Sounds of Yesterday

The Sounds Of Yesterday was a radio zine that circulated in the 1980s. It came out three times a year and was based in Midvale, Utah. It's a suburb south of Salt Lake City. Initially the zine and it's publisher were based in Laramie, WY. Another OTR zine named Memories actually noted it's debut.

Individual issues cost $3.00 but a year's subscription cost just $8. That's a savings of $1!  Despite plans to the contrary, publisher Paul Anderson only managed to print 3 issues. Writer Terry Salomonson claimed that there was no 4th issue but here it is. In the introduction, Anderson was already asking the question, how will the OTR hobby fare in the future? In 1985 FM had just overtaken AM in popularity and the question was more potent. Today the question is more of how radio will survive at all.

These are many known researchers in the OTR hobby, some for their works, some for their personalities. But Paul Anderson is a bit of a mystery. Two decades ago he published 4 issues of this zine and he was never heard from again so far as I know.I have scanned and formatted the whole issue for use in OTR research.

You can download all 6MB

HERE

BOOK WEEK: Radio's Golden Years

The book Radio's Golden Years: The Encyclopedia Of Radio Programs 1930-1960 was written by Vincent Terrace in 1981. The book includes the cast, and crew and air dates of virtually every radio program from the years listed. That works out to over 1,500 radio programs. As a reference book it's short on adjectives, listing sometimes only the type of program, host, length, network and year it aired. But there are numerous programs for which this is the only source of information whatsoever. It's a shame that the hardback printing by A.S Barnes & Company was so shoddy. Every copy of the book I've found has a dried out and split binding. I've re-glued my own copy several times.

Author Vincent Terrace is not a college professor, though he does have a  BFA from New York Institute of Technology.  He also wrote the Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 Through 2010, and a number of other media reference books. It was while doing research for those earlier books those that he discovered a basic lack of reference material on OTR programs. He's still alive and active today and serves as the Television Historian at McFarland Publishers. He's even on Linkedin.

Smilin' Jack's Old-Time Radio Trivia Quiz

Go here.

Take Smilin' Jack's Old-Time Radio Trivia Quiz

I thought I knew my old time radio serials but I got slaughtered. My score was only 35%. Think you can you do better? Jack French kicked my ass.

it's all about the old 15-30 minute programs that ran on the radio right after kids got out of school. They were called "Juvenile Adventure" shows. typically the hero is left in a precarious situation at the end of each episode (like modern soaps but more manly) so you'll tune in tomorrow.

The Bensman Radio Program Archive

We trade tapes, we post downloads, We FTP, we recommend our favorites. Some radio fans [geeks] have archives of hundreds of hours of radio broadcasts. (I understand that Fybush has quite the impressive collection.)

Websites such as archive.org carry large selections. Some companies now specialize in collections of old radio dramas. Now there is finally a significant dedicated audio library for radio recordings.

It was founded by Professor Marvin R. Bensman, J.D., Ph.D. at the University of Memphis Department of Communication. He like many of us is a collector of radio programs. His archive (unlike most others) is available to the public. He is the author of The Beginning of Broadcast Regulation in the 20th Century, and a member of the board of the Broadcast Education Association. The complete catalog is here. Its about 77 PAGES LONG!