The Adventures of PC 49 (1948) : Rare Transcription Recordings
The Adventures of PC 49 British crime drama. The radio adventures of Police Constable 49, and his girl friday, Joan, during the 1940s and 1950s in London. Brian Reece played PC 49 and Joy Shelton played Joan . The series was written by Allan Stranks and produced by Vernon Harris. PC 49 was a mere uniformed constable, but this didn't deter him from pursuing his own theories in solving the cases, frequently to the dismay of his superiors. The show mixed drama with light comedy, allowing both PC 49 and Joan to trouble the higher ranking officers who were notionally in charge of his cases, usually by having PC 49 solve them. Long believed lost, presented here are some extremely rare recordings from this radio series, which ran between 1947 and 1953. Although more than a hundred episodes aired, these recently found recordings are all that now survive from the show. Until very recently only a single episode was known to remain ( The Case of the Black Diamonds ). The episodes are each recorded on three 12-minute shellac discs, such that three discs are needed to broadcast each half-hour show. In several cases, only some of the discs survive. So some of these recordings include only a single disc (or in some cases 2 discs) from the original set of three, and the episodes in question are thus incomplete. ( Although I have no firm evidence, my belief is that these episodes were actually sold to overseas radio stations as 2-disc sets, with one disc having part 1 of the episode on Side A and part 3 on Side B, and the other disc having part 2 of the episode on Side A with Side B left blank. This would enable a station to play the episode from those 3 sides using just two turntables. Thus if one disc became lost, either Parts 1 and 3 or Part 2 alone would survive, which is what we find to be the case .) Nonetheless, given how rare any recordings from this show are, I decided to present here even those episodes which are now incomplete. Copyright Expired Recordings The 50 year period of broadcast copyright under the UK's Copyright Acts 1956 and 1988 has expired for all items included in this collection which first aired after 1956: · Copyright Act 1956, section 14(2): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1956/74/section/14/enacted · Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 14(2): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/14 Public domain radio For those broadcasts which aired before the 1956 Act was passed, the BBC has no broadcast copyright. Broadcasting was not invented until 1922, so no provision was made for it in the Copyright Act 1911. Accordingly, no period of broadcast copyright has ever existed in respect of any radio broadcast in the United Kingdom that aired prior to the introduction of the Copyright Act 1956: · Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Kingdom#Broadcast_copyright
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.