The online spreadsheet for East-West broadcasts of Suspense has been updated. (click here) See a video that explains the file (YouTube) Read more below for the complete background of this aspect of the project.
Much of OTRdom is aware of the efforts to document Suspense and catalog its recordings. Suspense is likely the most-recorded program of the golden and silver age of radio, with studio recordings, professional airchecks, recordings of network feeds, recordings by stations for later broadcast, home disc recordings, taped airchecks, home taped airchecks, and numerous other formats, and, of course, the many releases by AFRS and AFRTS over multiple decades, even beyond the end of broadcasts in 1962. Of interest lately are the periods of time when Suspense had two broadcasts by broad continental geography. There was one for "east coast" (Eastern and Central time zones) and another for "west coast" (Mountain and Pacific zones). In scripts, these were often identified as "early" and "late" and transcriptions would have labels as "Eastern" and "Pacific."
There were three periods of east-west broadcasts. The first was for two Saturdays, August 21, 1943, and August 28, 1943. The second period was for the beginning of the Roma Wines sponsorship in December 1943. CBS was not able to clear a single night for the series because of prior advertising contracts on its Pacific Network. The accommodation was that there would be an east coast performance on Thursday night, and a west coast performance of the same script with the same star and usually the same supporting cast and production crew on Monday night. The prior ad commitments expired. The third period of one national night for Suspense under Roma sponsorship began on Thursday, September 14, 1944, and lasted until the end of the sponsorship on November 20, 1947.
This particular Suspense research project began in 2004 when I started to gather information about missing episodes. I stumbled into all kinds of different recordings that I was not previously aware of -- and in newspaper searches, even more peculiarities appeared. This has since become a full-fledged project about all of Suspense involving the assistance of veteran and new collectors around the world. Thousands of recordings have been evaluated (and kept!) through the generosity of many, many fans. East-west pairs were popping up, and that certainly piqued interest as an important topic.
Why were there so many of these recordings? It's been a very active hobby for more than 50 years with a constant flow fans and collectors. Billy Joel's line from Say Goodbye to Hollywood "so many people in and out of my life, some will last, some will just be now and then" describes the many collectors who have been engaged in this hobby for long periods of time, others whose interest waxed and waned for years, and even more for whom interest was shorter in duration or of a different collecting focus. All of them traded recordings in their time, and these recordings have lasted longer than their actual time in the hobby as their copies and tapes went from collector to collector over the years.
There are those to whom we should be most grateful, often laboring in obscurity to find discs, recordings, tapes, and shared them with other collectors. The aggressive trading of those collectors, many of whom have passed away, are no longer interested in collecting, or not in a position to be active, is why so many Suspense recordings have survived to this day.
As audio storage media changed from reels to cassettes to digital files, many recordings from the early years of the hobby fell out of circulation. These are now being re-discovered. The 1970s and 1980s reel collections and cassette collections of the 1980s and 1990s are being sought and evaluated. Strangely, as efforts led to standardizing sets of programs of series in digital formats, many of the obscure and what were mistaken as "duplicates" fell aside, and started to disappear. This is why it has been so important to find the surviving early collectors, and also their collections, to search for the recordings needed to assemble as much of the history of the series as possible. Hence, the thousands of recordings of this series that have been gathered, regardless of source, quality, completeness, and format, are all in the hopes of understanding the context and history of this series.
As these recordings are assessed, it is surprising how many separate east and west coast recordings still survive, undetected, hiding in collections, in plain sight. The two-night Roma period is well-documented, and in a sense is self-documenting because each episode teases the upcoming week's episode by mentioning the specific day to listen.
It is the third east-west period, the single night Roma broadcasts, that are challenging. These are not so easy to identify. For a some weeks, east listeners would be reminded to stay tuned for The FBI in Peace and War, but west coast listeners heard no such reminder because their broadcast of that series did not follow Suspense in the schedule. The east FBIiP&W tease was always optional. If that performance was being pressed to finish on time, it was often omitted as the director timed the broadcast. There are many pairs of these FBIiP&W broadcasts that have been found, but it is clear that many are still missing.
Another method of discerning the broadcasts is how much time passed between the last word of the announcer before they would say "This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System." While the dramatic core of the broadcasts almost always match in timing and pacing, the post-show announcements were not always in such perfect lockstep, and often had differences for other reasons or purposes.
Other broadcast-specific characteristics can be found. There are sometimes differences in small clips of dialogue between east and west broadcasts. These are hard to find because they did not happen often, but they occurred and should be documented.
The only content aspect of east-west that can be relied on is the tease of FBIiP&W. The others characteristics only inform us that we have two different recordings but not their planned geographic intent.
There are non-audio factors. Sometimes, transcription discs of the pair of recordings are available and their labels specify the geography that received the broadcast. If that information has been carefully retained with a specific recording, then that is considered reliable documentation (we just have to hope that no one mixed them up!)
Unfortunately, this label information may have been lost as recordings were digitized. Some early collectors may not have had interest in keeping two recordings of the same drama and kept only one in their collection. They considered another recording to be an unnecessary duplicate as they were more interested in the story and not being complete in a preservation perspective. (It must also be noted that recording tape was expensive, and that was an important factor for many collectors). It's their hobby, after all, and they can choose whatever satisfies their interests, so that's fine. Many such collectors have been extremely generous to the hobby and researchers, so it is nothing to fret about as there is so much to appreciate about their support and commitment and broader interest in the era.
If you have any recordings of Suspense on reel or cassette or digital files made from those media, please check to see of any of the episodes are part of the east-west period. Then, check the online spreadsheet to view the status. If only one version exists, we may want to check your copy out. Listen to the program for an FBIiP&W announcement and time the period between the last announcement and the network ID. There may be other factors that could make it special, such as differences in dialogue, especially in the show announcements, or even a flub of some kind.
Listening to the programs can always help uncover aspects of a particular broadcast that collectors had inadvertently overlooked.
We are able to convert reels and cassettes into digital files. In fact, many of the east and west recordings we have found in these last six months have come from those sources. We are used to perusing a hundred recordings and finding one that has something of interest. It takes time, but it's part of a fascinating process.
If you think you might have something, please contact me on the Facebook page of the Old Time Radio Researchers or by email at suspenseOTR@gmail.com.
Thank you very much!
The spreadsheet can be viewed by clicking here
The spreadsheet is online because new information is being added, old information corrected, or enhanced with new details. Check back now and then to see the progress.
The primary targets are the episodes where only one performance has been located, and of course, we're always looking for missing episodes of the series.
The complete Suspense log is always being updated, and can be viewed or downloaded. (click here)
There are some particular episodes where we have not been able to find additional recordings... everything we have found so far is the same single episode broadcast recording. If you purchased a recording from an OTR dealer prior to 2005, or have reel or cassette recordings prior to that year of any of these from the 1970s-1980s, you may have a missing east or west recording. The east-west workbook has an explanation of how they can be identified. These may be lurking out there somewhere, undetected. If you have any of these, please contact me at suspenseOTR@gmail.com for this topic. If it is on tape or cassette, I am able to record a digital file from it if you are not able to. THANKS!
44/09/14 You'll Never See Me Again
45/05/03 Fear Paints a Picture
45/06/14 The Burning Court
45/11/15 Murder off Key
45/12/13 The Argyle Album
45/12/20 Double Entry
45/12/27 Pink Camellias
46/01/17 The Pasteboard Box
46/01/24 My Dear Niece
46/02/21 Consequence
46/03/14 No More Alice
46/04/18 The Night Reveals
46/04/25 Dark Journey
46/05/02 Crime Without Passion
46/05/16 The Plan
46/06/06 The High Wall
46/07/18 Photo Finish
46/07/25 Can't We Be Friends
46/08/01 Commuter's Ticket
46/08/08 Dead Ernest
46/08/15 The Last Letter of Dr Bronson
46/08/22 The Great Horrell
46/09/05 You'll Never See Me Again
46/10/31 Lazarus Walks
46/11/28 The Strange Death of Gordon Fitzroy
47/01/02 Tree of Life
47/01/23 One Way Street
47/07/31 Mortmain
47/08/07 Quiet Desperation
47/08/21 Murder Aboard the Alphabet
47/11/06 Dream Song
47/11/13 Riabouchinska