Originally broadcast in syndication, 9 September 1939. Restored from the Old Time Radio archives.
The run
- Network
- NBC / CBS
- Years active
- 1932–1948
- Surviving broadcasts
- 32
- Genre
- talk
Vox Pop began in 1932 as a Houston street-interview programme and ran on NBC and later CBS until 1948, broadcasting each week from a different location — a world's fair, a hospital operating room, a factory floor, a political convention. Its hosts put unrehearsed questions to whoever was standing there, making it one of radio's first sustained experiments in recording the unscripted public voice. The surviving recordings in this collection are public domain and stream from the Internet Archive.
1948 · 11945 · 41944 · 31943 · 21942 · 31941 · 111940 · 61939 · 2
Restoration quality — measured from the surviving files
Rough but complete · 32 of 32
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
Every broadcast below carries its own provenance sheet — transfer quality, file source and rights.Archive record: VoxPop_857
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
20 dated broadcasts across 17 years on the air, with 9 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
JFMAMJJASOND
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
Clean transferListenableRough but complete No surviving recording
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1939, in original transmission order.
- 1. New York Worlds Fair New York New York · 9 Sep 1939
- 2. Largest Telephone Building New York New York · 14 Dec 1939
- 3. Movie Set of Seventeen Hollywood California · 15 Feb 1940
New York Worlds Fair New York New York
9 Sep 1939 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on NBC, 9 September 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Largest Telephone Building New York New York
14 Dec 1939 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on NBC, 14 December 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Movie Set of Seventeen Hollywood California
15 Feb 1940 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 15 February 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
McLean Operating Room Roosevelt Hospital New York New York
9 May 1940 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 9 May 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Republican Convention Philadelphia Pennsylvania clip
27 Jun 1940 · 8 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 27 June 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Movie Set of Virginia Charlottesville Virginia
8 Aug 1940 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 8 August 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Buster Crabbe New York Worlds Fair
15 Aug 1940 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 15 August 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Mystery Location Burns Detective Agency Conclave
5 Sep 1940 · 29 min
Originally broadcast on CBS, 5 September 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Vox Pop collection (public domain).
Same night on the air
9 Sep 1939
Everything else the archive still holds from the night of 9 Sep 1939.
Originally broadcast in syndication, 9 September 1939. Restored from the Old Time Radio archives.
Also on NBC / CBS
NBC / CBS in 1932–1948
Other series the network carried while Vox Pop was on the air.
Same seasons
talk on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
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