Talk:Sears Radio Theater

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Facts[edit]

There are several statements in the article that are at odds with my experience with it in its own time. First, the Denver, Colorado, CBS affiliate had to get special permission to pick it up instead of the Mutual affiliate; it was always on that net but merely lost the Sears sponsorship for its second season. There were no more reruns between seasons than was standard procedure for TV in those days. When the title changed, new episodes continued to be heard with Duff replacing Widmark for Friday night adventures; Howard had in fact subbed for Dick on several first season episodes, so many that I wasn't at all surprised by his permanency in Season 2. At the end of that season it disappeared, with Nimoy never heard. Furthermore, there was a blatant drop in the audio quality for the second season, as if they either switched to lower quality tape, a less effective studio, or maybe even both. Apparently, a third season with Nimoy was not carried by the Denver station (given the image), but none of the other points has a handy explanation of the sort. Note that the External links don't allow Duff as host at all, but of the three Adventure hosts, he had to have done the most episodes (counting his subbing for Widmark). --Tbrittreid (talk) 21:46, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE: Since I posted this yesterday, a possibility occurred to me. Sometime back, the article Doctor Strange carried what was claimed (and certainly appeared) to be a scan of the cover of Strange Tales issue #110, heralding the debut of the aforementioned character, but in reality he was not even mentioned there and the image was a very well done fake, quite convincing in and of itself; it was only the fact that some of us there knew better that exposed it, not any shortcomings in the work. Were it not for Jerry Haendiges' logs (two of the aforementioned external links) mentioning Nimoy (but not Duff, as I said before, which does his credibility no favors) as a host of the Mutual-titled run, I'd strongly suspect that the image here is a similar fabrication; notice the lack of any "copy" other than the program's name across the top. Indeed, since he believes that Duffy's Tavern aired on CBS—only the audition show (old time radio's equivalent of a TV pilot) was, with the series proper on NBC (although our article says the first season was on CBS too, but even if that's true it doesn't really help him)—and that Ipana (toothpaste) was the only sponsor—there were others; I do not remember specific brand names off the top of my head, but my recordings indicate a home electronics manufacturer and, appropriately enough, a beer—he's no good reason to place very much trust in this. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]