Day: June 18, 2010

Golden Age Article

Nostalgic for Art

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I don’t view myself as a Nostalgia show host. I love old radio detective shows because of their quality, rarely touched in modern attempts, either in the fiber of the characters, or in the quality of the stories. They don’t make them like that anymore.

However, there are some shows that fill me with a nostalgic sense, and a great example of this is the radio and later TV hit, People are Funny. After the recent death of Mr. Art Linkletter, who I’d only seen from archive footage from his House Party days, I put five episodes of his game show where he gave out cash and prizes while challenging his audience to do stunts. People went along with the gag for the fun of it, more than for the prizes.

The show had something very gentle about its humor. While the idea of paying people money to do stunts isn’t unusual, today such stunts often involve doing things that are immoral or dangerous (see Temptation Island), and creating artificial hatreds and tensions with greed as a fuel for treachery (Survivor), as well as exploiting people’s real emotions, dreams, and feelings for high ratings (too many shows to list.)

Art Linkletter’s game show thought people were funny, but it also showed a respect for people. The stunts might cause some temporary embarassment like when Linkletter dispatached a man to sell Goat’s Milk door to door in a ritzy hotel, but they weren’t really going to hurt people in the long run. There was no attempt to gain ratings by exploiting people. There was a sense that the show was all in good fun, and audience, host, and guests were laughing together.

Of course, this isn’t to say that all was perfect in America during the 1950s. I’ll be the first to admit that the country was far from perfect back then (as the world always was), and these shows will have reminders of things we were better off leaving behind.

However,one part of the 1950s I am nostalgic about is the grace and class of Art Linkletter. Sadly, they don’t make many like that anymore.

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A Look at Our Listeners

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Well, we’ve been collecting Listener Surveys since the show started and even though I’ve not mentioned them for a while, they’ve accumulate at a nice pace. So who’s listening?  What type of folks are interested in Old Time Radio Detectives?  A few quick facts:

  • Men make up a solid majority of our listeners: Our listener base is 64% Male, but this is quite a bit less than the 71% male listener base over on Dragnet.
  • The Audience is well-educated: 60% of the Audience has at least a Bachelor’s degree with 29% having post-graduate degrees.
  • The Audience is a mix of ages: One would expect that most listeners would be people reliving the days they’d heard radio. While some are, the numbers suggest that there are plenty of younger listeners. 47% of the listeners were under 45 and 96% are under 65. This means we’re bringing old time radio to a new generation, as well as a few who are reliving it. This would seem to suggest that there’s a future in the past.
  • Where in the World: Blubrry tracks where our downloads are coming from. Most (90.6%) come from the U.S. However, our neighbors to the North contribute 6.2% of the downloads, followed by the U.K. at 1.8%, also showing up for downloads this month are Australia, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, and Sweden,
  • Popular Shows: The shows rank as follows: 1) Johnny Dollar, 2) Box 13, 3) Jeff Regan, 4) Let George Do it, 5) Sherlock Holmes. 

1949-54 Johnny Dollar, CBS, Podcast, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar

EP0170: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: Stuart Palmer, Writer

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Edmond O'Brien

Also known as, “The Man Who Wrote Himself to Death.”  Johnny Dollar is off to Chicago to investigate the case of a recently insured man whose involvement in the underworld could lead to a very early insurance payoff.

Rehersal of Show That Aired: March 14, 1950

Remember the name http://johnnydollarair.com when you plan your travel.

Call the show at 208-991-4783

Take the listener survey at http://survey.greatdetectives.net

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