"When Radio Was" broadcast tapes 1997 September 15/16 & 1997 September 17/18

Radio Spirits/Dick Brescia Associates

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"When Radio Was" is a popular old-time radio (late 1930s-1950s) anthology series that originated in the Chicago area in the early 1990s by Dick Brescia Associates through Radio Spirits, a company that once published a catalogue of (literally) thousands of old-time radio programmes for sale on cassette tapes. (Ugh. What we had to go through in the days before gigabyte hard drives and cheap high-bitrate Internet access...) It was developed and initially announced by the company's owner Carl Amari, then in the late 1990s the pairing of Fred Foy ("The Lone Ranger" announcer) (1921-2010) with Stan Freberg (1928-2015) happened. Cassette syndication ended sometime in the early 2000s and was replaced by electronic distribution (https://www.radioamerica.com/program/when-radio-was/). They may have distributed the show on CD at some point. Radio Spirits are still around, except now they're owned by Mediabay and no longer independent (purchased around 1999 or so) and they've forsaken cassettes for CDs. I know nothing else about their service since I haven't subscribed to them in about that long. In the late 1990s, "When Radio Was" was syndicated nationally via cassette tape, which stations were expected to return to RS after being aired. RS in fact sold their old post-airdate WRW tapes for something like $1 each through the catalogue so I would occasionally do bulk orders of them, about a dozen a pop, so I could have tape to record on because being a zit-faced junior high kid I was too poor to afford name-brand stuff like TDK or Maxell. It was an easy source of relatively-cheap, high grade cassettes. The 90-minute tapes were a fairly decent-quality 90-minute CrO2 emulsion that gave excellent fidelity when going from CDs and phonograph records. These VERY RARE tapes are the only two I have (that I know of) that escaped their fateful meetup with the cart eraser. Until the station's death in 1998 I listened to the programme on KKEY (now KGDD) religiously on Saturday nights, preceding their own similar locally-produced, 2-hour anthology "Radio Memories" before signoff at 8 PM. These programmes were likely aired in 1996 or (possibly) (I doubt it) 1997. There are no airdates printed on the cassettes, only vague indications like "MONDAY 1"; "WEDNESDAY 2" etc. I'm sure these probably meant something as Radio Spirits' broadcast coordination was concerned. (UPDATE 2021 January 30: These programmes aired 1997 September 15 [Monday] and 16 [Tuesday]. Thanx "PAULDRAKE33" [details/@pauldrake33] for this information!) Each ~48m side is a single episode, intended to be stretched to an hour time slot with local insertions. Thus, these captures are of the actual syndication tapes that were played on the air and they contain advertising for the programme's sponsors plus breaks for local insertions. Curiously there is no level calibration tone or countdown at the head, and there are no 25 or 35 Hz EOM tones to operate automatic spot announcement players. The sound is still quite brilliant despite being played nearly to death in sub-par portable equipment. The programme was produced and recorded entirely monophopnic so these files are encoded mono, obtained from the left channel. The audio was recorded at a moderately high level, peaking at +0 VU, and there is a minor amount of print-through from having been in storage for about 15 years. SETLIST TAPE 1 MONDAY 1 (side 1) Gangbusters, "Case of the Safe Cracking Combine" (a.k.a. The Case of Grzelak and Constantine), 1948 Feb 21 (ep. 512/517) - Arthur Vinton, Elspeth Eric, Walter Vaughan Abbott & Costello, "Lou's Race Horse, Peanut Butter", 1944 Nov 09 (ep. 74) (beginning) - Bud Abbott, Lou Costello TUESDAY 1 (side 2) Abbott & Costello, "Lou's Race Horse, Peanut Butter", 1944 Nov 09 (conclusion) Lone Ranger, "Ambush", 1945 July 09 (ep. 1945) - Brace Beemer, John Todd TAPE 2 WEDNESDAY 1 (side 1) Suspense, "Merry Widower", 1944 Oct 12 (ep. 114) - Reginald Gardner The Great Gildersleeve, "Going to Grass Lake", 1945 Sep 02 (ep. 174) (beginning) - Harold Peary, Walter Tetley THURSDAY 1 (side 2) The Great Gildersleeve, "Going to Grass Lake" (ep. 174), 1945 Sep 02 (conclusion) Boston Blackie, "Marked for Murder" (a.k.a. "The Backstage Murder"; "Marked Card Murder Case"), 1946 Sep 10 (ep. 74) - Richard Kollmar One curious observation, the low-quality MP3 of the Abbott & Costello "Peanut Butter" episode that has circulated on old-time radio websites and FTP servers for more than 20 years, suspiciously has fadeouts and fadeins in exactly the same positions as they appear here. I assure you I did not originate it since this is my first transfer, prepared in 2019 shortly before this upload, after bringing the tapes out of long-term storage. My guess is somebody else must have had another copy of the same broadcast tape and used it for their transfer, if they didn't grab it off the air. Interesting how things tend to come full circle sometimes. UPDATE 2022 Feb 21: Merged 1997 September 17/18 into this item. Previously they had been in a separate page. Notes DOWNLOADING When downloading this recording e.g. for local listening or to post elsewhere, please select only the original high-bitrate PCM ("WAVE" option) files. The lossy MP3 files for immediate previewing in the built-in Web player above were encoded from the PCM files using LAME 3.99.5 Linux (command $ lame -b128 -mm -o -q0 "'filename.wav]") but for optimal listening please download and use the PCM version. Master files are encoded as 44100 Hz 16-bit linear PCM (RIFF header). If used for broadcasting (noncommercial nonprofit/school/community/hobby stations or streams only) you should always use the PCM version and edit the commercial advertising spots as appropriate. These can be replaced with PSAs or locally originated material. Leave in PCM or encode in your preferred format for broadcast. To stream this programme as a sequence in an external media player (e.g. VLC), open the "VBR M3U" file in your player's playlist editor and select "play". To stream individual files, load the file you want from the "WAVE" option into your player directly. LICENCE Do whatever you want with it; I don't really care. If you enjoyed it, great. If you want to reuse and remix it, more power to you. If we meet someday and you think it's worth it, you can buy me dinner in return.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.