Top All-Time Radio Shows in RUSC Poll

The internet old-time radio service RUSC – for its motto “R U Sitting Comfortably?” – got 600 votes in response to a poll asking listeners to name “The Best Old Time Radio Series Ever!”

For a dramatic unveiling of the Top 10 watch this 3-minute video —

You ask, did any sf and fantasy programs make the top of the list? Absolutely!

Classic science fiction anthology series X Minus 1 (#9) and pulp adaptation The Shadow (#4) are both in the Top 10.

Inner Sanctum, the mystery, terror and suspense series with the iconic creaking door ranked #18.

Two other shows that cast a wide net and occasionally did sf/fantasy made the Top 20. At #17 is Escape, which did an adaptation of Bradbury’s “Mars Is Heaven.” At #6 is Suspense, mostly mystery, but its fantasy and horror offerings included the “The Hitch Hiker,” later adapted as a Twilight Zone episode.

What is #1? The Jack Benny program was voted the all-time best radio show.

8 thoughts on “Top All-Time Radio Shows in RUSC Poll

  1. Escape (whose archives I happen to be listening to on the evening bus) did a number of overtly SFnal and fantastic stories. Examples that come to mind are The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Ring of Thoth, Pollack and the Porroh Man, Casting the Runes, Leiningen vs the Ants, Earth Abides and The Time Machine. Oh, and The Outer Limit, which got redone by Dimension X, X Minus 1 and Suspense for some reason.

  2. Forgot to add: Escape is old enough William Conrad was still going by the name Bill Conrad.

  3. For various reasons wireless drama played a much larger role in my life than one might expect given I was a teen in the 1970s so I was aware of the Matt Dillon connection.

    Random horse opera fact: as far as I know the TV show Bonanza is still the only western to feature a Nobel-winning physicist as a character:

    http://youtu.be/vdqjE0jcag4

  4. One has to wonder what genius decided that the best way to announce something about radio was with a video clip in which the audio track carried absolutely no information.

    I’ve recently discovered the late-1940s series Quiet, Please: full archives available at http://quietplease.org . The few episodes that I’ve listened to so far are all sf or fantasy, or at least borderline.

  5. Wow — and it wasn’t entirely gratuitous because Michelson really lived in Virginia City as a kid.

    Seeing that he was given a special appointment to the Naval Academy by President Grant, it would not have been a stretch if he had also crossed the paths of Grant’s agents James West and Artemus Gordon.

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