The run
- Network
- Syndicated
- Years active
- 1933–1943
- Surviving broadcasts
- 171
- Genre
- variety
Studio trailers made for radio: stars, scenes and hard sell, aimed at getting you into the picture house on Friday. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive, harvested from the Old Time Radio Researchers collections and indexed episode by episode.
Source collection
Old Time Radio Researchers Group
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
40 dated broadcasts across 94 years on the air, with 90 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 2024, in original transmission order.
- 1. Sign Off · 19 Nov 2024
- 2. Dead Air · 26 Nov 2024
- 3. The Long Silence · 3 Dec 2024
Dead Air
4 Aug 2026 · 52 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Sign Off
28 Jul 2026 · 15 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
The Case of the Missing Hour
21 Jul 2026 · 30 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Night Broadcast
14 Jul 2026 · 45 min
New tape, a reluctant witness, and a timeline that finally stops making sense.
The Last Train Out
7 Jul 2026 · 1h 0m
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
Signal at Midnight
30 Jun 2026 · 23 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
A Room Above the Street
23 Jun 2026 · 38 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
The Long Silence
16 Jun 2026 · 53 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Also on Syndicated
Syndicated in 1933–1943
Other series the network carried while Movie Previews on the Air 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 Movie Previews on the Air
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
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