| rdfs:comment | - Old-time radio (OTR) is a phrase frequently used by scholars, fans, and companies to refer to a period in American broadcasting history, from roughly 1926 to 1962, when radio was a dominant entertainment medium. While modern radio is dominated by music stations, newscasts, and call-in talk shows, "old-time radio" featured a wide range of programming.
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| abstract | - Old-time radio (OTR) is a phrase frequently used by scholars, fans, and companies to refer to a period in American broadcasting history, from roughly 1926 to 1962, when radio was a dominant entertainment medium. While modern radio is dominated by music stations, newscasts, and call-in talk shows, "old-time radio" featured a wide range of programming. "Old-time radio" encompassed situation comedies, variety shows, game shows, anthology series, dramas, serials, and live band performances. Soap opera as a form originated in radio, and such programs as The Guiding Light went on to equally long runs on television. Other radio series which successfully transferred to TV include Gunsmoke, Dragnet, and The Lone Ranger. Mellifluous announcers, live sound effects (often created through household implements), and dramatic tag openings characterized the programming of this period. Contrary to the impression that old radio was always "tamer" than television, sound men on programs employed such techniques as chopping a head of cabbage with a machete to simulate decapitation, or grilling bacon to suggest searing flesh. The phrase "old-time radio" has also been applied to programs of like vintage from England (such as The Goon Show), Australia, or Canada, but less frequently since radio has largely retained the same basic scope and significance in these countries, with the BBC still producing regular dramatic series, adaptations, and sitcoms. Within the United States, with the exceptions of occasional revivals, mostly as syndicated series, and sporadic dramas on NPR, radio programming of this stripe is relegated to the past, but made available through record, tape and CD collections, online archives, regional re-broadcasts, live recreations, and satellite radio channels. Arguably the last network radio comedy was The Stan Freberg Show on CBS in 1957. Most soap operas ended in 1960, as the genre moved to television. The mystery series Suspense and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar both ceased in the fall of 1962. Thus, Jim Henson grew up during the tail-end of the radio era, and was exposed to such series as The Shadow and The Green Hornet.
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