Tune in to Antioch Broadcasting Network
Old-time radio from Illinois
Online: https://radio.macinmind.com/web_player.html
Radio app or digital audio player: http://stream.radio.macinmind.com:8000/listen
When you turn on the radio, you expect to hear music—maybe the latest pop hit, a throwback anthem, or a classical piece—or, if you’re the NPR type, news and talk.
Listening to Antioch Broadcasting Network (ABN) is like tuning your dial to the Golden Age of Radio, a mini-time machine back to when radio carried everything from game shows to sci-fi epics.
ABN is operated by Jay Lichentauer, a software developer in Antioch, Illinois, right on the Wisconsin border. It’s broadcast from a Mac in his basement running Radiologik—one of Lichentauer’s products, it’s a radio DJing and automation program. Lichentauer has over 16,000 episodes from over 100 old-time radio shows in ABN’s catalog, scheduled in hourly blocks like Police Stories, Family Comedy, and Matinee Theater. When possible, Radiologik slots in an episode from today’s date in history, so you’ll hear a Night Beat from exactly 72 years ago, to name an example from this morning’s broadcast.
Many of these episodes are sourced from thousands of reel-to-reel tapes—contemporaneous recordings of shows for later broadcast, or, in many cases, the Armed Forces Radio Service, which at the time served American troops stationed in Europe and Asia during World War II and its aftermath. Lichentauer has painstakingly transferred these to digital formats and cleaned up hiss and clicks to ensure the highest possible audio fidelity.
I often listen to ABN when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s kind of like falling asleep with the television on—stories are engaging enough to keep my mind distracted, but formulaic, so I’m not totally on the edge of my seat. Back in New York, I usually went to bed during the police stories and detective hours, and I soon looked forward to a few favorites: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, about an insurance investigator with an “action-packed expense account” who checks in frequently to keep us abreast of his costs; This Is Your FBI, dramatizations of real FBI cases endorsed by J. Edgar Hoover himself (a.k.a. pure, unfiltered copaganda); and Broadway Is My Beat, which follows a hard-boiled homicide detective on the gritty streets of Manhattan.
I’ve worked in fiction podcasts since 2016, and I find that many creators—colleagues and competitors alike—go to incredible lengths to separate their work from these old-fashioned radio dramas. I find the “this ain’t your granddaddy’s audio drama” posturing to be a bit misguided. While this may be “old-time” radio, these shows are not as far removed from contemporary entertainment as the moniker suggests. Many of the most popular radio shows made the leap to television, becoming foundational texts for the medium. There would be no CSI without Dragnet, no Modern Family without Ozzie and Harriet. Why do the Simpsons live in Springfield? Because that’s where the Andersons lived in Father Knows Best. Today’s audio producers are only hurting themselves by not mining our first nationally broadcast entertainment medium for tricks and techniques, references, and tropes to subvert.
Whether you’re simply marveling at the constant cigarette ads and the effects of inflation (just $1.40 for a cab ride across town!) or enjoying the twists and turns of a detective mystery, you’ll find a lot to enjoy in these old radio shows. You’ll never quite understand the feeling of the whole family gathering around the radio cabinet, tuning into Gunsmoke or Abbott and Costello, but if you close your eyes and imagine, you might get close.
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Adam Cecil
