It's too bad we have to rely on the internet rather than use radio itself to do this again. XM Radio should take advantage of it's freedom and use Old Time Radio for a block of programming.

There are several places on the net for old time radio. Several years ago I put together a bunch of old radio serials for a friend of mine who was dieing of cancer. It meant a lot to him since he hadn't heard them since he was a boy and it eased his final days.

Wow great article. I didnt even know these where out on the net. I'm excited to hear more of these and maybe do my own.

I'm not sure why XM and Sirius haven't jumped on this -- the new dramas that I've been listening to are high quality. Of course, if you listen to the interview Rob Walch did with the Sirius folks on Podcast 411, you'll know that they really don't have a clue about what podcasts are out there, and what quality they are.

Podcasting is giving new life to a lot of old serials, simply because by now they are in the public domain, so there aren't licensing issues to deal with. I'd love to hear some of the old stuff broadcast again.

For some reason, I neglected to link to Spaceship Radio, which does a great job of rebroadcasting great old sci-fi serials.

You can get a lot of compilations of old radio programs on eBay. Just look for your favorites. They're usually MP3s on CD. I started looking around for podcasts of old serials and was disappointed at the paucity compared to eBay CDs.

Radio theater is very effective and it's disappointing that it's not used more often. Perhaps podcasts will change that. As Stan Freeberg pointed out years ago, radio can do things that TV can never do. I suppose that the best modern example is Gary Keillors weekly program. Too bad that Joe Franks had to suspend his terrific "Works In Progress" series that appeared regularly on various public stations (you can get some of them at his website, perhaps he'll make them podcasts - you haven't heard good radio unless you've heard Joe Franks). Meanwhile, the Firesign Theater has a regular friday AM live broadcast sometimes available on Pacifica stations. Of course, at 5:35 AM sunday morning one can get 2 minutes of "Ian Shoales" before he signsoff with "gotta go".

Firesign Theater is podcasting -- http://firesigntheater.com/podcasting/ is the RSS for their podcasts. Not sure if it's the same show that airs on Pacifica or if it's just older stuff that's off old albums, but they're doing it.

One disappointing thing about podcast drama is that original programming is updated so infrequently (except for Dr. Floyd, which updates faithfully each week, but goes on an extended 'vacation' every 13 episodes or so, and Decoder Ring which updates biweekly). Episode 1 of Silent Universe, for example, was February 15. Episode 2 will be out "by early/mid April, but we don't yet have a solid release date." And they aren't the only example -- I've got a subscription list with at least 4 drama casts that haven't updated in almost a month.

The nice thing is that they really aren't taking up space, so I don't have to delete them. But I wish that drama podcasters would get a little bit of a show buffer so that they can update fairly regularly. If anything, that's the biggest weakness of the genre.

If you're into radio drama, please check our shows out at pendantaudio.com! We're on iTunes too in the podcast section. Just search for Pendant. We are continuously putting out epsiodes. We have several shows and a new epsiode of each comes out every month.

Remember, these things take time to put together, especially since we all have day jobs and do the drama stuff for fun in our spare time.

Enjoy!