in honor of Thursday Sept. 21, 1939

[The Wolf]

I have a collection of 19 hours of radio from Sept. 21, 1939.
On my cassette player in my car on the way home I listened to Major Bowes.
Now that it is 9:47 P.M. I'm listening to "Americans at Work".
I'll probably still be up when Louis Prima plays his midnight show remote from the Hickory House in N.Y.C.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had the honor of doing a remastering of that set of broadcasts for the First Generation Radio Archives a few years back, and also wrote the liner notes -- they're still online at http://www.radioarchives.org/sets/SC04.htm

Some interesting background on how this day of broadcasting happened to be preserved in the first place!

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Thanks for the link, Lizzie, or Aaron, or whoever you are. lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thanks for the link, Lizzie, or Aaron, or whoever you are. lol

Ha! I wrote the narrative part, and the other whats-his-name-there wrote the program listing. (I hate cataloguing!)

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Have you looked at your avatar picture lately? Or is my computer acting up?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Have you looked at your avatar picture lately? Or is my computer acting up?

Hmmm -- I just cleared my cache, and now I'm not seeing *anybody's* avatars. Very odd!!

 

[Absinthe_1900]

I have to get this set.:eusa_clap

 

[Wild Root]

Ooooh, a whole day's broadcast from 39? Man, I want a copy!!!

=WR=

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Hmmm -- I just cleared my cache, and now I'm not seeing *anybody's* avatars. Very odd!!

For a while last night, your avatar, at least on my computer, was Aaron of Aaron Hats in his newsboy cap. This forum software is weird sometimes.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Hmmm -- I just cleared my cache, and now I'm not seeing *anybody's* avatars. Very odd!!

Your avatar looks okay to me. But I still think I'll bequeath my current avatar to you when I retire it. It's just so,...you!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. That's too cool that this has survived and come down to us. I wonder if anyone had the presence of mind to record a few other full days of broadcasts somewhere?

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I wonder if anyone had the presence of mind to record a few other full days of broadcasts somewhere?

Yeah, like 7 December 1941, perhaps?

Man, it's tempting, though. 95 bucks is a mite steep, but I'm sure it's well worth it.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Yeah, like 7 December 1941, perhaps?

Man, it's tempting, though. 95 bucks is a mite steep, but I'm sure it's well worth it.

It's 19 hours Tony! That's a lot of listening enjoyment.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

That's half a really good vintage hat on eBay.

 

[missjo]

I was told these broadcasts are in the public domain, there are no copyrights on them, some time ago I bought the same broadcast on 1 cd for about $10 on ebay.
I guess you pay these people for the remastering and cleaning up they do on the original broadcasts and the ones I bought are the original recordings off less quality?

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's a lot of different versions of this set floating around these days -- usually sourced from one of two different cassette tape releases in the 80s. One of these sets is actually incomplete -- some material was deleted in order to fit onto the allotted number of cassettes. The other is complete, and was much closer in generation to the original transcription discs -- however, both sets are significantly off-speed, so that if you tried to listen to them in hour-for-hour real-time, you'd end up out of synch with the clock.

The set I remastered came from a low-generation tape transfer of the original discs, which I carefully time-corrected. Nothing is deleted from this set -- everything that was on the original discs is on the transfer -- even the seven minutes of dead air when the transmitter breaks down!

(Disclaimer -- I have no connection with the Archives -- I did that project on a freelance basis for a flat fee, and receive no royalties.)

As for other complete broadcast days, in fact most of December 7-8 1941 does survive -- NBC made a continuous recording of both its Red and Blue network feeds on a crude dictating-machine device called the Memovox, and these recordings are held by the National Archives. I've heard them, and they're very poor audio quality, but nevertheless quite fascinating.

Both NBC and CBS recorded their coverage of D-Day, and Radio Yesteryear released both sets on cassette in 1984 for the 40th Anniversary of the landings. They've since become available on MP3 from any number of dealers, but I have only the cassettes, and can't vouch for the quality of the digital versions. Both sets run about 40 consecutive hours over June 6-7th, and include both news coverage and everyday programming.

(NBC actually recorded everything it aired from June 6th thru August 16th -- and *that* continuous recording of over two months exists at the Library of Congress!)

 

[missjo]

Thanks for that!

The 1939 broadcast I have for sale lasts 19 hours and 9 minutes.
I also have the complete radio broadcast from D-day, it lasts 23 hours and 18 minutes long.
The Pearl Harboud radio broadcast I have for sale lasts 20 hours and 50 minutes .

But to me the most interesting broadcasts are the ones I made myself, mixing old music, speeches, shows and static to create a few hours of a broadcast in nazi germany, the occupied Netherlands, etc.

 

[ledsled]

Ironic

fftopic:

One of the ironic moments of my life is that on the morning of September 11th I was listening to a cassette from WWII (Pearl Harbor & the FDR speech) while driving into work. I was working in an office by myself, so was not aware of the twin towers until I logged into my email. I spent the rest of the day listening to the radio, and did not see any televised images until that evening. The hospitals near where I was working was close enough to NYC to be discharging patients to make room for survivors. Sirens could be heard all day long as the procession went on.

 

[The Wolf]

Wow, what did I start?

Thanks to everyone for adding something interesting.
I'm not playing favorites, but thank you Lizzie for the great information you added.:eusa_clap

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[George Wagner]

The September 21, 1939 Broadcast Day was my very first purchase (on reel-to-reel tape) when I first began seriously collecting OTR during the late 1970s. (Before that I had been limited to a few 16-inch transcriptions I'd remastered, George Garadenian-type phonograph records and early OTR cassettes from the local public library.)

I saved the tapes until my next day off, then arose at exactly 6:00 AM, started listening, finishing up past midnight on the next day.

By the way, there is a partial broadcast day, about 10 hours, from August 10, 1945, just as the Second World War is ending.

 

[George Wagner]

fftopic:

One of the ironic moments of my life is that on the morning of September 11th I was listening to a cassette from WWII (Pearl Harbor & the FDR speech) while driving into work. I was working in an office by myself, so was not aware of the twin towers until I logged into my email. I spent the rest of the day listening to the radio, and did not see any televised images until that evening. The hospitals near where I was working was close enough to NYC to be discharging patients to make room for survivors. Sirens could be heard all day long as the procession went on.

I did worse than that. I'd been up all night doing OTR research on the Internet, then tumbled into bed about an hour before the first plane struck the WTC. I slept through everything. So I learned the news all at once around 4:30 PM.