Night Transmissions is a 120 minute show featuring vintage radio shows. In this show...
Crime Classics 10/21/53 The Mysterious Traveler 1/30/44. X Minus One 5/22/55. Sleep No More 12/26/56
Music:
The Journeymen - 500 miles (1961) Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon (1976) The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody (1965) Judy Collins - Morning Has Broken (1987)
These dates should not be taken as canonical.
More at http://www.nighttransmissions.com/
This is a 64 kbs version of a weekly program which began on a now defunct low power FM station (KSOW) in Cottage Grove, OR Since there seems to be some interest in the show I have decided to continue . In this connection I will post a new show by Tuesday or Wednesday of each week. I will post a new show by Tuesday or Wednesday of each week. There is also a 128 bit version.
In the main, each episode consists of four approximately 30-minute long programs (not always, as sometimes I use a longer form show, so it may be 3 or fewer) and some filler to bring them in at 120 minutes. .
Broadcast Advisories
Use these programs in any way that suits you, commercial, non-commercial (well,don't sell it). Use them on your low power FM station or your AM station. Stream it on your internet station or stream. Whatever. Edit them if you want to, however you want to! I'm easy. In a few cases commercials have been left in but in those cases there is disclaimer stating that they are there for "historical perspective" only. I have edited out any underwriter spots that once existed. There is no comment about run times ( i.e. "It's Sunday night at 10 pm and this is Night Transmissions.") Also I have edited out any mention of the town I live in. In other words I have endeavored to make make these programs as "Evergreen" and global as possible. I would even consider making (at some point) shows that are tailored to some degree for specific locations. In most cases the mp3 file runs a little longer than 120 minutes. However, in all cases the main show comes in at under 120 minutes; anything in excess of 120 minutes is just music that can safely be faded out.
As of show 21 there are 30 second musical interludes at 30,60 and 90 minutes. with the last 5 to 10 minutes or so of the show uninterrupted music that can be faded out on without too much ado, Exact times will be in the mp3 comment tag
If you do broadcast or stream these I'd really be grateful if you dropped me a note.
This episode contains the following segments...
Segment One:
Crime Classics is sometimes called a, "Docudrama"( I know I've been guilty of that myself). But I have come to think that this is a bit too grand a claim. To start off with you have, in the person of the host, a completely fictional "expert". There is not now nor was there ever a ,"Thomas Hyland". Also, I have found while researching backgrounds of individual programs the historical content to be a bit dodgy; with the show willingly repeating legends and interesting anecdotes as well-established facts. Nonetheless, I will rise in defense of the program (of which I am very fond), to remind you that the entertainment industry of the 1950s was not different from that of our own time when inconvenient facts are simply not allowed to interfere with a good story. I do not think that producer/writer Elliott Lewis intended for these shows to be taken as historical documents. He was, after-all, a producer of popular entertainment using the vehicle of tongue-in-cheek re-creations of some of history's more interesting crimes. The fact is Crime Classics freely mixes fact and fiction and tosses in apocryphal and anecdotal details as garnishments. I don't think the producers were attempting to create an historically accurate account but entertainment. In this they succeeded, for entertaining they were and are. Today's show is from October 21 of 1953 and is called Billy Bonny Blood-letter; Also Known As 'The Kid'. This is the story of Henry McCarty a.k.a. William Henry Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Psychopathic killer and genuine folk hero. There is a great deal that is uncertain about young Billy. Born on November 23, 1859. Most likely in New York City. Historians think His parent's names were Katherine and Patrick McCarty. There are records of Billy and his mother in Indiana from the late 1860s. Their trail picks up again in Wichita, Kansas in 1870. By this time Billy's father had died. On March 1, 1873, Katherine McCarty married William Antrim, who moved the family to Silver City, New Mexico. After this nothing much good happen for Billy. On September 16, 1874, Billy's mother died of tuberculosis and Billy and his younger brother, Joseph, were placed in foster homes. By the age of 14 Billy was drifting and supporting himself by finding jobs as an itinerant laborer. On September 23rd of 1875 Billy had his first run-in with the law. This was not of a fatal nature but had to do with the theft of a bundle of clothes. Billy maintained this was more in the line of a practical joke rather than any actual criminal activity. The law didn't see it that way and he ended up in jail. Billy decided that he would not stay to enjoy the accommodations of the town and escaped to resume drifting for what would remain of his life.
On August 17, 1877 he killed his first man, a small-town bully and thoroughly nasty piece of work, Frank Cahill, who had, in a serious lapse of judgment, taken to mistreating Billy. On one occasion knocking Billy down into the mud of the street. It was the last thing he did. Billy Pulled his gun and shot him. Thus began his real career. The career for which we all remember him. His career as a murderer. Over the next four years he would kill, depending on who you believe, between four and 21 men. What a guy! He would die violently himself on July 14, 1881 by the hand of former friend Pat Garrett. That is unless he died in 1950. Billy The Kid was a slippery character.
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Segment Two:
The Mysterious Traveler was the second outing for pulp writers Robert Arthur and David P. Kogan. Their first effort, a show called Dark Destiny, ran for parts of 1942 and 1943 on The Mutual Broadcasting System. This show was, unfortunately. not particularly successful. Surviving for only 27 episodes of which only one is known to still exist.
For this, their next effort, they teamed up with producer/director Sherman 'Jock' MacGregor, and actor Maurice Tarplin to create a show that would have a very successful run on Mutual between 1944 and 1952. Eventually becoming one of the highest rated programs of the era and spawning a handful of spin offs.
These included: The Strange Dr. Weird (1945),The Sealed Book (1945),Dark Venture (1946),Murder By Experts (1949) and The Teller of Tales (1950).
Todays episode Of The Mysterious Traveler is, "The House of Death" from January 30, 1944.
These old shows always engender questions, sometimes more questions than answers.
For instance why were Roger and Hester so eager to have Aunts Louise and Martha stay with them in their secluded country home? Why did Roger try to sell the old women's house? He didn't tell them we was going to do it. They only found out by reading a for-sale notice in the newspaper. What's up with that? What happened to the mailman? I mean exactly what happened? Then there's the mystery of the cats. Whatever happened to the cats?
Maybe Roger and Hester's place really isn't the best place for Louise and Martha.
Segment Three:
X Minus One is considered the finest science fiction drama ever produced for radio. It was not the first. That honor belongs to 2000+. It wasn't the second, That would be Dimension X. In fact the first 15 episodes of it's 1955 to 1958 run on NBC were new versions of Dimension X episodes. The remainder were all most entirely adaptations of recently published science fiction stories (Mostly from Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine) usually written by the leading writers of the time, including Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber, J.T. McIntosh, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl and Theodore Sturgeon.
For all of us who were weaned on The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone and for the Trekkies (er,Trekker) among us, you should know that X Minus One is the forefather of the science fiction you grew up on. You will find that it still is some of the best Science Fiction ever aired.
Occasionally, we get something stellar from X-minus one. Today is one of those times. So for your pleasure here is the X-Minus One adaptation of the Frederick Brown story, Knock. One of the most famous stories of one of the best regarded science fiction writers of all time. Originally published in the December 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories it is one of the most heavily anthologized stories in the history of Science Fiction.
"The last man on earth sat alone in a room.
There was a knock on the door..." - excerpted from Knock
This story aired on May 22, 1955.
Segment Four: Nelson Olmsted was a national treasure. For more than 35 years, Olmsted's extraordinary vocal performances were the basis for his exceptional success as a radio
In "Sleep No More", Olmsted followed a rich tradition of broadcasting with his presentation of supernatural and suspense dramas for which he drew from some of the finest short literature the English language.The show today is Emile Zola's "The Death of Olivier Becaille" which aired on Christmas Day of 1956
"It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a three days' illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, and when she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and silent pulses. She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched my hands and bent over me. Then ..."
Music:
The Journeymen - 500 miles (1961) Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon (1976) The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody (1965) Judy Collins - Morning Has Broken (1987)
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