January 5, 2014

They broadcast what from Manhattan?

By Kurt Wayne
Nowadays on New Year's Eve I'm enveloped by two separate annual rituals.  First, there's a sense of dread I experience as to what bad-taste joke will be told by a network host before the ball drops.  Second, I take stock of what events will be celebrated in the upcoming year.  Mercifully this year I missed the first, but on the second the realization hit that this will be the 40th anniversary of the CBS Radio Mystery Theatrer (yes, that CBS), which, amazingly, handled topics as abortion, homosexuality, communism, (Islamic!) terrorism, witchcraft and Christianity with such wisdom that I still don't quite know how they did it without controversy. The CBS RMT (as its fans abbreviated it) began in 1974 as an attempt by radio veteran Himan Brown (who, among other things, was bullied as a child by a young neighborhood thug named Bugsy Siegel) to resurrect the "old-time" radio shows of the 1930s and 40s (with running narration at the beginning and end of each show segment by...(Read Full Article)