan is exactly what you think it is, a stand-in for the Ku Klux Klan, which was in the midst of a postwar resurgence across the south and midwest, and the idea of turning The Man Of Tomorrow loose on the hooded hookworms came from radical journalist Stetson Kennedy, who had infiltrated the Klan in Georgia and could offer a wealth of information on how it worked. Kennedy supplied Maxwell with certain intelligence information -- most of which never made it into the script. But the storyline -- depicting actual cross-burnings and racial violence -- had a real impact on listeners and positioned "Superman" for the rest of the decade as *the* Civil Rights radio show.

But for all that, the story has certain shortcomings. The target of the "Fiery Cross" bunch is a Chinese-American family, not African-Americans -- since sponsor Kellogg's was afraid of alienating racist cereal-eaters in Southern markets. The Clan itself, for all its cross burning and hood wearing, comes across more as generic thugs than as domestic terrorists. But Superman himself is just right -- his voice drips with contempt as he denounces the Clan and all it stands for as "un-American," a stance which must've made his creator, Jerry Siegel -- who had always seen his character first and foremost as a warrior for social justice -- quite proud. Even with its flaws, there is far more substance in this "kiddie show" than in most of the adult-targeted radio dramas of 1946.

There's also sad irony here. Bud Collyer, who played Superman and remained closely identified with the role for the rest of his life, was, by every account, a real and serious supporter of the civil rights movement. But he was also, alas, a red-baiter, who led the charge to drive "leftists" out of New York AFRA in the early 1950s, targeting many performers who had been crusading for civil rights when he was just a soap salesman -- including Superman's own announcer, and Collyer's own personal friend, Jackson Beck. I don't think Clark Kent would have approved of that.

The May 18, 1939 broadcast of "Morris H. Siegel, Insurance Counselor."

Altough it sounds like the title of an especially deadpan Bob and Ray sketch, this was a real program -- and was, in fact, something of an institution in local New York radio thru the late thirties. Heard regularly over progressive-oriented independent station WMCA, Siegel was right in line with the rising consumer-rights movement of the day in his investigation of corrupt practices in the insurance business. "I do not sell insurance and I represent no insurance company," declares Siegel in a rich Brooklyn accent, "but I offer to you impartial advice on how to buy your insurance." This makes for surprisingly brisk listening, especially when Siegel relates case histories of poor saps who didn't read the fine print before signing.

It wouldn't be long before the Boys pushed their way into even the small indie stations and forced out the mavericks and the oddballs in favor of the relentless homogenized slickness that dominated radio during the 1940s. But somewhere out there, I hope that the spirit of Morris H. Siegel, Insurance Counselor, lives on.