1928–1956 on radio · NBC, then ABC

The Voice of Firestone

The first great simulcast: one orchestra, one performance, two transmitters.

Firestone is the textbook case and the reason this shelf exists. The concert began on NBC radio at Christmas 1928 and ran without interruption for twenty-eight years; on 5 September 1949 NBC pointed a camera at it and started transmitting the same performance on both networks simultaneously. Nothing was remade, nothing was adapted — one orchestra played once and two audiences received it. What survives here is from just before that moment, the Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions of the mid-forties, which is to say the sound of the programme in the last years when radio was the only thing it was.

On radio

Radio from 24 December 1928

On television

Television from 5 September 1949

The overlap

Simulcast on NBC radio and television for six years, then on ABC to 1959

40 recordings · New York

AFRS transcription discs of Firestone broadcasts, 1943–1946, transferred by the Internet Archive. These predate the television simulcast: this is the programme in its radio-only years, shortly before the cameras arrived. Public domain (US network broadcast, copyright not renewed); no Creative Commons or non-commercial terms apply.