The Australian Playhouse
Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio · 1954–1988
61 EpisodesTwice weeklyPGSince 1954
The run
- Network
- Australian commercial radio
- Years active
- 1954–1988
- Surviving broadcasts
- 61
- Genre
- variety
A Collection of Aussie Radio Shows No 158 *" Keith McGowan OAM" (9 March 1943 – 22 December 2013) was an Australian radio presenter. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and died there, aged 70 years. McGowan got his first job in radio in May 1957, when he started as an office boy at 3UZ at the age of 14. His mother had heard about the job while listening to the station. Then he worked at the following radio stations in order: 3TR, 7BU, 7HO, 6PR, 3TR (again), 2NM, 2KA, 2HD, 2UW, 3MP, 3DB, 3AK, 3AW. McGowan first made a name for himself in Perth at 6PR in the mid-1960s, where he and his station, then known as The Home of the Good Guys rose to the top of the ratings. After his retirement, McGow 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
15 dated broadcasts across 73 years on the air, with 71 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 2025, in original transmission order.
- 1. Night Broadcast · 10 Jun 2025
- 2. The Case of the Missing Hour · 17 Jun 2025
- 3. Sign Off · 24 Jun 2025
The Long Silence
4 Aug 2026 · 15 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Dead Air
28 Jul 2026 · 30 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Sign Off
21 Jul 2026 · 45 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
The Case of the Missing Hour
14 Jul 2026 · 1h 0m
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
Night Broadcast
7 Jul 2026 · 23 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
The Last Train Out
30 Jun 2026 · 38 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Signal at Midnight
23 Jun 2026 · 53 min
The one everybody argues about.
A Room Above the Street
16 Jun 2026 · 16 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
Also on Australian commercial radio
Australian commercial radio in 1954–1988
Other series the network carried while The Australian Playhouse 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 Australian Playhouse
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
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