1942: The Year in Radio News
US networks (recorded off air)
US networks (recorded off air) · 1942–1942
131 EpisodesWeeklyPGSince 1942
The run
- Network
- US networks (recorded off air)
- Years active
- 1942–1942
- Surviving broadcasts
- 131
- Genre
- news
News from 1942. I usually share these via torrent but I don't think all these files are available on archive.org so here's a 1942 news file dump. Any typo or error is mine. 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
31 dated broadcasts across 85 years on the air, with 82 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. The Long Silence · 19 Nov 2024
- 2. A Room Above the Street · 26 Nov 2024
- 3. Signal at Midnight · 3 Dec 2024
A Room Above the Street
4 Aug 2026 · 54 min
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
The Long Silence
28 Jul 2026 · 17 min
A quiet beginning that turns, halfway through, into something else entirely.
Dead Air
21 Jul 2026 · 32 min
The one everybody argues about.
Sign Off
14 Jul 2026 · 47 min
Short, complete and unexpectedly devastating.
The Case of the Missing Hour
7 Jul 2026 · 1h 2m
The episode listeners keep sending to people who never listen to podcasts.
Night Broadcast
30 Jun 2026 · 25 min
We go back to the beginning and read everything again.
The Last Train Out
23 Jun 2026 · 40 min
Three interviews, one archive reel, and a question nobody wanted asked.
Signal at Midnight
16 Jun 2026 · 55 min
Recorded on location, with the room left in.
Also on US networks (recorded off air)
US networks (recorded off air) in 1942–1942
Other series the network carried while 1942: The Year in Radio News was on the air.
Same seasons
news on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The broadcast desk
Wartime correspondence and Cavalcade of America established the daily explainer and the narrated history hour long before either had a feed.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of 1942: The Year in Radio News
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
Chosen by the same editors.
