The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas

Well, I mentioned last week in my blog that I would have a very special announcement this week -- so here it is: I will be launching a new, nationally syndicated radio series beginning January 5th, 2009 called “The Mystery Theater.” It will be two hours each night, Monday through Friday (10 hours per week) of mystery, detective and science—fiction radio programming originally broadcast from the 1940s through today. It will be hosted by a very well known Hollywood celebrity. The scripts for the host will be written by acclaimed mystery writer Dennis Etchison, who also is the script supervisor for the TZ series. "The Mystery Theater" will have a dedicated website at mysterytheater.com (which will also launch in January 2009). The website will offer thousands of radio shows for sale and/or download. Each offering will be 2 half-hour radio episodes. The download price will be 99 cents or you can buy the 2 shows on CD for $1.99.

A top priority with this new series will be “sound quality” – we will only be broadcasting and selling radio episodes of the very highest sound quality – no radio episodes will be broadcast or sold on our site that are not absolutely top quality sound. For example, there is a terrific mystery series from radio’s golden age titled “Quiet Please.” It was written and produced by Wyllis Cooper, the man who originated “Lights Out!” There were more than 100 episodes produced but I’ve only found a handful of episodes from the series that would meet the sound quality standards to be aired on “The Mystery Theater” or sold at its site.

What you will hear each night on “The Mystery Theater” will be radio episodes of mystery, detective and sci-fi that are “direct from the master recordings” (or episodes very close to the source material) and then digitally remastered. Show's that are not excellent sound quality simply won’t make the cut.

Over my 30-year career in the radio business, I have made wonderful and long-lasting relationships with individuals and companies that not only own rights to the radio episodes, but have the master recordings. Each night you’ll hear 3 half-hour episodes on “The Mystery Theater.” Radio episodes like: I Love a Mystery, Boston Blackie, Dragnet, The Hermit’s Cave, Dangerous Assignment, Adventures By Morse, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Adventures of Sam Spade, Nightbeat, X Minus One, The Adventures of Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, The Weird Circle, Dimension X, Philo Vance, Detective, The Fat Man, The Weird Circle, Mystery Is My Hobby, Mr. District Attorney, Mystery In the Air, I Love Adventure, The Thin Man, Casey, Crime Photographer, Zero Hour (hosted by Rod Serling), The Mutual Radio Theatre (hosted by Vincent Price), The Adventures of the Falcon, Murder At Midnight, Ellery Queen, Mike Hammer, Detective, Bold Venture, The Clock, The Hall of Fantasy, True Detective Mysteries, Molle’ Mystery Theater, Michael Shayne, Detective, Mr. & Mrs. North, and many others.

I expect to launch the series on 100 stations by Monday January 5th, 2009 and by year three to have it placed on as many as 300 stations. You will be able to find a local station by checking the “tune-in” section of the mysterytheater.com website. And I can’t wait to share with you who the host will be! Hopefully I’ll be able to reveal that to you very soon.

Thanks for checking in, I’ll be back with you with more news on this series; "The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer" and of course TZ, next week.