WJSV Complete Day - Single Episodes
On September 21st, 1939, radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C., recorded their entire broadcast day from sign on to sign off. This unique collection captures the essence of a day in broadcasting before the advent of magnetic recording tape, using transcription disks instead. The quality of these recordings is generally good to excellent, with only a few spots of noticeable distortion.
Listeners will experience everything as it was on that day, including the pops and crackles, station breaks, technical difficulties, and a variety of programming such as music, comedy, drama, news, and advertisements. This is a fascinating time capsule that transports you back to an era when 15 cents could buy a hamburger and the 1939 New York World's Fair was showcasing the future.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapters
Reviews
Two things worth noting...
Bruce Baskin
One is that Arthur Godfrey started at about 7AM because he was late getting to the studio, a frequent occurrence when he worked for WJSV early in his career. The other is that the play-by-play man for the Senators-Cleveland game (which is joined in progress) is none other than Hall of Famer Walter Johnson, who'd spent more than two decades in the Senators organization as a pitcher and manager. 1939 was his lone season behind the mic. Posthumous kudos to the WSJV employee (I'm betting it was the chief engineer) for turning the recorder on early and letting it run up to sign-off. The result is the one known example of a typical broadcast day at a time when radio was the most popular entertainment medium in the country.
Time capsule--War in Europe
PhillipHeasley1
No small task, loading the transcription discs, one after another, for the entire day, and making sure they were recording properly. I believe the day was chosen because of FDR's speech to a joint session of Congress urging repeal of embargo in favor of traditional neutrality, which did not completely bar arms to beleaguered Europe. Hitler had gone into Poland on September 1, less than three weeks earlier, and Britain was at war with Germany. At the time, the U.S. could do little to directly aid the lone major nation still completely free from the Nazis. Note: At the time, announcers were required to state if they were playing recorded music. The Swing Era was at its height.
Intriguing document
Indeterminacy
I only have praise for the OTR Reasearchers Group. Here they have made available an audio document that has been in cicularion for some time, but in much better quality than I have ever seen. Listening to this is like opening a time capsule. You get the feel of 1939 September a day shortly after the beginning of WWII. Some of it is business as usual, an attempt to retain the innocence of the decade, and there is even a baseball game!
History
robertsradio
This collection is a part of America's history shortly before we entered World War II. Somehow the owner of WJSV must have known that America would soon become involved in the conflict taking place in Europe and wanted to record this day for future history. We owe a great deal of Thanks to stations like WJSV for giving us an audio sound of their current time.
Great job! Ten stars!
Abdulwadud
Years ago I downloaded the Complete Day. The sound was not clear at all and it consisted of one hour files without any more info. This new upload is quite different. Clear sound, clear info. Now THIS is a time machine! My rating: ten stars (if possible).
New Source Available
MrWimple
A real treasure trove. A new source has been uploaded which is more complete, much better quality and indexed much better with every single program titled and given it's own separate file. Find it here: http://archive.org/details/001WakeUpMusic