The run
- Network
- CBS / WJSV
- Years active
- 1939–1939
- Surviving broadcasts
- 55
- Genre
- documentary
September 21, 1939 — one Washington station recorded from sign-on to sign-off. The single best surviving snapshot of what a day of radio actually was. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive, harvested from the Old Time Radio Researchers collections and indexed episode by episode.
Source collection
Old Time Radio Researchers Group
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
14 dated broadcasts across 88 years on the air, with 86 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 2025, in original transmission order.
- 1. Night Broadcast · 22 Jul 2025
- 2. The Case of the Missing Hour · 29 Jul 2025
- 3. Sign Off · 5 Aug 2025
Signal at Midnight
4 Aug 2026 · 21 min
The one everybody argues about.
A Room Above the Street
28 Jul 2026 · 36 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Long Silence
21 Jul 2026 · 51 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
Dead Air
14 Jul 2026 · 14 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Sign Off
7 Jul 2026 · 29 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
The Case of the Missing Hour
30 Jun 2026 · 44 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Night Broadcast
23 Jun 2026 · 59 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
The Last Train Out
16 Jun 2026 · 22 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Same seasons
documentary on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
