The Radio Planet · the interview wing

In Their Own Words

Senators, generals, film stars and the men who built radio — answering questions at the time, not remembering it later.

Almost every interview strand from the period is either lost or still in copyright. What survives in quantity was made by the American government — the Treasury, the Veterans Administration — or deposited with it, like the CBS interview programme Longines Chronoscope, whose prints sit in the National Archives. Those are the recordings on this shelf. Dates and durations are the archives' own; undated items are left undated.

1942

Interviews and talks

Strands

1905–1961

Span

The shelf

Five surviving interview strands

1951–1953 · CBS Television, sponsored by Longines-Wittnauer

Longines Chronoscope

A fifteen-minute interview programme in which two journalists questioned a senator, a general, a cabinet officer or a foreign minister across a small table. The surviving prints were deposited with the United States government and are held by the National Archives, which is why a Cold War interview series survives more completely than almost any entertainment show of the same years.

Earliest surviving transfer: Longines Chronoscope with Lord John Wilmot

246 recordings

1935–1961 · United States Treasury Department

Guest Star

The Treasury's own weekly quarter-hour, distributed free to stations to sell savings bonds. Because it had a government budget and no sponsor to please, it drew the biggest names in the business — singers, bandleaders, film stars and comedians — talking and performing in a studio with the announcer sitting beside them.

Earliest surviving transfer: JBGS 1935-12-07 NBC Studio opening in Hollywood

1008 recordings

1940–1941 · Blue Network

Behind the Mike

Graham McNamee's weekly look at how radio was actually made: the sound-effects men, the engineers, the remote crews and the performers, interviewed about their own trade while the medium was still inventing itself.

Earliest surviving transfer: Behind the Mike 40-09-15 001 First Episode

110 recordings

1946–1948 · United States Veterans Administration

Here's To Veterans

A transcription series made for returning servicemen, pairing a guest star with a spoken segment on benefits and re-employment. The talk sections are a plain record of what the country was telling its veterans.

Earliest surviving transfer: "HERE'S TO VETERANS" — 12 Aug 1946

6 recordings

1931–1951 · Syndicated and network gossip programmes

The Hollywood Columnists

Scattered surviving broadcasts by the two women who could make or break a career from a microphone: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, reading their columns aloud and interviewing the people they were writing about.

Earliest surviving transfer: Norma Shearer Louella Parsons - Sunkist Radio Interview (03/25/1931)

16 recordings

1938 · CBS, then NBC

We The People

Ordinary Americans brought to a microphone to tell their own story in their own accent — a farmer, a rescued sailor, a widow, a boy who built something — interleaved with the occasional famous guest. The largest single run in this wing.

Earliest surviving transfer: We, The People

1 recording

1905–1948 · NBC Blue, later CBS

Vox Pop

The programme that invented the street interview: Parks Johnson and his co-hosts stopped passers-by, then later servicemen and factory workers, and simply asked them questions on the air with nothing scripted in advance.

Earliest surviving transfer: Vox Pop — March 12, 1905

197 recordings

1942–1956 · CBS News

Murrow Reports

Surviving Edward R. Murrow broadcasts and Hear It Now material: wartime despatches, interviews and the actuality recordings he assembled into radio's first news documentaries.

Earliest surviving transfer: murrow in london

123 recordings

1953 · CBS, introduced by Edward R. Murrow

This I Believe

Five-minute personal creeds spoken by the person who wrote them — scientists, cab drivers, novelists, generals — each explaining the rules they actually live by. Hundreds of the syndicated discs survive.

Earliest surviving transfer: This I Believe — January 1, 1953

84 recordings

1939–1958 · NBC and syndication

Mary Margaret McBride

The most listened-to interviewer of the era, working without a script for forty-five minutes a day. Authors, cooks, politicians and film stars talked to her longer and more plainly than anywhere else on the dial.

Earliest surviving transfer: McBride: Quintet for Oboe and Strings (1937)

62 recordings

1946–1958 · NBC Radio

Biography in Sound

Hour-long portraits built entirely from recorded voices: the subject's own tape, plus the people who knew them, cut together by NBC's documentary unit.

Earliest surviving transfer: 'Biography in Sound' Babe Ruth

80 recordings

1946–1954 · Mutual, NBC and Du Mont

Author Meets the Critics

A writer sat while two critics attacked or defended the book, then answered back. Argument as a format, decades before the panel show.

Earliest surviving transfer: Youngin'

3 recordings

1965 · NBC

Meet the Press

The in-period audio the archives actually hold from radio's longest-running press conference — a small handful of surviving sessions, kept here because the questions and the evasions are the record.

Earliest surviving transfer: Meet The Press

5 recordings

1930s–1950s · NBC, from the University of Chicago

University of Chicago Round Table

Three academics and a guest around a table with no moderator's script, arguing policy for half an hour. Only a fragment survives in recorded form.

Earliest surviving transfer: Illinois Public Media

1 recording

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