The Mercury Theatre on the Air
CBS
CBS · 1938–1938
Broadcasts
19
Cadence
Weekly
Rated
PG
Since
1938
The run
- Network
- CBS
- Years active
- 1938–1938
- Surviving broadcasts
- 19
- Genre
- drama
The Mercury Theatre on the Air was broadcast by CBS from July to December 1938, with Orson Welles and the Mercury company adapting Dracula, Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar and, on 30 October 1938, The War of the Worlds. The surviving recordings in this collection are 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
6 dated broadcasts across 89 years on the air, with 88 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. A Room Above the Street · 31 Mar 2026
- 2. Signal at Midnight · 7 Apr 2026
- 3. The Last Train Out · 14 Apr 2026
- 01
The Last Train Out
4 Aug 2026 · 1h 4m
- 02
Signal at Midnight
28 Jul 2026 · 27 min
- 03
A Room Above the Street
21 Jul 2026 · 42 min
- 04
The Long Silence
14 Jul 2026 · 57 min
- 05
Dead Air
7 Jul 2026 · 20 min
- 06
Sign Off
30 Jun 2026 · 35 min
- 07
The Case of the Missing Hour
23 Jun 2026 · 50 min
- 08
Night Broadcast
16 Jun 2026 · 1h 5m
Also on CBS
CBS in 1938–1938
Other series the network carried while The Mercury Theatre on the Air was on the air.
Same seasons
drama on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
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