Golden Age of Radio

Ready Eagle – May 3, 1954 ‘ Night Watch ,’ Radio Show, Real Thing in Police Work By NON THOMAS Hollywood , May 3 (AP) – The new “ Night Watch ” radio show tops “ Dragnet ” for realism in the cops-and-criminal department. It’s the genuine thing. Listeners to “ Night Watch ” on CBS Monday nights will hear the actual nabbing of a criminal. The recording was made during an arrest by Culver City, Calif., police. Columbia ’s answer to Jack Webb is an enterprising young man named Donn Reed. A radio veteran, he dreamed up “ Night Watch ” in an effort to find something new in radio. “I remember one day I came out of a radio conference feeling very depressed,” he told me. “I said to another fellow that I was tired of rehashing the same old things in radio. If only there was something new. “That day I went over to the place where I play handball. Another person who plays there is Ron Perkins who plays there is Ron Perkins, a sergeant with the Culver City police. H...

Mar. 30, 1940 “BELIEVE IT OR NOT” (A Review) “ BELIEVE IT OR NOT .” With Robert L. Ripley, Linda Lee and the orchestra of B. A. Rolfe . Friday, Columbia Broadcasting System 10:30 p.m. EST, 9:30 p.m. CST, 7:30 p.m. PST Sponsored by Nehi Corp. for Royal Crown Cola, produced by Balten, Barton. Durstine and Osborn, Inc., New York, originates in New York CBS studios. Show reviewed was heard on March 8 DEFINITELY tempoed for the ice-gripped winter trade was this program of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.” And its music, as well as its two dramatized unbelievables, had to do with tropical islands in sun-kissed seas. The Rolfe orchestra started the torrid program with a hot little number called “Holy Smoke.” followed by the first of the Ripley dramatizations. It was the story of how a French warship, in 1859, had been sent to subjugate a native island in the South Seas and, on the shoals off the very island, was shipwrecked, its sailors captured and sentenced to de...