Old-time Radio - Availability of Recordings

Availability of Recordings

The great majority of pre-World War II live radio broadcasts, many never recorded at all, have not been preserved, and the earlier the date, the less likely it is that a recording of the broadcast was made and survives. A good number of prerecorded syndicated programs from this period have survived because copies of those were originally distributed far and wide. Recordings of live network broadcasts from the World War II years were preserved in the form of pressed vinyl copies issued by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) and survive in relative abundance. Syndicated programs from World War II and later years have nearly all survived. However, after about 1950, when the networks started prerecording their formerly live shows on magnetic tape for subsequent network broadcast, but did not physically distribute copies, the survival rate of recordings of such broadcasts declines precipitously because the tapes, unlike electrical transcription ("ET") discs, could be "wiped" and re-used. Airchecks (off-the-air recordings) of complete shows made by, or at the behest of, individuals for their own private use sometimes help to fill in such gaps. The contents of privately made recordings of live broadcasts from the first half of the 1930s can be of particular interest, as little live material from that period survives. Unfortunately, the sound quality of very early private recordings is often very poor, although in some cases this is largely due to the use of an incorrect playback stylus, which can also badly damage some unusual types of discs.

Most of the Golden Age programs in circulation among collectors – whether on analog tape, CD, or in the form of MP3s – originated from 16-inch transcription discs. In many cases, the circulating recordings are several generations of analog reel-to-reel and cassette tape copies down the line from the original discs, being the product of tape-trading among collectors during the decades before lossless digital duplication was possible. The muffled sound, dropouts, sudden changes in sound quality, unsteady pitch and other defects heard all too often are almost always accumulated tape copy defects. The audio quality of the source discs, when they have survived unscathed and are accessed and dubbed anew, is usually found to be reasonably clear and undistorted, sometimes startlingly good, although like all phonograph records they are vulnerable to wear and the effects of scuffs, scratches and ground-in dust. Many shows from the 1940s have survived only in edited AFRS versions, although some exist in both the original and AFRS forms.