Our Saturdays were already dedicated to classic #filk from noon to five, and it’s growing strong. The more classic material we add, the better the playlist gets.
So we’re thinking what fun it would be to continue our old time radio show tradition by adding another segment at 5PM, and we’re calling it Super Saturdays. Yes, it will be a time that old radio shows from the early days of radio play just for you.
We won’t be playing just any radio shows. We’re hoping to get a collection of the weird, the sci-fi, the fantasy… the fun. (Okay maybe we’ll throw in a mystery now and again.) Why are we being so picky? Because the origins of filk owes something to those early shows. Science fiction is where a good meat of filk was born. And we bleed that to superheroes, about which there are a good many filk and novelty songs, and down into other popular filk subjects. So why not?
The first show we’re lining up happens to be the first adult science fiction to ever grace the airwaves: 200 Plus. According to our show source, Old Radio World:
(It) ran on the Mutual Broadcasting System from March 15, 1950 to January 2, 1952 in various 30-minute time slots. A Dryer Weenolsen production, it was the first adult science fiction series on radio, airing one month prior to the better known Dimension X.
2000 Plus was an anthology program, using all new material rather than adapting published stories. The series was the creation of Sherman H. Dryer (October 11, 1913-December 22, 1989) who scripted and produced the series with Robert Weenolsen. Dryer directed cast members Lon Clark, Joseph Julian, Bryna Raeburn, Bill Keene and Amzie Strickland. Emerson Buckley conducted the music composed by Elliott Jacoby. Ken Marvin was the program’s announcer, and the sound effects were by Adrian Penner.
The nature of the series is indicated in the titles of 1950 episodes: “The Brooklyn Brain,” “The Flying Saucers,” “The Robot Killer,” “Rocket and the Skull,” “A Veteran Comes Home,” “Men from Mars,” “When the Machines Went Wild,” “When the Worlds Met,” “The Insect.” “Silent Noise,” “The Green Thing,” “The Giant Walks” and “Worlds Apart.”
In Science Fiction Television (2004), M. Keith Booker wrote:
It was not until the 1950s that science fiction radio really hit its stride, even as science fiction was beginning to appear on television as well. Radio programs such as Mutual’s 2000 Plus and NBC’s Dimension X were anthology series that offered a variety of exciting tales of future technology, with a special focus on space exploration (including alien invasion), though both series also often reflected contemporary anxieties about the dangers of technology.
It’ll be like the old Saturday morning cartoon shows, but for your ears and at a time the night owls get to participate!
