The run
- Network
- ABC
- Years active
- 1965–1965
- Surviving broadcasts
- 265
- Genre
- theatre
Theater Five was ABC's attempt to revive radio drama during the early 1960s. The series name was derived from its time slot, 5:00 PM. Running Monday through Friday, it was an anthology of short stories, each about 20 minutes long.
Restoration quality — measured from the surviving files
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
12 dated broadcasts across 2 years on the air. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1964, in original transmission order.
- 1. Hit and Run · 3 Aug 1964
- 2. The Fix · 2 Sep 1964
- 3. Subject Number 428A · 2 Oct 1964
- 01
Hit and Run
3 Aug 1964 · 20 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 02
The Fix
2 Sep 1964 · 21 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 03
Subject Number 428A
2 Oct 1964 · 20 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 04
Why Can't Life Be More Like in the Movies
3 Nov 1964 · 19 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 05
Fog
3 Dec 1964 · 21 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 06
The Blank Check
4 Jan 1965 · 21 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 07
The Hunters
3 Feb 1965 · 21 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
- 08
April Snowfall
5 Mar 1965 · 21 min
Transferred from the Internet Archive item “OTRR_Theater_Five_Singles”, part of the Old Time Radio Researchers public-domain collections.
Same seasons
theatre on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
Theatre of the mind
Full-cast drama with a live orchestra and a studio full of sound effects. Lux Radio Theater and the CBS Radio Workshop are the direct ancestors of scripted podcast fiction.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of Theater Five
Modern series carrying this form forward.
If you liked this
More to explore
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