LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,715
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Transcriptions could be made for many different reasons. The most common was to provide a recording of a program for post-broadcast evaluation. Beginning in the early 1930s, many private recording studios offered "air checking" services that would record a program off-the-air on aluminum discs for use by performers, advertisers, or advertising agencies. In 1935, NBC opened a Radio Recording Division to provide this service internally for its clients. The majority of radio recordings that survive today were recorded by such services for such reasons. Many other programs were never broadcast live in the first place -- they were made and released on recordings for sale to individual stations, and by contract they were to be destroyed or returned to the distributor for destruction after broadcast. Many, however, were pilfered by station employees or recovered by dump-pickers before they could be destroyed.
By reasonable estimate, well over a quarter of a million radio programs still survive in the United States -- most of them in institutional collections such as the Library of Congress. NBC donated the bulk of its archive to the LOC in the late 1970s, but before that time many of the recordings were pilfered by employees, or lost to breakage or decomposition. Many others were simply discarded when they became irrelevant in one way or another.
Many sponsors kept archives of programs they presented, and the same fate befell many of these discs: theft, damage, loss due to poor storage, and a simple sense of "why do we need to save this old junk anyway?"
People began seriously collecting discarded radio recordings in the 1950s, and an organized radio hobby, trading dubs on tape, existed in the sixties. The first company to sell radio recordings to the public, on reels and cassettes, was Radio Yesteryear, formed by collector David Goldin in 1967, and many others followed his lead. These companies -- some legally licensed by copyright owners, and some not -- along private tape traders and radio clubs were the main source for distribution of vintage radio before the internet took over in the late 1990s.
I began collecting in 1977, and the bulk of my own collection is still on tape.
By reasonable estimate, well over a quarter of a million radio programs still survive in the United States -- most of them in institutional collections such as the Library of Congress. NBC donated the bulk of its archive to the LOC in the late 1970s, but before that time many of the recordings were pilfered by employees, or lost to breakage or decomposition. Many others were simply discarded when they became irrelevant in one way or another.
Many sponsors kept archives of programs they presented, and the same fate befell many of these discs: theft, damage, loss due to poor storage, and a simple sense of "why do we need to save this old junk anyway?"
People began seriously collecting discarded radio recordings in the 1950s, and an organized radio hobby, trading dubs on tape, existed in the sixties. The first company to sell radio recordings to the public, on reels and cassettes, was Radio Yesteryear, formed by collector David Goldin in 1967, and many others followed his lead. These companies -- some legally licensed by copyright owners, and some not -- along private tape traders and radio clubs were the main source for distribution of vintage radio before the internet took over in the late 1990s.
I began collecting in 1977, and the bulk of my own collection is still on tape.
I look forward to branching out and discovering more programs. I have started to listen to Lux Theater also. Great stuff.
