1940: The Year in Radio News
US networks (recorded off air)
US networks (recorded off air) · 1940–1940
189 EpisodesTwice weeklyPGSince 1940
The run
- Network
- US networks (recorded off air)
- Years active
- 1940–1940
- Surviving broadcasts
- 189
- Genre
- news
News from 1940. I usually share these via torrent but I don't think all these files are available on archive.org so here's a 1940 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
45 dated broadcasts across 87 years on the air, with 82 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. Signal at Midnight · 19 Nov 2024
- 2. The Last Train Out · 26 Nov 2024
- 3. Night Broadcast · 3 Dec 2024
The Last Train Out
4 Aug 2026 · 56 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Signal at Midnight
28 Jul 2026 · 19 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
A Room Above the Street
21 Jul 2026 · 34 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
The Long Silence
14 Jul 2026 · 49 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Dead Air
7 Jul 2026 · 1h 4m
The one everybody argues about.
Sign Off
30 Jun 2026 · 27 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Case of the Missing Hour
23 Jun 2026 · 42 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
Night Broadcast
16 Jun 2026 · 57 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
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 1940: The Year in Radio News
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
