CBS Radio Mystery Theater - The Complete Series (1399 episodes)
This upload contains all 1399 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Hosted by E.G. Marshall (and for the last 11 months, Tammy Grimes) and produced by Himan Brown, both veterans of radio from the Golden Age, the Mystery Theater was CBS's attempt to revive radio drama from 1974-1982. Despite the small budget allocated by CBS, the show is still excellent, with great acting, quality production and many excellent stories. So join me for another adventure in the macabre. Pleasant dreams.... The dates, episode numbers and titles are believed to be correct based on available information, but any corrections are welcome. Disclaimer: By uploading these files, I make no claim to ownership or copyright. These recordings have been acquired from publicly available sources on the Internet, and my goal has been to put together a collection of every available episode where possible. I will add to these collections if I discover new episodes or if any new episodes become available. Additionally, while I tried to put together a collection that contains the best version of each episode that I could, there may be better copies of some recordings available from collectors and dealers, and I encourage you to reach out to them if you are so inclined. We OTR enthusiasts owe a huge debt to those who have worked tirelessly to discover, acquire and preserve these recordings. My role here has been to organize the files I have, verify the dates, episode numbers and titles as best I could from available sources, and correct and rename the files accordingly. My goal is to ensure these excellent artistic expressions of our past are preserved for this and all future generations, and I hope that by uploading all of my files here in a uniform and organized system, they will be easily accessible for all.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapitres
Critiques
Missing, Lost or Misplaced Episodes
Shamus1
The CBS Radio Mystery Theater broadcasted for nine years from January 06, 1974 to December 07, 1982. Because broadcast records indicate 2970 Logged Episodes, folks wish to theorize there must have been more than the 1399 Preserved Episodes. Nine Years = 108 Months = 3144 Days 3144 Days / Seven Day Week = 448 Weeks 448 Weeks X Five Broadcasts per Week = 2240 448 Weeks X Seven Broadcasts per Week = 3136 2970 Logged Episodes falls within the middle of there being between Five and Seven Broadcasts per week during the Nine Years the show was broadcasted. Looking at the raw data provided in the McFarland Publishers’ book by Gordon Payton and Martin Grams, Jr.: The CBS Radio Mystery Theater indicates that originally the series broadcasted new episodes seven days a week, but as the series progressed a number of rebroadcasts appeared within the broadcast schedule, and the number of rebroadcasts increased over time. Additionally, towards the end of the running of the series, programs were only being broadcasted four or five weekdays each week. Then, there’s the example of a 164 Day Gap in broadcasting between January 09 and June 22, 1981. It’s reasonable to assume the staff who constructed the episodes worked only nine months out of the year with various staff members rotating within a six-day workweek of operation. While the taping of each show with the actors took no longer than three hours, behind the scenes technical staff, director and engineer would be working feverishly before and after the taping of each episode. Creating each episode for One-Hour Broadcasts involved a complexity of pulling together not only the written scripts fitting within the time limit of the show, but also splicing, mixing and processing all of the pieces of both sound effects from physical props and recordings from sound effects albums, taped background music for story bridges and up to a hundred different segments of recorded dialog. E.G. Marshall’s introductions, narrations and postscripts had to be added as well as allowing for the applicable time gaps to accommodate commercials and radio station’s call sign with top of the hour news bulletins. Taking into account the amount of time it took to coordinate the scheduling of the various pieces surrounding the recording studio sessions from start to finish could conceivably take a minimum of at least Three Days for each episode to be completely assembled. 38 Weeks and 6 Days is the number of weeks between the beginning of September and the end May of each year, which could be rounded up to a total of 39 Weeks based on a Six-Day Work Week. 39 X Two Episodes per Six-Day Work Week = 78 Episodes per Nine Month Season X Nine Years = 702 Episodes Taking into account the cost of booking the Sound Studio, it would more than likely be reserved for an Eight Hour Time Slot each week. This would conceivably allow for Two Episodes be Recorded with the applicable actors during the course of the day at the Sound Studio. And, two teams of technical staff assisting the director and engineer could conceivably assemble an additional 702 Episodes during the same Nine-Year period. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe the total of completed episodes assembled in Nine-Years would be within the 1400 range, which accommodates the fact there are 1399 Preserved Episodes in existence. And by extension, it doesn’t seem likely that there would be any further episodes missing, lost or misplaced of The CBS Radio Mystery Theater! Leonard Thomason Chatham, Ontario, Canada
Python code to download all files
simonsonjh
import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import os import sys Download = True def download_mp3s(url, download_dir): """Downloads all MP3 files listed on a webpage. Args: url: The URL of the webpage (view-source of the download page). download_dir: The directory where downloaded files will be saved. """ # Download the HTML content (view-source) response = requests.get(url) response.raise_for_status() # Raise an error if download fails # Parse the HTML content soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, 'html.parser') # Find all anchor tags (<a rel="ugc nofollow">) potentially containing MP3 links links = soup.find_all('a') # Create download directory if it doesn't exist os.makedirs(download_dir, exist_ok=True) # Download each file with a valid MP3 URL for link in links: href = link.get('href') if href and href.endswith('.mp3'): # Check for MP3 extension filename = os.path.basename(href) filepath = os.path.join(download_dir, filename) DownloadPath = os.path.join (url, href) if Download: print ('Downloading:', filename) else: print (DownloadPath) # Download and save the MP3 file # if Download: try: download_response = requests.get (DownloadPath, stream=True) download_response.raise_for_status() with open(filepath, 'wb') as f: for chunk in download_response.iter_content(1024): f.write(chunk) except: pass # except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e: # print(f"Error downloading {filename}: {e}") # Example usage url = "https://archive.org/download/cbsrmt-74-02-08-33-conspiracy-to-defraud" download_dir = "IA" download_mp3s(url, download_dir)</a>
1399 episodes were unique; the 2700 tally includes rebroadcasts!
chrisgherr
1399 episodes were unique; the 2700 tally includes rebroadcasts! Wikipedia gives the number of total broadcasts, including repeats as 2699, (tho without citation). Wouldn't it be nice if there were indeed an additional 1300, (or 1301) episodes to enjoy! It's such a great show; we're indeed lucky to have the complete run, a rarity for OTR, particularly for shows with triple digit episode counts. Notably Gunsmoke is missing a few episodes, tho one can always hope that those missing will surface. Kudos to the uploader here for his stellar work, for not only his CBSRMT uploads, but also for his other OTR archiving, here on the Internet Archive!
Downloading
degemike
It is possible to download and install a downloader to do all the files at once. I am using a product called "Download Them All!" which works very well. That being said, You can also find these files at web site https://www.cbsrmt.com/. I have found that the files on different web sites vary in quality. And after everything is said and done, This show is terrific. There are some show which would be great as a 30 minute show, shows like this run too long and there is too much talk. But that should not deter you from listening to this show.
This is a wonderful collection but there's more to be done.
Andyisgreat
First: so many thanks to everyone involved in collecting all these audio files and ordering them. I've listened from 1 to about 200 and have enjoyed every moment. In fact I got curious enough about this series to look up a book on the series and learned that there are 2970 episodes. I can't imagine the decades that discipline vering these 1399 episodes took but here is hoping that we manage to continue to expand the collection. With luck, it might happen.
Amazing Show!
yukonzach
...or you can open the dropdown for the MP3, go down to "Show All" and a mouse over will show you the download links for everything. No Python experience necessary! :) My family would listen to this show live on a shortwave radio in a dark cabin in the mountains. Some of my best memories ever! Thank you Archive.org! You are definitely getting a donation from me for this!
A kid in the 70s
2Tesoro
When I was a kid in the mid-late 70s, all I knew about was AM radio. KTRC, and starting at 9 or 10 pm every night they would broadcast Mystery Theater. I loved it!! I imagined a 1920s -30s family sitting in front of the radio after dinner listening to the show. Thanks for all your heard work.
COOL
chemdude
So Glad I found this. I had about 150 CBS Radio Mystery theater and wanted more. So I jumped on this collection and downloaded all the episodes. Thanks goes out to other reviews, I picked up some knowledge. Thanks for posting. Like otr. search for Big Variety Old Time Radio presented by chemdude on your favorite podcast catcher (most podcast apps).