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Re: [ARSCLIST] OTR online?

Tom Fine wrote:
Most people take OTR to encompass old radio broadcasts, not playing of old records like Dismuke's internet-streaming show.

That said, do some surfing at archive.org because there are also many recordings of live band remote broadcasts, which were the common way a lot of music was broadcast back in the day. For many years, many radio stations would not play records over the air, for a number of reasons. This changed dramatically in the years after WWII. This was not a hard-fast rule, there were exceptions in both legitimate licensed broadcasting as well as pirate and off-shore broadcasting.


You have confused radio stations with radio networks. It was the networks which did not allow the playing of recordings, not the stations. Almost every radio station played records and recordings in their local programming. I don't know where you got the idea that local stations did not air records and recordings. (The only notable local exceptions were WEAF, WJZ, and KPO until Oct 29, 1937 -- NBC was trying to keep their flagship stations "pure".) And what do you mean by "pirate and off-shore broadcasting"??? That didn't come about until the late 50s and mainly in Europe where there never was a prohibition against recordings in any country at any time. Earlier there were legit European stations in the 1930s like Radio Luxembourg and Radio Paris broadcasting commercial English language programs recorded in London back to England, but as I mentioned, no European station or national network prohibited recordings. Only in the U.S. were the networks that weird. And there were the Mexican border stations XER, XERA, etc in the 1930s, but as I said, there never were any prohibitions against local U.S. stations playing recordings so this was nothing unusual in that respect.


As for those U.S. networks, Mutual never had that prohibition. It was only NBC and CBS. The NBC prohibition ended on Feb. 8, 1949 with memo #2-49-005 from Ken R. Dyke to NBC execs, and CBS probably also did so at around the same time. NBC had allowed some recorded repeats on their Pacific coast NBC Blue starting on June 22, 1939 to keep from losing a couple of kids programs. Jack Benny was included in this allowance for a year or so till they moved him back to Pacific Red. NBC made only two specific nationwide pre-war allowances . They allowed ONE airing on each network of an excerpt of the Hindenburg Disaster recording, and an hourly repeat of the early morning Prime Minister Chamberlain Declaration of War on Sept 3, 1939. Both CBS and NBC unknowingly aired 4 short recordings of King George VI's coronation ceremony when taking the BBC summary program at the end of the day, and NBC was furious when they discovered that Lowell Thomas had fed them via recordings an interview with the French Premier a few days after the coronation, and Queen Wilhelmina and Lord Baden Powell on July 31, 1937 instead of doing the interviews live. But that is the network, not local stations. By 1943 NBC had said they would air war related recordings of importance, and did so for FDR's speech about North Africa, but they were very selective. They did air a few recordings on D-Day including George Hicks report from aboard a ship. All the networks started airing one-hour delayed programming for the non-Daylight Saving Time stations after the war, and this led to ABC (which had been NBC Blue before 1942) allowing Bing Crosby to pre-record and edit Philco Radio Time in 1946.


So, a show like Dismuke's probably wouldn't exist under the lexicon of OTR.

But not for the reasons you gave.


Mike Biel mbiel@xxxxxxxxx


By the way, in the perfect world, the major copyright owners (megaglomerate music companies) would happily and wholeheartedly fund a multi-hour weekly series for NPR hosted by Dismuke or someone like him highlighting all these gems from their vaults. The sponsorship annoucements could tell listeners to go to a special "store" at Amazon or the like to buy the reissue CD's of whatever is available in that format. This would take a different vault-management style than has been shown in recent years.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lou Judson" <inaudio@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2009 2:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] OTR online?


Thanks Tom. Those are good, but what I really meant was more people
like Dismuke who program old music currently - with commentary and
the like...

<L>

Lou Judson • Intuitive Audio
415-883-2689


On Jan 1, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Tom Fine wrote:

There is a ton of stuff at www.archive.org. Search on old radio first to get a general listing, then get as specific as you like.

Also, a listmember runs:
www.oldtimeradioonmp3.com
the sound quality level of his MP3 is very high.

And of course Radio Spirits has a website.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lou Judson" <inaudio@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2009 2:12 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] OTR online?


I would love to have a listing of all the OTR links available. Been
enjoying Dismuke, WAMU Hot Jazz Saturday Night, and would love to
have links handy from our good radio people here!

Thanks very much and Happy New Year - may it be a good one (not to
mention better!),

Lou



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