The Fireside Chats
NBC / CBS / Mutual (pooled networks)
NBC / CBS / Mutual (pooled networks) · 1939–1944
Broadcasts
17
Cadence
Weekly
Rated
PG
Since
1939
The run
- Network
- NBC / CBS / Mutual (pooled networks)
- Years active
- 1939–1944
- Surviving broadcasts
- 17
- Genre
- talk
Between 1933 and 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in a series of evening radio talks carried simultaneously by the networks; a reporter's phrase, "fireside chat", stuck to them. The surviving network transfers gathered here run from the September 1939 chat on the European war through the June 1944 opening of the Fifth War Loan Drive, including the December 9, 1941 broadcast following the declaration of war on Japan. These recordings are United States government broadcasts in the public domain and stream from the Internet Archive.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
5 dated broadcasts across 88 years on the air, with 87 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 2026, in original transmission order.
- 1. The Last Train Out · 14 Apr 2026
- 2. Night Broadcast · 21 Apr 2026
- 3. The Case of the Missing Hour · 28 Apr 2026
- 01
The Last Train Out
4 Aug 2026 · 36 min
- 02
Signal at Midnight
28 Jul 2026 · 51 min
- 03
A Room Above the Street
21 Jul 2026 · 14 min
- 04
The Long Silence
14 Jul 2026 · 29 min
- 05
Dead Air
7 Jul 2026 · 44 min
- 06
Sign Off
30 Jun 2026 · 59 min
- 07
The Case of the Missing Hour
23 Jun 2026 · 22 min
- 08
Night Broadcast
16 Jun 2026 · 37 min
Same seasons
talk on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
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