Weird Radio and Television

A Collection of Spy Transmissions, Unidentified Stations, Paranormal Activities, and Other Mysteries Across the Media

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Jim Johnston

For more than a century, radio has been a part of people’s lives. No one alive today remembers a time when it hadn't always been there as a familiar, reliable source of information and entertainment. Today, it seems a bit mundane, overtaken by the Internet and satellite television. Even in the 1980s, the development of cable television (50 channels instead of five) and the start of MTV made radio seem quaint, and as many once claimed, “Radio is dead”.

It wasn't, of course. Radio is still popular today, with as many stations as ever, and it remains a part of the world that is taken for granted. While not dead, its familiarity has made it seem a bit mundane, but people shouldn’t think of it that way. In fact, the airwaves have always been a place of mystery, a battleground of competing ideologies, and a source of anonymous voices. Radio has been used to support war efforts, topple governments, communicate secretly, and even attempt to communicate with the dead.

Likewise, for more than two generations, television has been a part of most people’s lives, and few could remember a time when it wasn’t there. Today, viewers are accustomed to broadcasts running seamlessly with commercials following programming before more programs come on. The occasional glitch might happen here or there, including temporary blackouts due to storms, but for the most part, television runs incredibly smoothly.

Of course, that wasn’t all the case. At times, pranksters or political activists hacked into satellite feeds, protestors took over studios while live and on air, and intriguing paranormal events with few good explanations have been seen.

Weird Radio and Television: A Collection of Spy Transmissions, Unidentified Stations, Paranormal Activities, and Other Mysteries Across the Media includes strange stories that will make these famous forms of media seem a bit less familiar and far more interesting.

©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River Editors

Lots of filler in the form of historical events.

Lots of filler in the form of historical events.
Needs more technical details about the sources.

Cheap, boring, misleading. Avoid.

Really just bad. I was hoping for an interesting 3-and-a-half-ish hours of radio and TV weirdness -- I mean, the thing is *called* Weird Radio and TV -- but what I got instead was a series of endless treatises on WWII/Nazi German history (especially of Panzer tanks), anti-semitic radio pastors from the '30s, redundant chapters on paranormal tech, and TV station takeovers from activists in the '80s. YES, I am aware that these things need context and historical perspective to be presented properly, and being a lifelong radio buff (I collect and restore vintage radios and love all things OTR, broadcast history, shortwave and amateur radio; my call sign is N0TLD) I was certainly expecting contextual set-up for each subject, in fact was looking forward to it. But so much of this is just a rambling tangent that eventually comes around to "Oh, yeah, we were supposed to be talking about radio and TV signals." For some reason, much of the information is very repetitive, to the point where I thought the chapter list was replaying or skipping, somehow. There is some scant mention of pirate radio, and a bit about EVP/ITC phenomena, but all treated scattershot, aloof, read by Jim Johnston's walrus mustache. I don't even know if he has one, but you can hear one. What you CAN'T hear, disappointingly, are any actual recordings -- there is no other audio but the narrator, no clips or recordings of ANYthing mentioned. I realize (obviously) it's supposed to be an audiobook, which has initially been understood to mean a printed book being read aloud, and in that case there would not be recordings in the original book... yet this was NEVER a print book, it is a newly created audio work and as such it should have been only natural to include AUDIO of events being touted. But no, no actual historical audio at all. It's just Jim's Mustache **reciting** Orson Welles' dialogue after his War of the Worlds broadcast, **reciting** Charles Coughlin's disgusting radio rants (of which there is FAR too much quoted for comfort), and so on. It feels like just a bunch of hashed together tidbits from Wikipedia, like a high school sophomore book report, thanks to the digital-dartboard style so typical of Charles River Editors' products. It's cheap, like the discount coffee table books at the front of a bookstore -- the titles and covers can grab you, but the content is just boring, disappointing garbage. There is nothing in this 'audiobook' worth the credit/price, that you can't find for free easily online... and in fact, you can hear ACTUAL recordings of all of those things and more for free online, too. So just avoid it.

EDIT/UPDATE:

After some time, I've tried listening again to see if I am being too harsh.

I'm not. This thing is AWFUL.

I am sorry I paid for it and wish I could exchange it but apparently Audible won't let me for now. Thanks Audible, for not only providing this audio dreck but making it impossible to return/remove from my library.

And never again, Charles River Editors. Never again.