Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #157
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 4/28/2002 9:03 AM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2002 : Issue 157
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Ted Osborne                           [ Osborneam@[removed] ]
  Secrets of Scotland Yard              [ Rob L Metz <vaboy1960@[removed]; ]
  Life with Luigi                       [ Swindling@[removed] ]
  Re: A&A's 1932 Decline                [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Converting MP3 files                  [ Arcane <arcane@[removed]; ]
  Science Fiction                       [ Fred Berney <berney@[removed]; ]
  Re: radio people behind the TV scene  [ Fred Berney <berney@[removed]; ]
  Cincy Con                             [ ilamfan@[removed] ]
  Plastic Cassette Boxes                [ lynn wagar <philcolynn@[removed]; ]
  Question to my website                [ Al Girard <24agirard24@[removed] ]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 11:12:31 -0400
From: Osborneam@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Ted Osborne

Can anyone tell me anything about Ted Osborne?  He seems to pop
up in many, many OTR shows and yet I can't find anything on him.
My husband is deeply into genealogy and I'd be delighted to find a
link to him.  But I can't find a bio or obit on him!

Anyone know his read name (Edward? Theodore?  Max? ;>)  where
he was born, etc?

Thanks in advance,
Just curious,
Arlene Osborne

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Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 11:25:44 -0400
From: Rob L Metz <vaboy1960@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Secrets of Scotland Yard
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Hi

        I picked-up several episodes of this radio detective series
"Secrets of Scotland Yard" from a friend in Australia. Does anyone have
any ideas about them? They are 29 minute stories sound like they are real
cases from the files of Scotland yard and cover a wide time period , from
mid Victorian to Atom Bomb spies and hosted by Clive Brook . I can find
anything about them in my log collection.

Thanks,

Rob

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Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 12:12:19 -0400
From: Swindling@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Life with Luigi
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Does anyone know where I might be able to rent/but tapes of Life with Luigi?
Donna Mayor <swindling@[removed];

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Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 13:55:31 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: A&A's 1932 Decline

Tom van der Voort quoted:

"What about Amos 'n Andy, who for years have been the acknowledged
twin kings of the air? Radio Guide made a survey in Chicago during the
evening hours. It showed that only twenty-four percent of those listeners
who were called now regularly listen to Freeman Gosden and Charles
[removed] percent used to  listen regularly but now tune them in
only on occasion.  And the remaining forty-seven percent won't listen to
Amos 'n Andy any more. This last group is divided into two classes, about
equally divided. Half never listened to them, and half say their broadcasts
have been so uninteresting during the past year that they just won't tune in.

The last sentence of that is the key. 1931 had been an extraordinary year
for A&A in terms of storyline: the year started off with the Madam Queen
breach-of-promise suit, which ran for thirteen weeks. Then, in April and
May, Ruby Taylor came down with pneumonia and nearly died. And, after a
deliberately-easygoing summer, the fall saw anothter intensely-dramatic
sequence -- the Jack Dixon Affair, which ran for thirteen weeks, and
included Amos being beaten senseless by the villian of the piece, and
then charged with first-degree murder when said villian was found shot to
death on the banks of the Harlem River. (Of course, things worked out all
right when the murder trial was revealed, two days before Christmas, to
have been nothing but a very bad dream.) In terms of whipping their
audience to a high pitch of  excitement, Correll and Gosden set a pace
for themselves during 1931 that no other writer/performers would ever
equal -- and, indeed, they couldn't keep up that pace themselves.

1932, by contrast, tended to wander story-wise. The big storyline for the
first quarter of the year was Andy's career as a professional wrestler,
which had its amusing moments, but never approached the intensity of the
events of 1931. Then there was a brief sequence in the spring in which
Amos, Andy, the Kingfish, and Madam Queen opened a weight-loss spa -- and
that storyline simply fizzled out when Correll and Gosden couldn't figure
out where to go with it. This gave way to the story of Lula-May, a baby
found abandoned in the back of the Fresh Air Taxicab, and Amos's search
for her real mother -- a sequence which had potential, but never seemed
to fully achieve it. And then in June, Amos, Andy and Brother Crawford
made a big mistake business-wise by closing down their successful lunch
room and going in partnership with the Kingfish and Pop Johnson to open
the Okey Hotel.

This was the most radical change in the series since the characters moved
from Chicago to New York -- and suggests that Correll and Gosden were
hoping a new setting would inspire new ideas. The hotel idea started off
interesting, but the taxicab company and lunch room had become so
well-established in the series that it didn't quite seem like "Amos 'n'
Andy" without them. And once they had established the hotel, Correll and
Gosden seemed unsure about where to go from there - the program began to
feel a bit too much like "The Nebbs," a popular comic strip of the era
that had a similar hotel setting.

What all of these 1932 sequences were missing was a strong hook: a
powerful adversarial character or a sense of real danger for the lead
characters. Simply put, there wasn't enough dramatic conflict thru most
of 1932 to create the sort of attention-grabbing suspense that had been
the hallmark of the program during 1931. Correll and Gosden themselves
eventually realized what was wrong -- and around the time that this Radio
Guide article appeared, they began to get the program back on track: much
of November and December of 1932 was taken up by the "Clifton Mills
Affair," in which Mr. Taylor began to think that Amos would never be able
to provide for his daughter -- and asked him to step aside in favor of
his new business partner, an up-and-coming young achiever. Amos learned
that Mills was actually cheating Taylor -- but was afraid that if he
revealed what he knew, Taylor would think he was acting out of spite and
wouldn't believe him. No sooner had this sequence finally been resolved
than the obnoxious Frederick Montgomery Gwindell was put in charge of the
Okey Hotel -- sparking a seven-month-long storyline that would eventually
drive the hotel out of business and land Andy in court again.

These two sequences sparked a healthy recovery in A&A's audience -- the
program picked up more than two million listeners over the previous year,
rising to an average of just over 26,000,000 a night -- and in fact,
because of the increase in the number of radio homes during the previous
two years, there were actually more people listening to A&A in 1933 than
during the craze year of 1931, when the average nightly audience ran to
about 25,600,000. The paradox is that the 1933 *rating* was actually 16
points *lower* than the rating for 1931 -- even though *more people were
actually listening.* This phenomenon is explained in my article "Amos 'n'
Andy By The Numbers," at [removed]~[removed] --
which points out why one should be very careful about drawing conclusions
from ratings statistics without understanding how they relate to actual
audience figures.

Elizabeth

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 13:56:08 -0400
From: Arcane <arcane@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Converting MP3 files
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Hi there Bruce, et al.

Converting MP3 files to regular .wav files to play on your car stereo has
become an easy task. I use a program called 'Musicmatch', version [removed],--
available for about $[removed] from [removed] ( its come down in price over
the years).

The program lets you convert cassette recordings, regular cd's, and records
into MP3 files, and vice-versa.  Cassettes and records are converted in real
time ( ie. a 30 minute tape takes 30 minutes) but a .wav file can be
converted in a matter of minutes.  Converting  an MP3 file back to a CD you
can play on a regular player doesn't take much longer.

I've done hundreds of conversions in my quest to gather all the Sherlock
Holmes stories [removed] :-)

And its EASY !!!! .... about a 10 second learning curve.

Hope you find this information useful.

Len M

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Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 14:28:17 -0400
From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Science Fiction

It is funny how far we have come. Back when I was in Jr. Hi School, I
wanted to do a book report on a science fiction book. My teacher told me
"no". She said that science fiction was not literature.

Fred
[removed]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 14:38:09 -0400
From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: radio people behind the TV scene

The voice of Mason Adams in the Smukers commercials.

Fred
For the best in Old Time Radio Shows [removed]

[ADMINISTRIVIA: And let's not forget his work on the Cadbury easter
commercials.  --cfs3]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 17:58:52 -0400
From: ilamfan@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed] (OTR Bulletin Board)
Subject:  Cincy Con

Hello, all!
     Just a note about how wonderful the Cincinnati
convention was - great fun start to finish!
     My sister and I (that's right, my sister, not my
wife (!) like lots of people seemed to think) had a full
schedule Friday and Saturday, checking out the dealers
room, auditioning for the recreations, talking to other
convention-goers, performing in the shows, etc.  We
barely had time to eat in between all this stuff!
     But I must say I agree with Rick Keating about
including some sort of panel discussions in the show.
If we hadn't have been cast in the shows, my sister and
I would have had to kill a lot of time in between.
Maybe there's a library or civic center nearby that
could be used as a space for this stuff, if the hotel
has no room (or charges extra for it).
     A word about working with the OTR professionals
(Hal Stone, Bob Hastings, and Rosemary Rice) -
WONDERFUL!  My sister got some script-marking and timing
tips from Rosemary Rice, which she thought was really
cool.  She also says that Rosemary's voice is beautiful
and smoothe - "It's just like butter!".
     During rehearsal for Our Miss Brooks (I got to play
the goofy Stretch) I got to sit right between Hal and
Bob, who mock fought and hammed it up in front of
everybody.  This was the best seat in the house.  They
both are terribly funny, the quiet asides that the
audience never got to hear were even funnier than what
they did get to hear.  Lemme tell ya, Mr Stone DOESN'T
just say wallawallawalla for his background vocals.  I
can't even repeat some of what he said!  A riot!
     And I have to tip my hat to the director Don Ramlow
(I think I've got the name right).  He must have a very
hard time selecting actors from the roomful of
auditioners.  And it's really cool being directed with
the hand signals - they're pretty self-explanatory, but
they DO make the show flow better.  Where the heck would
someone learn that these days, anyway?  I'm pretty sure
there's no classes at my local college in "Live Radio
Drama Direction".  Guess you'd have to learn it at an
OTR convention.
     Plus getting to hang out with a group of great
people and talk OTR is always a treat (since
most "normal" people barely even know what OTR is!).
     I will keep going to these as long as they have
them.  What we really need is one in the CHICAGO area.
Dagnabbit.  No kidding.  Really.  Come on.  Let's.
     Til next year!

[removed] Anyone who got a copy of the Crimebuster cd from
me, I would love to hear your comments.  Email me at
ilamfan@[removed] . Thanks!

Stephen Jansen

--
Old Time Radio never dies - it just changes formats!

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 18:51:05 -0400
From: lynn wagar <philcolynn@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Plastic Cassette Boxes

Thanks you every one who answered my ad about the
cassette boxes.  I had a ton of replys.  Many more
than I could fill.  It's great to hear I am not the
only person converting thier collection to MP3 or
CD's.
My Thanks!!!!!

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Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 00:10:49 -0400
From: Al Girard <24agirard24@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Question to my website

I received an email message to my website with the question:
"What show's theme was by the Doodletown Fifers?"

I have no idea so I ask the expert panel before I reply to the message.

Al Girard

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #157
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