I now have 300+ episodes of the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER, 300+ episodes of Suspense and 300+ episodes of GUNSMOKE(radio version) and may consider more. CBS RMT will run a couple of episodes each night between 1 and 3 AM. Suspense runs each day at 10 AM and 10 PM and Gunsmoke will run following Suspense at 10:30PM.
Oldies the rest of the time with Artisan's Teenage Dreams series at 9PM daily.
Broadcast computer for these needs a decent amount of storage space as these 3 dramas with that many episodes take up approx. 28 GB. If I can get episodes of Chickenman and get enough of them I will run them once an hour.
One night after dark I was driving somewhere, either home from a radio station after working or after driving my girlfriend home, and from the lights on the dashboard came the CBS Mystery Theater. The particular episode was outstandingly clever and since then I have tried to find it so I could hear it again, but now that I see Mark's information about 300 episodes, no wonder I haven't been able to find it.
If you knew the name of the episode you could just look it up.
The CBS RMT ran from 1973 to 1982 and 1399 episodes were made. Suspense ran from 1942 to 1962 and 946 episodes were made.
Gunsmoke radio series ran from 1952 to 1961 and 480 episodes were made.
Suspense had well known actors and actresses that did it. It is similar to CBSRMT but 1/2 hour like most were and stories other than just crime and find who did it.
CBSRMT ran the most episodes of all and was 40 to 45 minutes.
I like Suspense and CBSRMT best. Most of the others were a few comedies and mostly crime/detective....find the killer. "The Challenge of the Yukon", you've heard one you've heard them all. Almost.
Carl, listen to "Sorry Wrong Number" with Agnes Moorhead. This is an all time Suspense classic!
Right you are!
"Sorry Wrong Number" is one I heard when it was originally on the network. Later I had a 10" LP containing the episode. There's even a movie version.
The Internet Archive lists 987 CBS Mystery Theatres!!
I don't remember any details about the program I heard except that it was very excellent.
Upon Closer Examination...
No, there are not 987 episodes of the CBSMT at the archive org link. Some of the links contain 20-episodes, other links have no audio content or are duplicates, and there are a few links to other programs. Proceed at my own risk.
I dropped the CBS radio mystery theatre as a good many are very bad quality, some with background noise and hard to understand muffled audio, and because of the different running times varying from 40 to 50 minutes it's hard to program them for the certain times.
The others fill a 1/2 hour time slot. So I have now about 800+ of Suspense and 946 were made. So currently 2 run each day from 10 to 11 PM and Teenage Dreams produced by Artisan run at 7 PM daily. Chickenman runs every day every hour and great oldies mix the rest of the time. Still thinking of Gunsmoke following Suspense but haven't done it yet.
I run 9 hours (18 1/2 hour shows) overnight on Artisan Radio from 9PM to 6AM. Shows such as Suspense, but also The Whistler, Escape, Dragnet and various detective shows such as Philip Marlowe, Nick Carter, etc.
I run them in chronological sequence based on original broadcast dates, rather than randomly.
For those looking for quality-sounding OTR, I recommend the OTRR certified sets, which can be found at archive.org.
@artisan-radio I plan to also have back to back Suspense mixed with one other like Gunsmoke run back to back from midnight to 3AM to listen in bed. And for anyone else that discovers it. Would advertise it's there. I've got so many repeats won't be that often. All Suspense have fine audio even getting them from a 900 episode playlist from Youtube. Gunsmoke also but I will check archive.org you mentioned.