CBS Radio Workshop

The centerpiece for our analysis today is an audio recording from March 16th, 1956.

It's a broadcast from the CBS Radio Workshop, and it's titled Cops and Robbers.

A fantastic title.

It really is.

Wow.

They wanted to weaponize the imagination of the listener doing things that television, which was burdened by heavy cameras and expensive physical sets and the literal boundaries of a screen, simply could not do.

And this defiant philosophy led directly to the revival of the CBS Radio Workshop.

The network tapped CBS Vice President William Froug to spearhead this initiative.

Later on, an audition broadcast of a program called I Confess from 1952.

But first, one of radio's great experiments late in its golden era, it's the CBS Radio Workshop with the story Housing Problem.

Famous voices at the time, Shirley Mitchell, Shep Menkin, and Dawes Butler appear in this CBS broadcast from June 16th, 1957.

From Hollywood, the CBS Radio Workshop.

I don't care what you say.

I say he keeps a canary in that cage.

Uh, that's Mr. Henchard, our boarder, uh, a man of similar firm convictions.

Me? Uh, my name's Eddie, and I say I don't care what kind of a bird he keeps in the cage, so long as he pays the rent.

Four.

CBS Radio and its 217 affiliated stations present the CBS Radio Workshop, radio's distinguished series dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind.

Tonight, report on ESP, a study of clairvoyance, telepathy, and extrasensory perception taken from actual case records.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. John McIntyre.

man

through thought.

Tonight, the CBS Radio Workshop has presented Report on ESP, directed by Jack Johnstone.

Research and script by Leonard St. Clair.

Visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Stephen Vincent Binet's short story comes to CBS Radio Workshop in an adaptation by William N. Robson, who also directed and produced.

In New York Society, young office worker Tommy Culverin, an avowed cat-hater, looks back on his courtship of the enigmatic Princess Vivranca.

Around them move tea calls, dinner parties, concert performances, and Thibault, a visiting European conductor whose unusual physical peculiarity has society talking.

From CBS, this is episode 44, broadcast November 25th, 1956, The King of the Cats.

And now, our story begins.

From Hollywood, the CBS Radio Workshop.

Cat!