The run
- Network
- NBC
- Years active
- 1930–1955
- Surviving broadcasts
- 15
- Genre
- drama
Short stories adapted with care, in the sustaining slot where NBC did its serious work. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive, harvested from the Old Time Radio Researchers collections and indexed episode by episode.
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. Night Broadcast · 28 Apr 2026
- 2. The Case of the Missing Hour · 5 May 2026
- 3. Sign Off · 12 May 2026
Signal at Midnight
4 Aug 2026 · 25 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
A Room Above the Street
28 Jul 2026 · 40 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Long Silence
21 Jul 2026 · 55 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Dead Air
14 Jul 2026 · 18 min
The one everybody argues about.
Sign Off
7 Jul 2026 · 33 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
The Case of the Missing Hour
30 Jun 2026 · 48 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
Night Broadcast
23 Jun 2026 · 1h 3m
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
The Last Train Out
16 Jun 2026 · 26 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
Also on NBC
NBC in 1930–1955
Other series the network carried while Author's Playhouse 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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