THE
BEST FREE
RADIO DRAMA INTERNET
SITES
Selected
by Mark
Leeper, last updated November 30, 2011
Online version of this list: http://leepers.us/radio.htm
Please send comments and suggested additions to mleeper@optonline.net
Those of you who have read the MT VOID for a while know that I have a special interest in audio drama. It is particularly convenient to download it from the Internet. Different users will record programs in different ways. These days most people download from iTunes or download MP3s. Below are the best Internet sites I have found providing audio drama. The sites I list offer radio drama without charge.
I am pleased to say that there has really been an explosion in the number of sites offering free drama radio drama. There are several that offer radio from the Golden Age, roughly 1940 to 1960, but many sites are creating their own new radio drama.
There are really two types of site. There is PC radio. These just broadcast 24 hours a day from what is usually a non-published schedule. The listener can sample it at random times or can just record an interval of time and then go back and choose what he likes. There are also download sites where you choose a program and listen on your PC, record to tape, or download it to an mp3 player. iTunes also offers a wide variety of audio drama.
Look for the notations GEM: and NEW ENTRY:
Please note the "Of Related Interest" sites at the end. It is not exactly radio drama when you get readings of stories and entire novels free from the Internet, but it will be of interest to many of the same people. Having listened to Old Time Radio for many years some of the old sources are getting repetitive. But there is so much new media of interest I really cannot keep up.
Please let me know if you find discrepencies, particularly sites going away. And like I say above send comments and suggested additions to mleeper@optonline.net.
And thanks for your help.
PC
RADIO STATIONS PLAYING CONTINUOUS OLD TIME RADIO DRAMA
The first five are much the same as each other. Yesterday USA has more original programming and longer musical interludes. That is not to my taste, but the programs are good.
1. Treasure Trove ACB Radio: ACB is the American Council for the Blind. This site was established as entertainment for the blind, but I can imagine they have a lot of other listeners as well. It has a really good selection of old time radio including some BBC science fiction. You might want to also make a small contribution to the ACB.
http://acbradio.org/treasure-trove.html
2. Wizard Media Old Time Radio: This site offers a program a day in several different categories like a daily "X Minus One" or "The Cisco Kid." Some videos are also available. They also offer a link to listen again to ten previous shows in each category.
http://www.wizzard.tv/oldtimeradio
3. Yesterday USA: This station associated with a broadcast museum is a good source of old time radio, but it does it own original programming much of which is not very interesting to me. There are long musical interludes, interviews, hosts talking, musical programs, etc. They do more children's programs than others above.
http://www.yesterdayusa.com/streams.htm
4. WNAR: This is a Pennsylvania AM radio site that is a lot like Treasure Trove and Yesterday USA. It has nonstop old time radio. At least for this one there is a schedule right on the page. Some of the programming is religious.
5. Crimetime Radio: This is all crime, detective, and police procedurals. Rocky Jordan, Broadway is my Beat, etc. 24 x 7.
http://www.live365.com/stations/otrnow?site=device
6. Audio Noir: This is all crime, detective, and police procedurals. Much like Crimtime Radio. Both sites are free but request donations.
7. OTR NOW: This station offers two different streams of Old Time Radio. One stream is general radio with standard Old Time Radio programs. The other is Crime Radio which they say features "Old-time Radio Detectives, Cops & Robbers, Guns & Ghouls Danger & Dames!"
http://www.otrnow.com/otrnow/index.htm
WEEKLY/DAILY SOURCES FOR RADIO DRAMA DOWNLOADS
NEW ENTRY:
1. The Drama Pod: This is a site is mostly dramatic readings but it also records plays and makes them available free for download. Their subject matter is in large part horror and science fiction. It takes a little poking around to find all that is offered.
http://thedramapod.com/drupal/
2. BBC Saturday Play: 60-minute weekly plays. The BBC Saturday play tends to be light entertainment. It typically may be a comedy, a crime story, or a thriller. There are a few romance stories. BBC radio plays generally have high production values.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/saturday_play.shtml
3. BBC Afternoon Plays (45-minute plays, five a week) This is more a
mixed bag.
There are love stories, comedies (some quite funny), fantasies,
detective
stories, historical dramas, you name it. Never science
fiction, but
occasionally they do ghost stories.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml
4. BBC World Service World Drama (60-minute weekly plays). Yet another site for new plays each week. The plays may not be available outside the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/world_drama.shtml
5. The Halls of Ivy: This is a weekly comedy/drama about a likeable
college president. It
stars the distinguished Ronald Colman and usually stresses intellectual
values.
http://classicmoviefavorites.com/colman/ivy.html
6. Decoder Ring Theater: This site seems to specialize in modern pastiches of Old Time Radio. Currently they are running a series with their hero the Red Panda (obviously patterned on the Green Hornet). In the past they ran a radio noir hard-boiled detective series called Black Jack Justice. The acting is a little too tongue-in-cheek for my taste, perhaps inspired by the Firesign Theater.
http://decoderring.libsyn.com/
7.
WBAI Golden Age and Mass
Backwards: Max Schmid on WBAI does a weekly show "The Golden
Age of
Radio" and he also will frequently play radio drama on his other weekly
show "Mass Backwards." These shows are downloadable from the
WBAI archive. Do a search on the page for the two titles and
then click
on link in the right column.
GEM:
8.
Imagination Theater: This is a weekly
radio program of newly produced original drama. Each is a program of
about
50-minutes with generally two stories. They have several series with
continuing
characters. They do stories with detectives like Sherlock Holmes and
their own
Harry Nile, a sort of soft-boiled detective in the Philip Marlowe vein
but a little lighter. They
also have stories with an occult detective. Then a lot of their stories
are not
in series. This is the most accurate pastiche of Old Time Radio
currently
available and is something of an institution. If you have heard all the
old OTR
shows, this station will have good material you have not heard before.
Jim
French Productions syndicate the show to local radio stations, but the
weekly
show is also available at their web site. It is a little hard
to find
where in their site to find the program. Go to the home page
and on the
right side you'll see the sidebar that says: "Show Information."
Click on "Imagination Theater" then click on the "Listen
now" buttons.
http://jimfrenchproductions.com/
GEM:
9. LA Theatre Works: This is just one play a week, but it is two hours long and usually a production of very high quality. It is good (frequently familiar) playwrights and good (frequently familiar) actors. After a week the plays remain on the site, but are replaced with a sample that is just the first 15 minutes. I recommend checking each week.
http://www.bigcontact.com/latw
GEM:
10. Escape and Suspense: Escape and Suspense were the two best action and adventure anthology series. This site is a treasury collection of episodes. Notice that in the right column you have links to many more episodes.
http://www.escape-suspense.com/
But wait. There's more. Actually there is access to many more shows available. Click on a series title anywhere on the above listings and you get a text description telling you about the series and several episodes you can click on to hear or download. Sadly there is no way to find a complete list of the programs this site offers.
GEM:
11. 19 Nocturne Boulevard: This is another great find. Julie Hoverson is twice a month releasing great half-hour plays in the old time radio tradition. The stories are fully dramatized with a touch of fun in the acting. The stories are science fiction, horror, and suspense. There is even a western with the continuing character The Deadeye Kid. The genres are a mixed bag, but the quality is quite high. There is also an archive of the older programs. Julie Hoverson also has done a big collection of dramatic readings of H. P. Lovecraft stories.
http://www.19nocturneboulevard.net/Episodes.htm
12. Relic Radio: This site that offer a single radio program most days. Each is categorized as science fiction, horror, thriller, or just general. But there are not many that are just general. Most tell you the date that the program ran, mostly from the golden years of 1940-1955. There is also an archive of the older programs going back to December 2008. I would not put it in the "Gem" class, but it is a nice find.
13. Podcast Pickle--Horror Stories: I have a hard time navigating around the Podcast Pickle site to find out what all can be found there. However their horror stories page has Old Time Radio horror programs offered for downloading. They keep a rolling list of their last one hundred and post a new one on the average of every four or five days.
GEM:
NEW ENTRY:
FIXED
COLLECTIONS FOR DOWNLOAD
1. The Mercury Theatre on the Air: Perhaps the greatest genius of radio drama was Orson Welles. This site seems to be a complete source for everything he did on radio. This includes the famous October 30, 1938 "Panic Broadcast" based on THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, but even better is his adaptation of DRACULA.
http://www.mercurytheatre.info/
2. Quiet Please: Wyllis Cooper created one of the better horror series of Old Time Radio. Some episodes of Quiet Please are very good mood pieces. A few have become classics.
http://www.quietplease.org/index.php?section=listepisodes
GEM:
3. The OTR Network Library: This is a terrific collection of over 12,000 Old Time Radio programs. Not just the weaker programs either. Things like a long run of Lux Radio Theater. This site is a must for OTR fans. Really!
GEM:
4. The
Internet
Archive: This site is part of a very large project to save Internet
material
and make it constantly available. That mission covers a lot
of ground but
part is that they store Old Time Radio shows, more than a thousand at
this
point. It is a fascinating site to just browse to see what
they do have
in addition to radio shows. Like any large library it is impossible to
know
exactly what to look for, but you can let the search window look for
specific
items. For example, search for "Lux" and you will find years
of
"Lux Radio Theater" with hour-long radio dramatizations of films.
http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio
5.
The Wireless
Theatre Company: Mariele Temple of Wireless says,
* The Wireless Theatre Company is an award winning audio drama company producing original radio drama, comedy, stories, sketches, interviews, plays and more to be downloaded as MP3sto listener's iPods.
* We release up to 2 new productions a month of various genres, including live radio recordings that take place in London's West End.
*
We have over 100 new productions and have worked with over 150 actors
and writers, including Prunella Scales, Nicholas Parsons, Timothy West,
Julian Glover, Christopher Timothy, Richard O'Brien, Rula Lenska,
LionelBlair, Mary Tamm, Abi Titmuss and more.
* All the plays are produced in a professional studio and are free to download after a quick registration.
* In 2011 we won Best Entertainment Producer and Best Online Multi Platform Creator at The Radio Academy's Production Awards.
* All the productions feature new writing, original music and are professionally edited.
* We are preferred suppliers to BBC Radio 4.
To listen and download the plays is free, but it does require registering with the site and getting a log-in and password. Available are: Drama Plays, Comedy Plays, Short Plays, Comedy Serials, Musical Comedy, Sketch Comedy, Satirical Plays, Poems, Short Stories, and Educational Plays.
http://www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk/
6. Radio Tales of the Strange and Fantastic: This is not a big collection, but it has some good radio programs. Mostly they are collected from other sites like the archive.org. But it is nice to have the links in one place.
http://www.digital-eel.com/rtsf/
GEM:
7.
RadioLovers: Not as extensive as
the Internet OTR Archive (I think, I haven't counted) but still a
fairly large
source of OTR sorted by series.*
NEW ENTRY:
GEM:
"Download here. The password is {sherlock}". Click on the word "here" and then enter the password you were just given.
GEM:
NEW ENTRY:
OF
RELATED INTEREST
GEM:
1.
Radio Drama Revival!: Fred Greenhalgh does a weekly show (dated
Thursdays) about 30-minutes to an hour in length dedicated to (mostly
new) radio drama. He will have entire productions of radio
drama
or he will just have programs about how radio drama is created
today. The program is always of interest and it is a good
place
to learn not just of Greenhaigh's own productions but also of other
productions companies around the country with a copious collection of
links. His site also offers archives of programs going back
to
January of 2007. Generally Greenhalgh will give an introduction talking about audio drama news and then goes to an audio-play. The show seems to be a real labor of love.
http://www.radiodramarevival.com/
They have just recently added a special archive of their horror programs for Halloween, 2011. I am not sure if it will stay around, but for now it has something like 24 horror plays of recent vintage. This archive can be found
http://www.radiodramarevival.com/horror-radio-plays-halloween-scary-audio-stories/
GEM:
2.
RadioGOLDINdex: This is not a source
for Old Time Radio, but it has very useful episode guides for Old Time
Radio
series. It is a valuable reference.
http://radiogoldindex.com/frame1.html
3.
Simply Scripts: A site with scripts
and transcripts of OTR programs*
http://www.simplyscripts.com/radio.html
GEM:
4.
LibriVox Audio: This is not drama but
books read by human readers (as opposed to some sites that
have computer
voices). There are over 1600 books in public domain
available.
Topics include the classics, science fiction, fantasy,
history, etc.
http://www.archive.org/details/librivoxaudio
5.
Podiobooks: This is a lot like LibriVox. It is downloadable
readings of whole books or shorter pieces, fiction and nonfiction, read
by non-professionals. They also do have an Audiodrama
category.
6. Golden Age of Radio--World War II News Broadcasts: Not drama but dramatic. A large collection of radio broadcasts, 662 in all, documenting World War II while it was happening.*
7. Insomnia Radio: You either love Jean Shepherd or you don't. He has a lot of fans in the the greater New York area. Also some people discovered him through the film A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983). Whenever you crave a shot of Shep, he is here 24x7.