The General Motors Hour
Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio · 1930–1960
15 EpisodesWeeklyPGSince 1930
The run
- Network
- Australian commercial radio
- Years active
- 1930–1960
- Surviving broadcasts
- 15
- Genre
- variety
A Collection of Aussie Radio Shows No 30 The General Motors Hour were one hour radio plays aired on the Macquarie Network every Wednesday evening from the 30th of January 1952 to 26th of October 1961. Most were performed and especially recorded for the GM Hour. The plays included two announcements through them promoting Holden and its contribution to Australia. The final play, 'The letter', was episode 463. The General Motors Hour brochure : 'A story of enterprise in Australian radio' Printed brochure on 'The General Motors Hour' presented by General Motors-Holden's Limited (GMH) comprising sections including the initial development and planning in 1951 for the programme of radio plays, GMH Public-domain transfers 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 97 years on the air, with 96 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 · 28 Apr 2026
- 2. Signal at Midnight · 5 May 2026
- 3. The Last Train Out · 12 May 2026
Dead Air
4 Aug 2026 · 20 min
The one everybody argues about.
Sign Off
28 Jul 2026 · 35 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Case of the Missing Hour
21 Jul 2026 · 50 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
Night Broadcast
14 Jul 2026 · 1h 5m
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
The Last Train Out
7 Jul 2026 · 28 min
The one everybody argues about.
Signal at Midnight
30 Jun 2026 · 43 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
A Room Above the Street
23 Jun 2026 · 58 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Long Silence
16 Jun 2026 · 21 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Also on Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio in 1930–1960
Other series the network carried while The General Motors Hour was on the air.
Same seasons
variety on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
Friends in front of a microphone
Jack Benny and Fibber McGee sold intimacy: recurring characters, in-jokes, a house style. The modern hang-out show is the same trick without the script.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of The General Motors Hour
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
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