The bibliography that follows is a listing of some of the book-length and other sources used in preparing this reference work. Many sources other than those listed here were used, of course, including hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and many of the annual trade publications that were produced during the Golden Age of Radio. Most of the journals, weekly and monthly magazines, and annual publications devoted to radio are not listed because they are now out of print and many of the organizations that were responsible for their publication no longer exist. Although difficult to find, these sources sometimes are available in large public libraries and from dealers who specialize in old-time radio (OTR) materials. They include, among others, the Broadcast Bibliophile’s Booknotes, Broadcasting, Broadcasting Yearbook, Dimensions of Radio, Journal of Broadcasting, Mass Media Booknotes, Radio Broadcast, Radio Daily, Radio Directory, Radio Guide, Radio Life, Radio-TV Mirror, Radio Programming Profile, Radio Stars, and Variety. The Journal of Popular Culture, begun in 1966 and still being published, was especially helpful. Also useful were the several nostalgia magazines that have been published since the 1970s, including Memories, Remember When, and Reminisce.
In addition, use was made of numerous program logs, newsletters, and other publications of OTR fans and clubs, including the following: Collector’s Corner (Old Radio Warehouse, Yonkers, NY 10710), The Golden Years of Radio & TV (World of Yesterday, Waynesville, NC 28786), Hello, Again (Jay Hickerson, Hamden, CT 06514), Hello Again, Radio (Cincinnati, OH 45206), Old Time Radio Digest (Royal Promotions, Cincinnati, OH 45212), The Sounds of Yesterday (Paul Anderson, Laramie, WY 82070), SPERDVAC Radiogram (Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety, and Comedy, Van Nuys, CA 91409), The Illustrated Press (The Old Time Radio Club, Buffalo, NY 14220), and Memories (annual magazine of The Old Time Radio Club). Radiohero, a fanzine issued by Jim Harmon for three issues in 1963–1964, contains several articles of interest to OTR fans and collectors.
Of the commercially published books on old-time radio listed, the following four titles can be recommended for a basic library on the subject, each for a somewhat different reason:
1) Buxton and Owen’s Radio’s Golden Age (1966). Revised edition: The Big Broadcast, 1920–1950 (Viking, 1972). The first attempt at a comprehensive reference work in the field. Particularly useful for its inclusion of information about producers, directors, and music directors.
2) Dunning’s On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford University Press, 1998). A very readable coverage of many of the favorite programs of Radio’s Golden Age. Provides extensive critical comments on programs.
3) Greenfield’s Radio: A Reference Guide (Greenwood, 1989). A scholarly work on radio research materials, focusing on popular radio broadcasting. It provides historical overview of the medium from the late 1900s through the 1980s and is especially valuable for its listing of station histories.
4) Swartz and Reinehr’s Handbook of Old-Time Radio: A Comprehensive Guide to Golden Age Radio Listening and Collecting (Scarecrow, 1993). Information on several thousand old-time radio programs of all types, divided into program category and program descriptive logs. A brief history of networks and broadcasting in the United States also is provided, along with other information for the fan and collector of OTR programs.
The number of public and private collections on radio materials is extremely large; there are useful collections located throughout the United States. The Washington, D.C., area may be the single best location for major library and printed archival collections, housing the Broadcast Pioneers Library (in the National Association of Broadcasters building), the National Museum of American History (featuring the Clark Collection in the museum’s Archives Center), and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. The manuscript division of the Library of Congress is also an important resource, holding several good collections including the papers of Eric Sevareid. Washington, D.C., also is home of the National Public Radio Library and Audio Archive.
The New York Public Library has a substantial collection of books and periodicals covering all aspects of radio. Three of the major networks also have their own official libraries and archives located in New York, but these are not research centers in the conventional sense. The Lincoln Center Performing Arts Research Center, the Museum of Broadcasting, and Columbia University’s Butler Library (housing the Oral History Collection) also are in New York City. The David Sarnoff Library in Princeton, New Jersey, is a major source of information on the business aspects of early radio.
In the Midwest, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin’s library in Madison is probably the best-known and most widely used resource for radio historians: it has collections on almost every aspect of radio. In Marquette, Michigan, is the Catalogue of Classical Radio Programs, located in the Speech Department of Northern Michigan University. The Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago, archives consist of the A. C. Nielsen, Jr. Online Research Center, with more than 4,000 radio programs, and the Radio Hall of Fame.
On the West Coast, some of the larger universities have developed important archives and libraries on radio and related fields. These include the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Television Library and the Theater Arts Library, both at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The North American Radio Archives Library has holdings in Seattle, Washington, and in the Los Angeles area. Among its holdings are more than 15,000 taped radio programs. The Mass Media Studies Program, University of San Francisco, is also a resource for the researcher in old-time radio. Other important sites around the country include the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings (Sterling Memorial Library), and the George Foster Peabody Collection at the University of Georgia (School of Journalism and Mass Communications). Significant fan club libraries include those of SPERDVAC (Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety, and Comedy (Van Nuys, California), Friends of Old-Time Radio (Hamden, Connecticut), Old Time Radio Club of Buffalo (Lancaster, New York), and Golden Radio Buffs (Baltimore, Maryland). For anyone seeking information on audio collections and radio archives, both Greenfield’s Radio: A Reference Guide and Godfrey’s A Directory of Broadcast Archives are highly recommended.
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There are hundreds of old-time radio (OTR)-related sites on the internet, some of them information-only sites presenting historical information on almost every conceivable aspect of OTR, many of them offering recordings of old-time radio programs for sale. A few of these latter are well-established commercial operations, but many are operated by hobbyists or other OTR fans and they come in and out of existence too frequently to make it practical to list them by name. Entering “OTR” in a Google search engine will yield hundreds of sites of interest. The quality of service varies, but prices for recordings of OTR programs have become very reasonable, and it is possible to own hundreds of recordings with only a very small investment.
This is a period of transition for all providers of OTR recordings, whether commercial or otherwise. A few recordings are still available on cassette tape, usually at extremely low prices, but the vast majority of OTR recordings are now provided on CD. The use of conventional CD’s is also declining rapidly in favor of MP3. If you are not familiar with MP3, you need not concern yourself with the technical details, only make certain that you have a CD player that will play disks recorded in MP3 format. Most recently manufactured CD players do so as do many players in late model cars, but you do need to be certain that you have a player that is so designed.
MP3 has several advantages, allowing programs to be downloaded directly from provider sites, as well as allowing them to be stored and played on a computer or on the very compact little MP3 players that are now popular with music fans, but for users of compact discs, MP3 is simply a method of recording that allows vastly more information to be recorded on a disc than would be the case with conventional recording. A conventional CD holds as much as 74 or 80 minutes of recorded material, for example, or two episodes of most OTR programs. A disc recorded in MP3 format might hold upwards of 100 programs.