old time radio online

[melankomas]

(Links deleted due to Lounge copyright policy -- please note that links to download sites are not permitted. Links to podcasts *are* permitted, since the podcaster assumes responsibility for the copyright status of the material he presents.)

 

[melankomas]

otrfan is a lovely site! it's one of my favorites, too; thanks!

today, i'll share a site for both purchase and free downloading. otrcat is a nice way to sample shows, and learn a bit about their histories.

http://otrcat.com/today.php

 

[LizzieMaine]

(Had to delete my own link due to Lounge copyright policy -- sorry!)

 

[Fletch]

Bless you Lizzie. Thanks to you I've just discovered Easy Aces!

I just realized why Dean Mora named his kitty cat Mr. Ace!

 

[melankomas]

today i'll share a podcast sort of thing, with channels in several genres. this is where i discovered the Red Panda.

http://radiomemories.libsyn.com/

 

[LizzieMaine]

Bless you Lizzie. Thanks to you I've just discovered Easy Aces!

I just realized why Dean Mora named his kitty cat Mr. Ace!

Yes indeed -- one of my all-time favorites! You've got plenty of fun listening ahead with that one...

 

[Bart]

Old Time Radio

HEY!!!! Everyone, I love the old time radio and want to record some which you have been talking about. What do I do? Do I need an MP3 player or a Pod caster, a Blackberry, or a simple little tape recorder.....perish the thought ..... can I copy to my hard drive?......sorry I am not up on these modern contraptions....I like running boards on 1938 black Caddies with EG Robinson hanging on with a machine gun blasting away.

But observing Fedora Lounge people they will bring me up to speed, Right?.

 

[melankomas]

HEY!!!! Everyone, I love the old time radio and want to record some which you have been talking about. What do I do? Do I need an MP3 player or a Pod caster, a Blackberry, or a simple little tape recorder.....perish the thought ..... can I copy to my hard drive?......sorry I am not up on these modern contraptions....I like running boards on 1938 black Caddies with EG Robinson hanging on with a machine gun blasting away.

But observing Fedora Lounge people they will bring me up to speed, Right?.

Bart,

i'm very pleased to meet you! i'll do my best to help.

first, visit one of the sites mentioned above, and download some mp3 files. save them on your hard drive in a place you will easily recall.

if you have an mp3 player, you can transfer the files to the player. if you'd like to create a compact disc, i'll tell you how. i'll give you very generic, basic information; if you need a detailed tutorial, please tell me your operating system (Windows XP? Mac OSX? Red Hat Linux? et cetera) and media player of choice. i'll make a tutorial with screenshots to help you, if i have that operating system and player at hand.

first, obtain a blank CD (CD-R) and place it in your computer's optical drive. a window may appear with options such as "Burn Blank CD Using X Media Player". feel free to select from these options, or close the window.

next, open your media player. look for a "Burn CD" option. this may be within a menu marked "Tools". if you tell me your media player of choice, i'll tell you exactly how to find this utility. you will likely have an option to burn an mp3 CD or an audio CD. if you'd like to create a disc you can listen to in any CD player, select the audio CD option.

next, look for an option such as "Add Tracks to this CD". this should open a window where you can browse to your saved radio mp3 files. select which files to include on the CD.

when you've selected the files you would like, begin the burning process. this may take some time, depending on the speed of your optical drive.

when the process is complete, remove the disc and enjoy listening!

 

[melankomas]

lol

i'm listening to a 1943 broadcast of the Bob Hope Show. the guest is Cary Grant, and it's hilarious! this is a streamable station from Live365:

http://users.adelphia.net/~n1dk/

 

[Mike in Seattle]

HEY!!!! Everyone, I love the old time radio and want to record some which you have been talking about. What do I do? Do I need an MP3 player or a Pod caster, a Blackberry, or a simple little tape recorder.....perish the thought ..... can I copy to my hard drive?......sorry I am not up on these modern contraptions....I like running boards on 1938 black Caddies with EG Robinson hanging on with a machine gun blasting away.

But observing Fedora Lounge people they will bring me up to speed, Right?.

Adding a little something to Melankomas' excellent response to your question above, if there's a link to a sound file, you can usually right-click on it, select "Save Target As..." and save it to your hard disk, a floppy, even a CD/DVD burner, or thumb drive/flash drive.

Example - on the page Melankomas supplied the link to - if you go to that page, the first item is an episode of The Whistler. If you place your mouse arrow over where it says "Whistler Penalty,The March-28-1943.mp3" down in the lower left corner of your browser window, you'll see text show up ending with "...March-28-1943.mp3" which tells you the link is a sound file (.mp3, wav are the most common).

If it ends with .htm or .html, that tells you the link is to another webpage and on it you may find the actual soundfile link. So if the link were to be something like "...March-28-1943.htm" you'd click on that and THEN look for the link to the actual sound file that you wish to save.

You can also pull the files out of your internet cache if it's something that just plays without an actual link to the soundfile - should I explain how to do that or am I already way over everyone's head or too far into computer nerd mode?

 

[LizzieMaine]

You can also pull the files out of your internet cache if it's something that just plays without an actual link to the soundfile - should I explain how to do that or am I already way over everyone's head or too far into computer nerd mode?

By all means -- anything that enhances the radio listening experience is OK here. Just keep it so us analog people can understand!

 

[Mike in Seattle]

OK...let's say you've logged onto a site and there's no link for a sound file that just plays. Sometimes you're just not going to be able to get the file because it's imbedded into a Macromedia Flash file or similar, and sometimes it's a streaming sound file that's almost impossible to save unless you have some specialized software. But let's say you click on a link to a page about a particular show, you're taken to that page, the episode plays but there's no link to the actual sound file.

Or let's say you logged on, listened to a show that was in MP3 format and now want to save the file but you can't remember the page that had the link to save/play the file. In your browser, there's usually a tool bar at the top of the page with File, Edit, View, etc. Select Tools. Next, select Internet Options. It's about the middle of the box that pops up on most browsers. On the next box that pops up, there's a button for View Files. Click that and it takes you to all the temporary files stored to your computer from viewing web pages (AKA your internet cache). You'll find LOADS of files there - every page background, every graphic (navigation buttons, icons, bullets), photo, internet cookie, etc. from every site you've visited recently...and how recently depends on how long it's been since the cache was flushed or how big the cache is set for.

On the screen showing all the files in the cache, you can click on the little titles at the top to sort the files based on that column. One click is ascending, a second click is descending, a third click takes you back to ascending. A little up/down arrow appears next to the column you've sorted on. Click to sort the Type column. Then just scroll down until you find a section with MP3 files (assuming that's the format used for the sound file you want) and drag a copy of that file to your desktop. Or if it's just little short snippets of dialogue, it may be a WAV file.

I used to have a web page with some family photos, and whenever you accessed the page, it would play a Cary Grant soundclip from Arsenic and Old Lace - "Insanity runs in my family - it practically gallops!" There wasn't a link to the sound file - it was just to amuse those who viewed the page. But say I wanted to save the sound file to my computer - I'd look in the internet cache and in the WAV section, I'd find a file named "insanity-gallops.wav" and I'd do a drag-n-drop to my desktop to save the file.

Other sound files are sometimes MIDI - it's not the original version but a more compact electronic somewhat tinny synthesizer version - you can also save those. On the page about my mom before she died, I had the Driving Miss Daisy" theme as an inside joke since family & friends would jokingly say, after her stroke, someone should do a movie called Driving Miss Gracie with some of the wise-cracks we were always making back and forth when we'd be out driving here and there. It took her a couple years to recognize the background music on "her" page and getting her out of the wheelchair and into the front seat one day, she grabbed the front of my shirt and said, "You think you're funny. Miss Daisy indeed...you're not to big for me to spank!" Anyway, "daisy.mid" would show up in the browser cache after going to that particular page and you could save it to your hard disk if you wanted to.

The easiest way, though, is when the page has a link to click to hear a particular sound, song or episode - simply right-click, chose "Save Target As..." and you've got the file.

 

[DeeDub]

An Alternative Source for Old Time Radio

I, too, have downloaded radio shows from some of the web sites already listed here. I've also bought some on CD. But consider another possibility: XM Radio.

On several of the XM channels, they have old time serials, comedy, news and interview programs. The Decades channels have music of the 40s, 50s, and so on. The Broadway and Cinemagic channels play soundtracks from older plays and movies, as well as more recent fare.

XM isn't free, of course, but ten or twelve bucks a month is a bargain for the range of entertainment they offer. I've got a receiver that I use in the car and in the house, a Walkman-like receiver, and all subscribers can listen online.

I'll gladly do without cable or dish TV, but I won't give up my XM without a fight. And no, they're not paying me for this testimonial. I'm just a satisfied customer.

 

[Mr. Pinstripe Suit]

OTR Podcast + A Fabulous *Modern* "Homage"

For a podcast of genuine OTR in many flavors, try http://boxcars711.podomatic.com and then wait...and wait...for his LONG page to open, complete with his own "box covers" for each show. A little history, a little variety...all good.

However, I'm a *HUGE* fan of modern audio theater and can recommend "The Red Panda" from Decoder Ring Theater as pretty damn good. It's an homage to OTR done in a minimalist fashion that has done very well by it's listeners. Good 30's-ish dialogue feel to it and classic style story lines.

Gregg Taylor, the writer/producer, also now serves up "Black Jack Justice" in alternating cycles with The Red Panda Adventures, but BJJ is only about half a year old while TRP is about to turn two.

To start at the beginning visit http://decoderring.libsyn.com and see the OCTOBER 2005 archive to the right, even though there's Aug/Sept, too. The prior stuff was with training wheels.

Enjoy!!

 

[Tamamiko]

I was in the mood for some Glenn Miller this morning. I kept hitting repeat on the youtube classic of Moonlight Serenade. So I decided to find a big band station on the web and waddaya know... Pandora Radio is a build your own station type place. Go to this link http://www.pandora.com/ and type in whatever it is you're in the mood for (I typed Glenn Miller) and it plays things similar to what you want. I've been listening to the classics all morning with a bit of covers thrown in for fun. The best part is, it's totally free with no commercials. Just constant streaming music. The only "catch" is after so many songs, half an hour I think, you can either sign up or just push play again. Since it was free I chose to sign up. I'm really glad I found it.




Gee, maybe I should go into advertising. LOL

 

[The Wolf]

I have a Louis Jordan channel input at Pandora. Good stuff and the ones I don't like I give a thumbs down to delete it from the playlist.:cool2:

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Adele]

I truly do hope I'm not repeating here (which I don't think I am), but I've always listened to this one station online:

http://www.radiodismuke.com/

 

[Brian Sheridan]

For a podcast of genuine OTR in many flavors, try http://boxcars711.podomatic.com and then wait...and wait...for his LONG page to open, complete with his own "box covers" for each show. A little history, a little variety...all good.

However, I'm a *HUGE* fan of modern audio theater and can recommend "The Red Panda" from Decoder Ring Theater as pretty damn good. It's an homage to OTR done in a minimalist fashion that has done very well by it's listeners. Good 30's-ish dialogue feel to it and classic style story lines.

Gregg Taylor, the writer/producer, also now serves up "Black Jack Justice" in alternating cycles with The Red Panda Adventures, but BJJ is only about half a year old while TRP is about to turn two.

To start at the beginning visit http://decoderring.libsyn.com and see the OCTOBER 2005 archive to the right, even though there's Aug/Sept, too. The prior stuff was with training wheels.

Enjoy!!

Just to let you know there are new Red Panda and Black Jack Justice programs online and free for download. Hilarious as always. Decoder Ring is aces!

 

[K-K-K-Katie]

Online OTR

I'm rather surprised that no-one has mentioned live365.com. I have a premium membership at $5 a month, but there are a ton of free channels. I have at least 30 or more OTR channels at my fingertips, at work and at home. OTR is under the spoken word category if you care to check it out.

 

[Chas]

I'm rather surprised that no-one has mentioned live365.com.

Radio Dismuke was mentioned; that's where his station is hosted.