SHAKESPEARE WAS NOT an obvious source of programming for commercial radio. The higher the ratings, the more a network could charge for airtime, but ratings for cultural programs were expected to be low. Networks eventually met the obligation to broadcast sustaining programs with bravado, producing the best educational, public affairs, and arts shows they could, including adaptations of plays.

A 1942 article in Time magazine complained, “last week, for the first time in more than twelve radio seasons, neither NBC (the old Red network) nor the Blue Network broadcast an hour-long adaptation of a stage play. Possibly not many millions of listeners noticed this, but it meant that the book was closed on an era of radio.” The article looks back to what it identifies as the first Shakespeare broadcast, a NBC production of The Tempest in 1928, and then describes some of the playwrights whose works were broadcast including Henrik Ibsen, John Galsworthy, James M. Barrie, and George S. Kaufman. NBC producers and directors blamed the demise of these adaptations on a trend toward original radio scripts. There are three qualifications the writer might have made, but did not: original radio scripts much predated 1942, adaptations of plays were still being broadcast— just not that week, and local stations presented plays five years before there the networks were organized.

Understanding the formats of previous Shakespeare broadcasts will explain why the Battle programs were severely abridged. This chapter will therefore survey past programs. We will probably not survey everything. Susanne Greenhalgh writes, “research on radio thus offers that rare phenomenon in Shakespeare studies, a history still in the process of being outlined and documented.” Please remember this as I describe all known American Shakespeare broadcasts until the Battle begins, local and network. I have not yet researched the years 1923– 1926, though I did stumble upon some local productions from 1924. There are almost certainly more to be found.

Shakespeare on Local Stations

It has long been believed that the first Shakespeare broadcast and the first dramatic broadcast of any kind was a program presenting three Shakespearean scenes, heard February 16, 1923 on the BBC.