1939: The Year in Radio News
US networks (recorded off air)
US networks (recorded off air) · 1939–1939
94 EpisodesTwice weeklyPGSince 1939
The run
- Network
- US networks (recorded off air)
- Years active
- 1939–1939
- Surviving broadcasts
- 94
- Genre
- news
News from 1939. I usually share these via torrent but I don't think all these files are available on archive.org so here's a 1939 news file dump. Any typo or error is mine. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
23 dated broadcasts across 88 years on the air, with 85 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2024, in original transmission order.
- 1. Sign Off · 19 Nov 2024
- 2. Dead Air · 26 Nov 2024
- 3. The Long Silence · 3 Dec 2024
Dead Air
4 Aug 2026 · 16 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Sign Off
28 Jul 2026 · 31 min
The one everybody argues about.
The Case of the Missing Hour
21 Jul 2026 · 46 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
Night Broadcast
14 Jul 2026 · 1h 1m
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Last Train Out
7 Jul 2026 · 24 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Signal at Midnight
30 Jun 2026 · 39 min
The one everybody argues about.
A Room Above the Street
23 Jun 2026 · 54 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Long Silence
16 Jun 2026 · 17 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Same seasons
news on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The broadcast desk
Wartime correspondence and Cavalcade of America established the daily explainer and the narrated history hour long before either had a feed.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of 1939: The Year in Radio News
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
