2021-12-05

Welcome to Theater Five (or is it Theatre Five, Theater 5, or Theatre 5?)!

Believe it or not, each of those four names were correct at one time or another as far as ABC Radio, their publicity gurus, and the newspapers and trade magazines were concerned (and even their internal memos!). Whatever name is used, it's an underappreciated radio drama venture that ABC attempted in 1964 and 1965, and it deserves more attention among classic radio fans and collectors.

The series has not received much affection from fans of classic radio. There are two basic reasons. First, most recordings of the 256 surviving episodes of the 260 broadcasts are in poor sound, making them less enjoyable than other recordings. Audio quality is very important in appreciating radio programs. 

Second, the history behind the development of the series has been unknown to most radio fans. The most common dismissal of the series has been "ABC couldn't even get their own New York station to run it." It's not that simple... Theater Five may have had a one-year run that ended in Summer of 1965, but its syndication life ran until early 1969! It's a fascinating story... a story worth telling... and we're happy to do so.

As part of our shorthand, you will see the series referred occasionally referred to as "T5," It works as an abbreviation, and no one has to give a second thought to whether it's "Theater" or "Theatre" or "Five" or "5." Just like radio, we'll leave it to your imagination.

I have a personal interest in the series. When I was a young collector of radio recordings in the 1970s, I had the opportunity to meet many of the people involved in the series. Announcer Fred Foy and director Warren Somerville were very generous to me. Ed Blainey, who was a sound effects artist in the golden age of radio (one of the effects he invented the coin drop used on The Fat Man), became a very close friend. Unfortnately, Ed passed away in July 1979, just months after his 63rd birthday and months after his retirement from ABC. I miss him dearly, and he'd be so thrilled to know that T5 was finally getting some recognition. Here's to Ed, and all the others who toiled in obscurity, to create radio's golden age and its successors.

-- Joe Webb, Wake Forest, NC

RESEARCH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Two radio history researchers have been generous contributors to this Theater Five effort: Karl Schadow and Nick Palmer. Karl has been immersed in documenting radio's past for decades in articles in fan and other publications and in liner notes for commercial releases. Nick Palmer has worked diligently to document and summarize the individual episodes and find curious connections to prior radio series and later ones, such as CBS Radio Mystery Theater, where some T5 scripts were re-worked for that program, and quirky items about productions and recordings (the kind of stuff that makes this research stuff so much fun).