On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio

In the job I do to earn my living, I spend a lot of time of time outside, working alone; so when the iPod was first introduced a few years ago, I saw it as a boon to those who do similar work--a way to keep entertained while engaged in tedious labor. So I bought one of the first models, way before everyone had an iPod, as they do today.Problem was, eventually you get sick of listening to the same music when you are listening to it 6-8 hours a day. You have to find something new to listen to. This led me to a renewed interest in old time radio (or OTR, as we afficianados have dubbed it). This wasn't a brand new interest, as I had a small collection of old LPs with vintage radio programs, from the pre-CD days; but what was available back then was such a small sampling, there wasn't much to get into.With the advent of both the MP3 file format for audio, and then the internet and ebay, where large numbers of old programs became easily and cheaply available, the world of old time broadcasting suddenly exploded. Now for a small expenditure you can collect hundreds (even thousands) of old programs, including some that are almost complete runs of nearly 20 years. I now have a personal collection of over 10,000 old radio shows that I am slowly working my way through.Naturally with this wealth of material, a reference work is an absolute neccesity or one would be lost in trying to find what's good. Professor Dunning's encyclopedia is such a work. It is a huge, fat book, listing every major show, with pertinent dates, cast and sponsor listings, and long essay entries on the most important shows. Now when loading programs onto my iPod, I always have this book at hand. It is indispensible for this purpose.I disagree with some of his assessments of old shows. F'rinstance, I think Fred Allen was without peer as far as radio comedy goes. No one else was even close. Professor Dunning, however, felt Allen's humor was too topical and many of his jokes may not be understood by the modern listener, and that Jack Benny's work was more timeless. Now, I like Benny's program, and find them amusing (tho I would rate him after not only Fred Allen, but also Duffy's Tavern, Henry Morgan and Fibber McGee & Molly). But as far as comparing with the best of Fred Allen (his famous feud mate), well I think there is no comparison.That is not a knock on this book, but merely an honest difference of opinion--which is good because it shows that this is more than a mere listing of data and statistics, but a book of history and criticism. The book itself has no flaws that I can find.If there are factual errors (as there always are in a book this size), I don't know about them, because the author knows the subject far better than I do.If you are at all interested in OTR, get this book. If you own an iPod, get into old time radio, get a few discs of OTR programs and then get this book and start building up a collection. As with any mass media, much of OTR is junk, but even the junk is worth listening to as a window on the past. And this encyclopedia is the best guide to this window.

I used to work in radio News and had my own evening radio talk show ( it was a 500 watt day-lighter in rural New York...if it had a pulse I interviewed it). So, naturally I love programs from the Golden age of radio...especially the detective/police programs. This book gives a detailed review of just about everything that was on the air then and what vestiges of the Golden Age are aired now. A great book on the background of your favorite programs and stars. Get it!

Why 2 stars instead of 1 star?Because it lists a ton of shows (in alphabetical order) and has too many pages for it to get 1 star.Why 2 stars instead of 5 stars?Here are the reasons:1) It's missing All-Star Western Theater. This show spanned over 2 years and over 100 episodes and starred Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage. The Riders of the Purple Sage appeared in several other shows, and you can find a non-descriptive mention of them in the other shows they appeared in, but not one mention of the fact that they starred in their own show. Not one mention of Cottonseed Clark in the entire book. No mention in the Index. For a show of its importance due to the wealth of talent it had on the show (Dale Evans, Smiley Burnette, Tex Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown, Jack, Jennifer, and Tim Holt, etc), it's not only surprising that this program didn't get plenty written about it, but it's not even mentioned. And when I got this book in the mail and tore open the packaging and sat down to read, I immediately went to All Star Western Theater in the index and in the alphabetical listings, and it wasn't there. The beginning of my depression. How do you miss this entry? How do you miss any reference to this program's existence?!2) You have around 800 pages worth of alphabetical listings of shows, and the majority of the listings give a very small mention of the show. I wanted to read about Have Gun Will Travel. It took less than a minute to read all about it, and they credited Virginia Gregg with starring as "Missy Wong" rather than Miss Wong. You might as well say John Dehner starred as "Meesah Paladin". What you have for most of these pages is the name of the show, what station it was on, what time it aired, and a brief description that you already know if you went to the bother of looking up the show. So I have a book that, in most cases, tells me what I already know. At this point it might as well be a book that just lists every show ever made, and nothing else.Looking up Challenge of the Yukon, I knew that there were a few regular Sgt Prestons, but sometimes one of the characters that would typically play a villain or a friend on the show (as well as on the Lone Ranger) would also appear as Sgt Preston. I wanted to find out who that was. Nope! This book doesn't go into detail. Again, a small amount of info on the show, no info on why the Sgt Preston changed so often early on in the show, and as for a cast of characters, it was basically: See Lone Ranger.3) No mention of how many episodes were part of each show. So if you're an OTR collector and want to make sure you have every episode of a series, this book doesn't give you that information. I know who sponsored some of the shows and I know that such and such obscure show had a 6:30 time slot, but no idea how many episodes. This would've been great information.4) Inconsistency in descriptions of the shows. Many of my favorite shows had very small descriptions. Jack Benny had 7 pages worth of description. Nothing wrong with that, but there was more information on Frank Nelson's part-time role on the Jack Benny show than there was information on entire programs in most cases.5) The entire book is an alphabetical order listing of many shows, followed by an index. If you're searching for a subject, such as a breakdown of all the westerns or a breakdown of all the sci-fi shows, you're out of luck. If you are really into Lights Out and want more shows like that, how are you to know that the Mysterious Traveler or Murder At Midnight are shows that you might like as well? Unless you want to read through 1500 shows and see which ones are horror, etc, then you won't know.6) Because of the format, there's no history lesson here. Which shows started the trend of old time radio? Which ones ended it? Which shows were affected by WWII? There is so much history to old time radio. So many stories that can be told in a book this size. This is a catalog.7) What if you want to learn a lot more about the individual actors and writers that made up these great shows? There aren't sections for these artists. Just an alphabetical list of shows with synopses.It'd be great to see a timeline of old time radio, biographies on the bigger stars, great stories from the shows that can put the reader in the seat of a live audience that gets to watch one of these shows play out. I wasn't around in the 30's - 50's so I have no idea of what attending a show was like back then, and I still have no idea. There isn't even a mention of Jack Benny doing a USO tour. Maybe I have to look something up besides the Jack Benny Show. If I do, I have no idea what it'd be. And that's one of the biggest problems in an encyclopedia that is cluttered with thousands of shows that many will have no interest in. How did WWII change old time radio? This isn't the book to tell you that!If the people who made HISTORICA could write a book on OTR, then that would be a book worth the $75 price. For $75 (I bought mine for $22 and still feel I didn't get my money's worth), you should at least get the number of episodes per show.Because of how much was left out of the book for the sake of putting in as many shows as possible (while accidentally leaving out very important shows), I can't give this more than a very disappointing 2 stars. And I'm STILL left looking for a definitive Old Time Radio book. Hopefully one will be written before everybody who was around in that era is dead, and we're left with nobody who has first-hand stories to tell.

Great book with loads of information about old time radio programs.