OTR
- What is "Old Time Radio"?
- Old Time Radio, or OTR as its fans often call it, is a shorthand label for the Golden Age of Radio, from approximately 1920 to 1950, from "Stoopnagle and Budd" and "Amos and Andy" through "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar". This is the period when radio was the dominant mass medium in the United States, roughly equivalent to television's position today. Even so, the comparison suffers, because today's mass market is so heavily fragmented. No single program in any medium commands as much of the audience as "Amos and Andy" or the various Arthur Godfrey programs did at their peak.
Still, it is comparable, in that radio was the average person's primary window on the world: News, sports, entertainment and culture all entered the home through the glowing dial of radio's mahogany console. Radio will probably never be so dominant again, but ARTC is working to revive one little piece of it.
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- I was disappointed in your catalog: I was hoping to fill in some gaps in my OTR collection.
- We are far too busy creating new radio drama to expend the energy necessary to do justice to collecting and marketing OTR. Criticizing us on that basis is analagous to condemning the "Wall Street Journal" because it doesn't carry comics. Meaning no disrespect to OTR, comics or the "Wall Street Journal".
However, just because we do not ourselves traffic in OTR doesn't mean we don't love it. So, on this page you'll find a long list of OTR-related links: One of them will certainly get you started.
Another good starting place is the Old Time Radio Digest, a mailing list devoted to OTR listening and collecting. To join, send e-mail to old.time.radio-request@oldradio.net with the single-word subject: SUBSCRIBE (The body of request mail is ignored by the server.)
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