this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mercury_Theatre_on_the_Air
The most famous is the War of the Worlds broadcast; that and others are available at the Internet Archive.
The most famous is the War of the Worlds broadcast;
Yarp, literally the only one I know off the top of my head.
The shadow knows.
The gem smuggling episode was fucked
Mmmuhuhahahahaaa
Wasn’t War of the Worlds an extended radio drama?
War of the Worlds was originally a novel in 1898. A 1938 adaptation was made for radio as a single 60 minute episode of The Mercury Theater on the Air.
The radio episode was formatted as a series of increasingly frequent "news bulletins" that interrupted light jazz orchestra music. This caused some listeners to believe that New Jersey was actively being invaded by Martians.
Cracker Barrel used to sell old radio dramas on tape and CD. They had the original ads, too. Awful quality, but the illusion was there.
Can't believe no one has said the dramatized version of LOTR broadcast by BBC in 1981! 12 hours plus of pure magic. Fun fact: Ian Holm gave the voice for Frodo in the radio version, the same guy who plays Bilbo in the movie trilogy.
Looks like it is on internet archive already: https://archive.org/details/lord-of-the-rings-10_202401 though I first downloaded it on high seas many years ago.
A 14 hour expanded radio drama of the Star Wars trilogy was done.
Of course there are. Look up "OTR" on Archive.org.
Oh yes. Check out OTR Gold podcasts. They’re all classic radio shows and dramas.
ever heard of the Lone Ranger?
Not a drama but, The Firesign Theatre.
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
If classic means old, aren't all radio dramas classic radio dramas?
I mean, afaik the genre of radio drama also includes fiction podcasts like Archive 81, Limetown, and Welcome to Night Vale
You might check out episodes of Lux Radio Theatre. It ran for about 20 years, and every week they performed an hour-long adaptation of either a Broadway play or a popular movie; as much as possible, they tried to use the original cast as well. There's a whole bunch of them on the internet, at the Internet Archive and other sites. I downloaded a whole bunch of them back in the day; I used to listen to them during my commute home.
The Adventures of Superman, Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet
Day of the Triffids.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! As much as I love the 1981 BBC series, you can't beat the radio series.
Having read the original Foundation Trilogy twice, I can give a heartfelt stamp of approval to the BBC radio play of it, apparently it's from 1977, I had assumed it was at least half a decade older than that. Hope you enjoy, I surely did.
I don't know if it's still available, but you used to be able to download many Orson Welles radio dramas as podcasts. It was great entertainment when I worked for a moving company driving hours ever day
Edit: It was called Relic Radio. The last upload was 2023. Iirc the shows had a wide variety of audio quality
As others suggested, just go to Archive.org and search "OTR".
If you are looking for super modern stuff look into BBC Radio 4 Extra.
I had a good time listening to Wolf 359.
Shout-out to WAMU's Big Broadcast. Sunday nights, three hours of old time radio. Lately they usually play Jonny Dollar, Guns one, a comedy, a feature length drama, and some shorter songs and variety pieces.
You can listen online.