About Us

This site is brought to you by the Australian Old Time Radio Group, a group of volunteers from all over Australia, with close ties to International radio show researchers. 

The main interest of the members is researching and documenting the Golden Years of Australian Radio, normally accepted as the period from the 1920's to 1960's (inclusive).

The group have many ongoing projects as well as projects in mind for the future. Some of the projects include:

Series/Serials Database
 
The database of Australian Series and Serials is well under way. It is a special project undertaken by our Chief Researcher, Moris Sztajer, before he passed away in 2012.  His work will be continued. 





Australia the OTR Exporter

During the Golden Years, Australia was a large exporter of Australian Radio Series/Serials. This was indeed fortunate, as this has meant that a lot of our OTR heritage that survives today, does so because it was overseas at the time. We are currently working on documenting the stories of our Radio show exporting.




Research Support

Currently we assist International Authors who are researching areas that involve Australian Old Time Radio. We do this to not only promote Australian OTR, but to also ensure that the correct information is supplied.


Ongoing Projects

One of our major projects is of course arranging so that ordinary Australians get to hear Australian radio shows from the Golden Years.  We are fortunate in that NFSA (National Film and Sound Archives)  do store a large amount of our radio heritage. They are storing them for future generations and, we would like to hope, for current generations to hear. It is our intention to assist NFSA in any way possible, to allow Australians to listen to Australian Old Time Radio Shows, NOW!  as well as in the future.

Radio Clubs
 
This is one of my favourites. Collecting the radio badges and documenting the various radio clubs set up for listeners. This is where the listeners became participants. Many folk have memories of being a part of The Argonauts, Smoky Dawson Wild West Club,  as well as hundreds of other Australian radio clubs. We are collecting the badges and documenting the clubs.

Programming Database

This database is only in its early days. By purchasing the magazines and other documentation, we are databasing what was broadcast on what station at all times. You can imagine the amount of work it will take to document over 18,000 days programming multiplied by the number of  stations across Australia. It will take decades, but the project has started. We are always looking for programming information to add to the project.

Radio Transcriptions

Several of the members collect Radio transcriptions and have done so for several decades. Transcription Discs are like LPs and were made for Radio Station use only. This was how the Radio Production Houses  moved the series/serials to the studio, apart from live performances of course. Transcription Discs were meant to be destroyed after use, sometimes a single use and other times they were licensed for a period. Fortunately not all were destroyed and we owe this heritage to those who protected the discs.

Documentation

Several members collect books, documents, photos, ephemera from the Golden Years of Australian Radio. We will bring these to you on this website. All these items assist us in documenting Australian Radio Shows as well as Radio Stations and all the people involved.