WJSV Complete Broadcast Day Remaster

I'll be getting back to Science Fiction soon, but I took on this project, and interested or not, here it is. All 19 hours, slightly high on the reverb, but the original files didn't offer much to work with. They actually reported a 0kbps bit rate. Never seen that before. How is that done?

The radio station got a bit of a boost when I broadcast it for three days straight last week, about a half dozen listeners spent five hours or more with it. So I'm not the only one who finds this fascinating. Less than a hundred years ago, this broadcast feels like Science Fiction, another planet, aliens. I was born smack in the middle of then and now. Does anyone who might have heard this original broadcast feel like they're living on another planet?

Download is located at the top of the blog.

Remaster of X-Minus 1 The Map Makers based on a story by Frederick Pohl

The Map Makers is story with ideas that seem much more like they belong in the last twenty years than the from the 1950's. Human brains modified to act as computers, and something experienced very much like the 1990's version of future cyberspace. Interesting how one finds that some ideas are much older than expected.

Download is located at the top of the blog

Remaster X-Minus 1 of Issac Asimov's Nightfall

I've never seen this story done justice. Maybe it is something that will always be a better read than movie, teleplay or radio-play. I remember a god-awful movie of Nightfall I saw sometime in the eighties. This is a decent, if melodramatic, adaptation.

Download is located at the top of the blog.

Remaster of X-Minus 1 Episodes, written by Philip K Dick

While tens of thousands mp3's of OTR radio shows exist out there on the internet, more than half of them are unlistenable. X-Minus 1 has some of the poorer audio quality of the any of the series that circulate. Unfortunate, as it is one of the best. Sci-Fi legends had written many of the scripts, and the series stands up today as engaging and entertaining. So I've taken two of my favorites, both by my favorite Science Fiction writer, Philip K Dick, and remastered them for the clearest possible audio. My goal is to provide shows where each actor's voice can be heard at a level volume, and I think I've done this, though because of unevenness in the original recording, some voices come across as tinny.

For those who don't know Philip Dick, he is likely the third largest Science Fiction movie franchise behind Star Wars and Star Trek. Nicholas Cage's new movie, Next, is based on his story "The Golden Man". Last year A Scanner Darkly was released. Blade Runner and Total Recall were based on his novels. Through the nineties his name on the screen brought loud applause and cheers. His stories still bring in movie goers, but now his name tends to be buried in the credits and brings only scattered applause. Seems the public mind is too full of other celebrities to include mere writers anymore. I'll bet you a nail from my coffin that one hundred years from now the designer who does the background color shading in the third remake of the Harry Potter series will have bigger credits than JK Rowling.

All my remastered files will be kept at the top of the blog until such time that I make so many I'll have to move them to another page.

Dragnet

This is the city . . .


Link: http://www.archive.org/details/dragnet

Dimension-X, X Minus 1 - Complete Runs of Both Series

X Minus 1 and its antecedent, Dimension X, broadcasted the best science fiction radio dramas in the United States. From 1954 through 1958 some of the best science fiction short stories, like the Veldt by Ray Bradbury, came to life first in these dramas.

Many great writers wrote radio-plays or allowed their works to be adopted for the show (see parial list below). Science Fiction was in its infancy on television, and America lagged behind Britain, who had Quartermass and Avengers around this time. It wasn't until The Twilight Zone in the early sixties that a serious science fiction drama came to US television.

The mid fifties were the waning days of radio drama, as soap operas and situation comedies made an easier, and cheaper, transition to televison.

I've provided a link to archive.org to get the files or listen to the streams, as the files are too large to upload to free transfer services.

Here is a list of some of the more famous epidoses of X Minus 1:

The Colony and The Defenders by Philip K Dick

Universe by Robert Heinlein

Mars is Heaven by Ray Bradbury, and the Veldt from Illustrated Man is performed as a radio drama.

Adaptation of Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

The Reluctant Heroes by Frank M. Robinson


Link: http://www.archive.org/details/XMinus1_A

WJSV Complete Broadcast Day On September 21, 1939

I once spent a Sunday listening to almost all of this. The key feature of the broadcast is President Roosevelt's Address to Congress. Britain and France had declared war on Germany, and Roosevelt is asking for the repeal of the Neutrality Act.

The inital hours of the broadcast are filled with Arthur Godfrey, who fills the time with small talk, birthday announcements, commercials, delivered with what sounds like a bad cold. Then in what would have been the late morning, a number of soap operas begin. These end at 1:30pm with the beginning of the news broadcasts that fill up the afternoon, before and after the address to Congress. Then there is a Washington Senators baseball game, followed with news, plays and music programs for the remainder of the evening.

WJSV was the CBS station located in Washington DC and decided to record the entire day's broadcast for the National Archive. The most interesting segments are the news broadcasts surrounding President Roosevelt's speech. Compare these to the rapid banter on cable news. It seems too simplistic to say the times were slower, people more thoughtful. What comes to my mind is that in 1939, people required much less amusement.

This is 19 hours of audio on one CD, in the form of MP3 files.

Here is the itinerary of the broadcast:

6:30 Sundial with Arthur Godfrey (music)
8:30 Certified Magic Carpet (quiz show)
8:45 Bachelor's Children (soap)
9:00 Pretty Kitty Kelly (soap)
9:15 The Story of Myrt & Marge (soap)
9:30 Hilltop House (soap)
9:45 Stepmother (soap)
10:00 Mary Lee Taylor (soap)
10:15 Brenda Curtis (soap, featuring Agnes Moorehead)
10:30 Big Sister (soap)
10:45 Aunt Jenny's True Life Stories (soap that Bob & Ray loved to parody)
11:00 Jean Abbey (news for women)
11:15 When a Girl Marries (soap)
11:30 The Romance of Helen Trent (soap)
11:45 Our Gal Sunday (soap)
12:00 The Goldbergs (comedy)
12:15 Life Can Be Beautiful (soap)
12:30 Road of Life (soap)
12:45 This Day Is Ours (soap)
1:00 Sunshine Report (news)
1:15 The Life & Love of Dr. Susan (soap)
1:30 Your Family and Mine (soap)
1:45 News
2:00 President Roosevelt's Address to Congress (speech)
2:40 Premier Edouard Daladier
3:00 Address Commentary (news)
3:15 The Career of Alice Blair (soap)
3:30 News (news)
3:42 Rhythm & Romance
3:45 Scattergood Baines
4:00 Baseball: Cleveland Indians at Washington Senators (sports)
5:15 The World Dances (music)
5:30 News (news)
5:45 Sports News (news)
6:00 Amos and Andy (comedy)
6:15 The Parker Family (comedy)
6:30 Joe E. Brown (comedy)
7:00 Ask-It Basket (quiz)
7:30 Strange as it Seems (true stories)
8:00 Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour (variety)
9:00 The Columbia Workshop - "Now It's Summer" (drama)
9:30 Americans at Work (true stories)
10:00 News (news)
10:15 Music (music)
10:30 Albert Warner (news)
11:30 Teddy Powell Band (music)
12:00 Louis Prima Orchestra (music)
12:30 Bob Chester Orchestra (music


Download Link: WJSV Complete Broadcast Day On September 21, 1939