70s-80s radio drama "revival"

It has been said that the Golden Age of Radio is said to have ended in 1963 with the airing of the last original episode of Suspense. Maybe so.

Many of us were just being born around then and so we didn't hear the older shows when they were first run. Instead, what we heard was shows from the "otr revival" of the 70s and 80s.

Some of the old-timers might think that these revival shows were an abomination, not worth listening to. In my opinion, the revival shows are decent radio drama.

I have put a show intro sampler (mp3, 1.5MB) online for you. The shows are in the order they appear below.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

With nationwide distribution and 1400 original shows broadcast over 8 years, the RMT is the 500lb gorilla of revival radio shows. Not only did it run a long time but 5-7 shows/week were broadcast (most other series were weeklies). How did they keep up?

I am biased toward RMT because it was the first radio drama of any kind I had ever heard; I didn't hear any rebroadcasts of OTR until years later.

my holdings
series log
a nice RMT essay

CBS Radio Adventure Theater

An offshoot from the RMT, the RAT was geared to a younger audience. The show was identical in feel, structure, music, actors, and sound effects to RMT. The host was Tom Bosley ("Mr. Cunningham"), and 52 shows were produced. General Mills (the cereal people) was supposed to sponsor the second year, but backed out. Sometimes this series is referred to as the CBS GM RAT.

my holdings
series log

Crisis

Another series overshadowed by the RMT, Crisis ran from 1973 to about 1978 with repeats. Although not well-distributed at the time, the author Jim French has achieved something of a cult status among listeners. Almost everyone who has listened to a show from this series has been hooked.

my holdings
series log

Price of Fear

The Price of Fear was hosted by Vincent Price (get it? get it?), and was, IIRC, a BBC-derived series. It is only minimally recognized in the US.

my holdings

Mutual Radio Theater

Originally the Sears Radio Theater, this series featured rotating themes/hosts:

Monday - Western hosted by Lorne Greene
Tuesday - Comedy hosted by Andy Griffeth
Wednesday - Mystery with Vincent Price
Thursday - Drama with Cicely Tyson
Friday - Adventure hosted by Leonard Nimoy

MRT was the only revival show broadcast in stereo. The writing and acting can be a bit wooden at times, and the Nelso Riddle theme is ludicrously florid.

my holdings
series log

Zero Hour

Although RMT usually gets credit for starting the revival, Zero Hour actually beat RMT to the airwaves by broadcasting its first shows in October 1973 (as well as Crisis, below). It featured Rod Serling as the host.

It seems to me that ZH is a bit more adventurous in the construction of its shows; almost avant-garde sometimes. Early on ZH concentrated on longer story arcs that spanned 3-5 shows.

Since RMT and ZH were such close contemporaries, it may be instructive to view CBS' RMT and Mutual's ZH as part of the radio network wars.

my holdings
series log

Into the Future

The CBC and BBC (especially the latter) are still out there producing great radio drama. What's wrong with our public broadcasting system that we can't get any decent radio drama productions?

$Id: revival.orb,v 1.6 2004/06/22 02:05:29 mouse Exp $

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