Radio Recap: The Big Story

The Big Story is a fascinating concept for a program - although the execution isn't that different from other shows. It was an anthology program in which each week they would dramatize a story taken from the newspapers, usually with the story's journalist as the lead character in the drama.

The problem with the series is that while, in theory, a newspaper story could glance upon almost any aspect of social life, the majority of episodes of the Big Story are about crime; either the journalist is trying to help the police catch a criminal or he's trying to clear the name of a wrongly-convicted felon by finding the actual criminal. So although the Big Story could have been a great dramatic program, it's mostly yet another crime program.

The series was broadcast over NBC for a respectable run from April 2, 1947 until March 23, 1955. Pall Mall cigarettes sponsored the show for most of its run, although Lucky Strike sponsored the final year. The series was produced by Bernard J. Prockter, who had previously been a radio game show producer; the announcer was none other than Ernest Chappell, best-remembered as "the man who spoke to you" on Wyllis Cooper's Quiet, Please.

If you're a classic film buff, you probably remember the 1948 James Stewart film Call Northside 777, in which Stewart portrayed a journalist who rescues an innocent man from a life sentence. If you enjoyed that film then you'll probably like the Big Story, which hits a lot of the same beats as that movie.

One interesting episode that deviates from the norm is dubbed "The Bitterest Man on the Earth" (June 8, 1949) which concerns a wrongly-convicted black man. It sounds like at least a few of the performers were black people, and the majority of characters in the cast were black-- that's always a rarity in radio. Another interesting story is "Puritan Morality and Violent Death" (October 18, 1950) which drew parallels to the case of Lizzie Borden and involved a wife who grew frustrated with her philandering husband.

If you want a newspaper drama, you'll be a bit disappointed (maybe you should listen to Big Town?), but as a crime program with a rotating cast of journalist protagonists drawn from true-life cases, it's not bad.

You can hear 38 surviving episodes (from 383 broadcast!) of the Big Story on this YouTube playlist created by the Old Time Radio Researchers.