quality about s/mrt shows

[harold95]

i just started listening to these collection of shows.

and the first thing that hits me is the quality of the recordings. they sound very good.
obviously these were not recorded off broadcast radio.

were they made available in some other way at some point?

i wish all of the cbsrmt's sounded this good.

thanks for any thoughts you may have about this.

[Mike Hobart]

Funny you should ask. Just last month the FGRA [First Generation Radio Archives] brought out a set of Mutual on CD and this is what they had to say on the subject:

In a time before satellite or Internet transmission became commonplace, "The Mutual Radio Theater" was distributed to local stations on 12" long-playing records in sets of five discs per box - a full week of shows, sent all at once, recorded complete with pre-sold national advertisements and station breaks. Stations would play each show just once, and were then instructed to discard the recordings to make way for next week's supply.

Luckily, the packrat personnel of some local stations kept the practically new discs for themselves, carting them home to their basements and garages - and, since 2001, Radio Archives has been searching the country to find and preserve the content of these multi-LP sets. Just a few months ago, we were able to complete our collection and have finally obtained the full run: all 103 original productions, as well as 107 repeat broadcasts (same show, different commercials), all from the original 12" LPs and fully restored to stereo brilliance.

http://www.radioarchives.org/

So there you have it. Always nice to hear a story like that, isn't it?